PART TWO—
CURRENT PERSPECTIVES

Salmon and steelhead have broad appeal. In this part of the book, each author addresses the subject in terms of his or her special interest. The tone and content of the selections, ranging from the abstract to the personal, illustrate the unique place salmon and steelhead occupy in our experience.

Patrick Higgins, a fishery biologist, opens this part with an explanation of how genetic adaptations developed in California salmon and steelhead and why genetics must be an integral element in all restoration plans. He suggests how this may be accomplished to obtain long-range benefits despite high initial costs. In dealing with the Klamath River basin salmon and steelhead fishery, Higgins draws attention to problems with clear genetic implications that exacerbate the strife among the principal groups involved: the Indian gillnetters, the trollers and sportfishermen, and the federal regulatory agency (PFMC).

In Chapter 7, Robert Ziemer and Richard Hubbard draw the reader into the fishery-forestry issue in their thoughtful essay on the problems of articulating timber harvest and fishery protection plans. Although the problems they raise defy solution, and seem to get worse as one thinks about them, their conclusion is optimistic: the topic is receiving much current attention in academia.

In Chapter 8 the scene shifts to the Sacramento Valley. Richard Hallock, closely involved in the Red Bluff Diversion Dam (RBDD) fish protection and enhancement operations for many years as Fish and Game biologist, discusses the project's problems, efforts to resolve them, and the current status of RBDD fish facilities. When

that low dam on the Sacramento River began operations during the middle 1960s, it was hailed as a promising development in the struggle between fishery and irrigation interests. Its complex, state-of-the-art fish protection and enhancement facilities were a showpiece complete with visitors' center in a parklike setting where one could study colorful billboard-size illustrations and explanations of how the system worked. Several contributors to this volume touch on problems that led to the distressing current status of the RBDD and the associated Tehama-Colusa Canal fish protection facilities: they don't work the way they were supposed to. Worse, the dam has gained a reputation as the major recent cause of declines of salmon and steelhead runs on the upper Sacramento River. In this discussion, Hallock makes clear the reasons for the demise of this once-promising project.

In Chapter 9, fishery biologists Cindy Deacon Williams and Jack Williams offer a detailed account of a significant current crisis directly related to Red Bluff Diversion Dam: the almost certain slide into extinction of the Sacramento River winter chinook salmon. This species originally spawned and reared in cold tributaries of the Sacramento above the site of Shasta Dam and have hung on precariously in the river between Red Bluff and Keswick. The California-Nevada chapter of the American Fisheries Society and other conservation organizations met resistance from several sources, including the government, as they attempted to extend the protection of state and federal endangered species acts to the winter run. In 1989, the state Fish and Game Commission declared the species endangered and federal officials listed it as threatened under emergency regulations effective for two hundred and forty days.

"Salmon mystique," the special feelings we associate with salmon, becomes apparent in the next three chapters. In Chapter 10, economist Philip A. Meyer describes an economic approach to evaluating commercial salmon catches that takes into account a hitherto elusive human element: fishers' strong attachment to their life-style. With an economist's precision and charts, he challenges unrealistic assumptions that commercial salmon fishermen could as readily earn their living fishing in other places for other species.

In Chapter 11, Dave Vogel, whose fieldwork often extends into underwater explorations of salmon and steelhead habitat, relates a number of his sometimes harrowing experiences in a series of per-

sonal vignettes. He and his fellow scientists of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service extend their understanding of stream conditions for Sacramento River chinook and steelhead, and add to their scientific skills, in sometimes unorthodox ways.

In Chapter 12, Harvard sociologist Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good provides insights into the lives of a group we do not ordinarily associate with commercial fishing: women who fish independently and the wives of North Coast fishermen. Ashore, fishermen's wives worry about their husbands' safety and resent the disruptions of their home life. They function as important business partners. At sea, women who fish experience a primordial love of the ocean that they express as men rarely do. And when they learn the joys of catching fish, they become very competitive indeed.

The complex and emotionally loaded subject of Indian fishing rights is the focus of Chapter 13. Ronnie Pierce builds on the historical sketch she introduced earlier in Chapter 2 and explains her view of the current dilemma facing Indian and non-Indian fishers in the Klamath inriver and offshore fisheries. As a marine biologist and Native American activist, she leads the reader through the bewildering mix of issues that impinge on interminable efforts—"many tables" of meetings—to set appropriate allocations of Klamath River salmon among various user groups.

In Chapter 14 Bill Matson, a commercial troller who lives in the seaside hamlet of Trinidad, tells of his love of the sea and fishing for salmon. He also tells of problems that even the rugged individualists who are salmon fishermen feel powerless to overcome. The California North Coast troll fishery suffers from harvest restrictions imposed by federal management plans to protect wild stocks of Klamath River salmon. Ironically, the controls imposed on trollers resulted from passage of federal legislation, the Magnuson Act, which trollers backed because it promised protection from foreign competition. Now the competition is much more difficult to deal with because it is internal: a clash essentially between different cultures. Matson's advice: Quit fighting about who should get more fish, and concentrate on ways to improve the fishery for everyone, and the salmon as well. This chapter and those by Ronnie Pierce and Patrick Higgins constitute an introduction to the extreme complexities of the Klamath Management Zone fishery.

Joel Hedgpeth and Nancy Reichard make their special interest

clear in Chapter 15: "Rivers Do Not 'Waste' to the Sea!" The general public tends to believe that streams expire as they find their way to the ocean. Wild young mountain streams become weary rivers, then doddering estuaries. Floods are particularly wasteful, because they destroy products of human effort and life itself. Such beliefs offer ready justification for major water projects. The slogan "Water must not waste to the sea!" was trumpeted in the 1950s campaign for the State Water Project and is still heard today. In this pointed essay, the authors argue convincingly that streams do not in fact waste to the sea—they have many beneficial effects as they find their way to the sea, and the public must understand that significant reality.

Part Two closes with "Steelie," the engagingly personal account of an outdoor writer's quest for the spawning grounds of wild steelhead high in a headwaters stream. Paul McHugh, who wrote this essay as a contribution to fishery restoration, tells more than an adventure story. He presents two other elements: a streamside glimpse at the basic biology of steelhead and a testimonial to the human fascination they engender.

Chapter Six—
Why All the Fuss about Preserving Wild Stocks of Salmon and Steelhead?

Patrick Higgins

California's wild salmon and steelhead populations have an uphill battle for survival. Habitat for these fishes shrinks yearly due to a number of factors, such as logging and water development for agricultural irrigation and domestic use to accommodate California's burgeoning human population. To solve problems for the fish, many would argue that we should supplant wild fish production with hatcheries. Many fishery professionals disagree: that is not a wise course of action, and California has better options. My purpose here is to show why this is so.

Natural Selection

To the untrained eye, it may be very difficult to distinguish between a wild fish and one raised in a hatchery. The genetic information within each wild salmon or steelhead and those reared in a hatchery may vary considerably, however, and those genetic differences may have a profound effect on the long-term viability of California's salmon and steelhead runs and the costs to society to maintain them.

California's salmon and steelhead populations have a wide range of behavioral and physical characteristics that are controlled

by the genetic code within each fish. That code has been molded by the success or failure of thousands of generations of these fish interacting with the physical and biological conditions of California's environment.

Behavioral traits allow salmon and steelhead to survive despite long-term trends toward a drier climate and seasonal droughts throughout much of the state. If a run of steelhead spawns in the upper reach of a stream that is near a spring, for example, and the lower stretches of the creek dry up in summer, the offspring may have genes that tell them to stay near the spring. Also responding to genetic signals, the fry of earlier-spawning chinook salmon in the same stream might migrate downstream quickly after emerging from the gravel to avoid this problem.

Variations of such patterns may also be observed. For example, runs of coho salmon and steelhead adapted to small coastal streams near Santa Cruz are flexible in the time of their return to fresh water. If rains come early, some of these fish may return in October. Should drought conditions exist, they may not spawn until January. Indeed, some southern California coastal streams host steelhead runs that return only in years of abundant rainfall.

One of California's last substantial runs of summer steelhead on the Middle Fork of the Eel serves as a classic example of genetically controlled survival strategies. As the last snow melts from the Yolla Belly Mountains, these fish battle up the steep, rocky Middle Fork gorge. Streamflows drop rapidly, but the summer steelhead seek shelter in deep pools that are cold on the bottom. Here they wait, often as if in suspended animation, until fall rains allow them to spawn in tributaries. The offspring of all the steelhead in this drainage are also able to thrive in summer water temperatures that are consistently above seventy degrees. Less hardy strains of steelhead fry would be lethargic and susceptible to disease in these elevated water temperatures.

Many of California's rivers once had numerous distinct runs of salmon and steelhead returning throughout the year. The evolution of variations in timing between runs in the same river is due at least in part to biological interactions changing genetic makeup. By entering the river and spawning at different times, competition for spawning and rearing areas is minimized. As fry of the different runs emerge from the gravel, they take turns using different parts

Natural home. This small tributary of the Smith River in northern coastal
California illustrates ideal nursery habitat for juvenile salmonids: forest
canopy and streamside vegetation, oxygenated flow, deep pools,
and cobbles and gravel streambed.
(California Trout, Inc.)

of the stream habitat. Chinook salmon may be the first to return to spawn in the fall, followed by coho salmon, and finally steelhead in mid to late winter. As the chinook salmon emerge, they feed in the slow water at the edges of the stream. By the time the coho salmon fry emerge, the chinook salmon are feeding in swifter, deeper waters and beginning to move downstream. Thus competition for food and space is minimized.

California's stream systems are endowed with salmon and steelhead specifically adapted to the geology, hydrology, and ecology peculiar to each. Many of these native strains have been lost where habitat was completely destroyed, but others have survived against amazing odds. For example, suburban development in Pacifica, south of San Francisco, caused a whole tributary of San Pedro Creek to be placed in a culvert. Years afterward, steelhead in that tributary were still spawning far up that (dark culvert in the gravels deposited in it. Where native strains remain they must be protected. The preservation of even remnant runs could play an important role in rebuilding the state's salmon and steelhead stocks.

Restoring Salmon and Steelhead Runs

In recent years considerable efforts have been made to restore habitat and salmon and steelhead runs in California rivers. Hill-slopes have been stabilized, streamside vegetation replanted, and structures to improve habitat placed in streams. Runs of salmon and steelhead in these watersheds are typically depressed when these restoration projects are initiated.

Some of the few returning adult fish are trapped and spawned artificially and eggs raised in "hatchboxes" to increase survival rates. These native fish survive well in their restored habitat and begin to reproduce naturally. As we continue efforts to restore California's fishery habitat, we may begin to encounter areas where no remnants of native strains exist. The more wild populations of salmon and steelhead that remain throughout the state, the better the chances are that the appropriate genetic strains for natural reproduction in the widest range of environments will have been retained.

Genetic engineering is much in the news these days, and one might get the impression that if we needed a fish with certain

characteristics, we could just mold the DNA of a salmon or steelhead. Actually, we are only now beginning to decipher the genetic code of these fishes. We know that there are more than a thousand different points of information, or loci, on the gene. Of these loci, we understand the function of only a dozen or so. Physical or behavioral traits can also result from interplay between combinations of genetic sites—combinations that are almost infinite in number. In short, these fish have evolved adaptive mechanisms that we do not understand. We cannot genetically engineer traits for survival, therefore, unless we retain these fish and copy from their genomes. Although salmon and steelhead sperm can be preserved by freezing, there is no known way to preserve the eggs of these fishes.

If we lose this precious genetic resource, our watersheds may remain perpetually underseeded or we will have to rely more and more on artificial rearing to maintain poorly adapted populations. Costs will escalate to maintain salmon and steelhead in the state, valuable genetic resources for future aquaculture or enhancement efforts will be lost, and an important part of our heritage will have disappeared as well.

Problems with Hatchery Production

California's first hatchery was opened in 1872 on the McCloud River, a tributary of the Sacramento. Despite this early start on artificial production and a tremendous investment in hatchery facilities associated with California water projects, hatchery success in rebuilding or maintaining stocks has been a hit-and-miss proposition. Problems with disease or human error in operation can cause catastrophic fish kills. Heavy dependence on hatchery-produced salmon and steelhead is a very expensive solution to diminishing runs of these fish and one fraught with problems.

Typically, hatcheries in the past selected the first fish returning to the hatchery for breeding purposes. Hatchery managers wanted to capture enough adult fish at the earliest opportunity to acquire sufficient numbers of eggs to utilize fully the incubation and rearing capacity of their facility. We now realize that this method may have saved only a fraction of the genetic information and survival strategies that existed in the genes of a broader cross section of the

salmon or steelhead in that drainage. Apart from the obvious effect of causing runs in hatchery-dependent rivers to be early and of short duration, various life-history patterns and survival strategies are lost when genetic diversity is restricted in this fashion. Ocean migration and other patterns are often virtually uniform in hatchery stocks. As ocean conditions or streamflows vary from year to year, the diverse strategies of wild fish can dramatically increase their chances for survival over hatchery fish. Returns of salmon and steelhead that are genetically restricted are subject to much wider fluctuations in rates of return. By retaining stock diversity, populations of these fishes will be more stable.

If genetic diversity becomes too restricted, reproductive capacity declines. This phenomenon, called inbreeding depression, results in decreasing hatchery production, which may ultimately necessitate replacement of the entire hatchery broodstock. A disease outbreak can be devastating in a hatchery if the strain being raised lacks genetic resistance to the pathogen. The Coleman Hatchery on Battle Creek, a Sacramento River tributary, has had continuing problems with outbreaks of disease. In worst-case scenarios, whole broodstocks from hatcheries may need to be replaced because of disease.

Human error can result in tremendous fish kills, which can greatly alter returns in hatchery-dependent rivers. In the summer of 1986, Iron Gate Hatchery on the upper Klamath River experienced a fish kill of one to three million juvenile chinook salmon being reared in cold hatchery water. As repairs were being made to the dam upstream, water was being released from the surface instead of from the bottom of the lake behind the dam. Water temperatures below the dam were in the high seventies, and when the young fish were released almost all of them died.

But hatcheries are not all bad. Despite the problems inherent in hatchery production, hatcheries play a vital role in supplanting losses where habitat has been irretrievably lost. In the 1960s, new feeding methods and ways of combating disease were discovered, and production levels at hatcheries generally increased. Recent investments by commercial fishermen on improvements to Sacramento and San Joaquin River fish-rearing facilities through the Salmon Stamp Program have also resulted in substantial increases in hatchery production in the state. As hatchery production increases, negative side effects on native strains can occur, so special

care must be taken by hatcheries in basins where viable wild populations still exist.

The Impact of Hatchery Fish on Wild Populations

Fishery professionals used to believe that hatchery programs which produced numbers of fish above the numbers of naturally produced offspring had little or no negative impact on wild runs. We are now, however, discovering that hatchery programs and the way in which hatchery fish are transferred and planted can have substantial negative effects on wild fish.

California has opted for large hatchery facilities on just a few rivers as opposed to smaller facilities on a greater number of streams. On the surface, the strategy is easy enough to understand: large hatcheries have larger production capabilities and therefore lower cost per fish produced. Also, most of these facilities were funded in association with dams for mitigation. When these large hatcheries have surpluses of juvenile fish, the fish are often transferred to "enhance" populations in other streams. The fish may be poorly adapted to the watershed to which they are introduced. They are also sometimes planted without regard for the carrying capacity of the stream. Competition for food and space can greatly reduce the number of native juveniles in these systems.

Hatchery fish often do not survive as well in the stream or ocean as wild fish, yet as thousands or millions of fry or smolts are planted in streams, they outcompete native populations because of sheer numbers. Hatchery fish are taught to respond positively to humans or machines moving along raceways to feed them. In the wild, such movement over the water might be a predatory bird or animal. Wild fish stake out territories where little energy is required to stay in feeding position but much food is delivered. Hatchery fish may not be imprinted to behave in this fashion. We are just now gaining greater understanding about timing the release of these young fish. If they are not released to begin migration when genetic cues normally would induce such behavior, they may not even go to the ocean at all.

Transferred stocks are often poorly adapted to conditions in host streams. Coho salmon from hatcheries on large northstate rivers

have been planted in short coastal streams near Santa Cruz. The genetic information they contain gears them for a journey of several hundred miles, but the systems to which they have been transferred are only a few miles long. Coho salmon returning to the Klamath, for instance, never encounter low streamflows near the mouth and begin their upstream migration several months before spawning. When these fish are transplanted, they might return to spawn when the Santa Cruz area streams are almost dry. Native stocks of California coho salmon have declined seriously, partly because of such stock transfers.

Straying of returning adult spawners is also a problem with hatchery fish. Instead of returning to the hatchery, they may continue upstream, enter a tributary below the hatchery, or return to a different river system. This problem is compounded if the salmon or steelhead are planted away from the hatchery facility, as in the estuary of the river or in an entirely different stream.

Hatcheries often plant juvenile salmon in estuaries because the number that survive to maturity is greatly increased. Intermixing of hatchery and wild stocks may, however, introduce genes into the wild population that decrease survival. A prime example of this is when introduced fish lack resistance to a disease organism present in their new environment. The result can be catastrophic.

Wild fish can also be severely affected by overfishing when harvested in mixed-stock fisheries with hatchery fish. Hatchery stocks can sustain harvests of up to 90 percent, while wild populations may be jeopardized by any harvest pressure over 65 percent. The reason for the difference is the higher survival rate of eggs reared in hatchery trays over eggs that are exposed to the many hazards of the natural environment. To maintain maximum genetic diversity and protect wild runs, harvest quotas must be set to preserve the more vulnerable native fish.

If harvests are kept at a rate to sustain wild populations, thousands or even tens of thousands of surplus fish may return to the hatchery gate. Huge concentrations of fish in the stretches of river below these hatcheries overwhelm the river's spawning and rearing capacity. Many fish that are not allowed in the hatchery die without reproducing. These massive runs encourage poachers, who rationalize their "sport" by saying that the fish will otherwise be wasted.

Legitimate sportfishing in rivers supporting these huge hatchery runs may also reach levels that deplete native runs.

Hatchery returns may also mask problems with native stocks and create false impressions of the overall health of the salmon and steelhead runs in certain basins. While runs to the hatcheries in the Klamath/Trinity River system have boomed since 1984, wild fish in drainages like the South Fork of the Trinity have not rebounded at all. Wild stocks were overharvested for so long that rebuilding will take many years. Habitat problems may also be besetting these native fish.

Study of the decline in populations of older forty- to seventy-pound Klamath River salmon has revealed a perplexing facet of this problem. Commercial and sportfishing pressure over the years has reduced the numbers of four- or five-year-old fish to the extent that they have nearly disappeared from the Klamath and other California streams. Spawning females of these stocks produce up to ten thousand eggs. Such fish may be genetically adapted to spawning deep in large rivers, using habitat where smaller salmon are unable to reproduce successfully. Without fish to utilize it, this habitat may not be used for spawning. As ocean fishing regulations have tightened in recent years, more of these large fish seem to be returning.

But another set of problems must be dealt with. The large-mesh gillnets used in the Indian fishery on the Klamath River selectively harvest the largest returning salmon, thus thwarting efforts to restore these important stocks. The large mesh does permit the escape of smaller steelhead, however, an important sport fish in the Klamath basin. A shift to smaller nets would, therefore, not only reduce the value of the Indian salmon catch but also produce negative side effects on the important sport fishery, which contributes significantly to the local economy. Solutions to problems of preserving diverse runs are never simple.

How to Protect Wild Stocks

To protect California's remaining wild salmon and steelhead we must, first and foremost, fight to protect remaining habitat. As we work to restore California's salmon and steelhead resource, we are

finding the task oftentimes difficult and costly, so preservation of existing habitat makes economic good sense as well.

In areas like the North Coast, where considerable habitat remains that can support wild salmon and steelhead, care must be taken to lessen the negative effects of hatchery fish on wild fish. The original fish used as parents or broodstock at the hatchery should be taken from a wide spectrum of the native run. New wild fish should be captured periodically and used in breeding. In this way the fitness of the hatchery strain is maintained, and if some straying occurs, negative impacts are minimized. If a stream's entire run of salmon or steelhead is extinct, broodstock should be chosen from the nearest similar basin so that natural production has a greater chance of being reestablished. Selective breeding at the hatchery for large size (or any other trait) should be avoided. While individual fish in returning runs might tend to be larger, many traits that would contribute to long-term survival might be lost.

California hatchery managers need to pay more attention to the carrying capacity of the stream or river where juveniles are released. In years when tremendous numbers of progeny are reared, survival rates may be very low after release because the natural system is incapable of supporting the young fish. Survival of wild fish under these crowded circumstances might also be very low.

Salmon or steelhead juveniles generally should not be planted away from their hatchery of origin. Young fish released at the hatchery are more properly imprinted and therefore stray much less to spawn with wild fish. Transferring juvenile salmonids between basins should be avoided under most circumstances.

Hatchery juveniles are often much larger than wild salmon and steelhead young at the time of their release. Hatchery programs should release fish equal in size to native fish in the same habitat so they will not prey upon wild young or have an unfair competitive advantage in seeking food or habitat.

Hatchery fish should be harvested more intensively than wild fish. If hatchery fish were all marked, they could be selectively harvested in the river and in the ocean, and wild fish released. British Columbia, Washington, and Idaho currently manage their steelhead in this manner. British Columbia's anglers initially grumbled at not being permitted to keep unmarked steelhead, but now fishing has improved so dramatically that they are extremely happy

with this management strategy. Managing salmon in this fashion is more complex logistically, but it may be a worthwhile strategy to explore.

The California Department of Fish and Game is caught in a bind on the issue of protecting wild stocks. As the state's population increases, problems of fishing pressure also increase. Many decision makers within the department see the only solution as increasing artificial production of salmon and steelhead. In certain cases, like the San Joaquin River, where the native fish have been wiped out, hatcheries may be the only solution. But much of the state's salmonid habitat remains viable, and more effort is needed to maintain and enhance wild salmon and steelhead populations by employing management strategies to put harvest in balance with production wherever possible.

In the long run, preservation of wild fish makes economic good sense. When wild fish come back to spawn, it doesn't cost California's taxpayers a dime.

Chapter Seven—
Forestry and Anadromous Fish

Robert R. Ziemer and Richard L. Hubbard

One of the most pressing . . . problem[s] involves the effect of timber harvest upon fish resources. . . . Rarely has so much discussion been generated around so few facts.
—D. W. Chapman, 1962

This statement is nearly as applicable today as it was when made more than twenty-five years ago in the Journal of Forestry . The relationship between forest practices and anadromous fish production has continued to be debated during the intervening decades without a clear resolution. The issue is complicated because there are activities in addition to forest practices that affect anadromous fish production. The offshore fishery removes a large portion of those adults that would return to the streams to spawn. Instream fishing removes another portion of those spawners. Dams on the rivers reduce peak streamflows that influence channel morphology and sediment transport, as well as modify low-flow discharges in the summer. Much of the downstream river habitat is modified by major highways, agriculture, and urbanization. Estuarine habitat has been virtually eliminated from many rivers and severely modified for the remainder.

In the forested areas, past and present land use is variable. Many mountainous watersheds were severely modified by extensive placer mining and logging during the last century. In the late 1940s, the increased value of softwood species, such as pines and firs, started a new wave of cutting in the forests. Beginning in the

mid-1950s, large storms reactivated huge dormant streamside landslides. Not until the 1970s did forest practices legislation begin to address issues of riparian condition and habitat. The question facing researchers now is how to separate all of these influences, including the effect of past forest practices from present and future practices in relation to fish production. The important regulatory challenge is to be able to predict the influence of new activity given the present condition of the resource of concern.

In 1987, at the request of the California Advisory Committee on Salmon and Steelhead Trout, the Wildland Resources Center of the University of California convened a workshop at the U.C. Davis campus to define the needs and costs of a ten-year research, development, and education program related to salmon and steelhead trout. A cross section of commercial and sportfishermen, government resource managers, university scientists, and consultants compiled a list of one hundred and thirty-nine problems needing solution. From that list, eighteen problems were given highest priority for expanded funding and research. Two of those eighteen problems are directly related to the forestry and fishery interaction:

1. Determine how changes in inputs of sediment and associated changes in instream channels affect fish habitats under varying conditions.

2. Identify and assess the cumulative effects of timber harvest on erosion, hillslope stability, streamflow, and sediment in stream channels.

After decades of work, we still cannot predict biotic changes from measured changes in the physical environment of watersheds or stream channels. This limitation has, in some cases, resulted in the destruction of habitat in the name of protection. Until recently, forest practice regulations addressed water quality—not fish habitat. Our view of woody debris, for example, has changed dramatically over the past decade. Programs to protect water quality at times required extreme measures to clean up streams after logging. Occasionally these programs were translated into removing all woody debris from the stream—both natural and logging-induced. Often the result was accelerated erosion of channel beds and streambanks. Large woody debris is now recognized as an impor-

tant component of healthy streams. It moderates the velocity of streamflow, influences the routing and storage of sediment, and increases the quality and diversity of fish habitat.

Most forest practices regulations, and most research on land use effects, have focused on short-term responses of local areas to single land uses. These responses are typically viewed as being isolated in time and space. Recently, managers and researchers (and the courts) have become increasingly concerned with the "cumulative effects" of land management activities. The National Environmental Policy Act defines such effects in this way: " 'Cumulative impact' is the impact on the environment which results from the incremental impact of the action when added to other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions regardless of what agency or person undertakes such other actions. Cumulative impacts can result from individually minor but collectively significant actions taking place over a period of time."

Cumulative environmental changes may occur either at sites of land use disturbance or away from the disturbed sites. At the site of disturbance, multiple practices may combine or accumulate through time to affect a beneficial use. Away from the site, changes may accumulate through a sequence of impacts spread over many years or through the combined effects of multiple practices distributed throughout the river basin. Concern about cumulative effects introduces the concept that even though all activities are conducted in a manner which limits their individual effects to an acceptably low level, unacceptable harm may be experienced at some point in time or space when these activities function collectively.

Today we have no effective method for predicting the environmental response to a land use plan. To make matters worse, there is little agreement among disciplines, geographic regions, or interest groups over what actually constitutes cumulative effects or whether they even exist.

Determining the influence of land use on resident fish, let alone anadromous fish, is particularly problematic. First we need to understand how land use activities affect the removal over time of sediment, water, woody debris, nutrients, and heat from hillslopes and their delivery to streams. Then we need to know the transport rates of each of these products from the sites of land use to areas of

concern. Moreover, we must determine how altered sediment, water, woody debris, nutrient, and heat transport affect resources of concern, such as diversity, composition, resilience, and structure of biological communities. Finally since fish are near the top of the biological community structure, we need to understand the importance of these changes on not only the fish but also their ecological link to other parts of the community throughout their life cycle. It is much simpler to understand, for example, how a single land use activity over a short period affects erosion than to understand the biological consequences of the resulting sediment.

There are important issues related to scale—both spatial and temporal. In general, individual erosion events are limited to an area of square yards or, at most, acres. Individual land management activities, such as logging, usually occupy less than a hundred acres. The drainage area of the streams that contain most of the prime anadromous fish habitat exceeds a thousand acres, and usually more than ten thousand acres. In small areas, it is relatively simple to measure the relevant variables in order to evaluate cause and effect. As the area becomes larger, it becomes progressively more difficult to measure these variables at a scale that can give meaningful results. And as the spatial scale increases, so does the time required for a change to be observed. For example, the time required for sediment to be routed from a site of erosion within a one-acre watershed is much less than in a hundred-acre watershed or a ten-thousand-acre watershed. Therefore, the relevant response time between a land use activity and a significant effect should be expected to increase as the size of the area increases.

Similarly, the recovery time following disturbance should be expected to increase as drainage area increases. As the time between disturbance and expected effect increases, there is a greater chance that a natural event, such as a major storm, will occur within that interval and confuse any determination of cause and effect. In some cases, land management decisions can set the stage for substantial problems during serious storms. If conventional road engineering designs call for forest road culverts to withstand a fifty-year storm, for example, then during a hundred-year logging cycle all of the culverts would be expected to fail twice, on the average, and the associated road fill would be washed into the

stream. This is not a natural consequence of a large storm; it is an economic and design decision.

Even when we eventually understand the relationship between land use practices and erosion and sediment production and routing, we will still be a long way from understanding the effect of that sediment on the biological community, including anadromous fish. The important point to keep in mind is that none of these relationships are simple. To evaluate the effect of logging on sediment production immediately below the area of activity is not enough when the area of interest is ten miles downstream. Furthermore, to understand the effect of that logging operation on the sediment regime ten miles downstream is not enough when the objective is to understand the effect of sediment on anadromous fish production.

It now becomes important to know the change in flux of that sediment throughout the life cycle of the fish and the effect of these changes upon growth, reproduction, and mortality. The effect may not be direct, but it may represent a change in food availability, feeding success, susceptibility to disease, or predation. Thus we must be concerned not only with the immediate effect of the sediment on the fish but also its effect on the ability of the fish to grow, compete, and eventually reproduce. If a change in sediment load, for instance, lessens the ability of a fish to survive and reproduce, that is perhaps as important an effect as killing the fish outright.

For several decades, the riparian zone has continued to be the focus of increasingly restrictive regulations—and for good reason. Thirty years ago the riparian zone was a place to locate roads, landings, and skid trails. Logs were routinely tractor-yarded to and down stream channels. Large volumes of soil and logging slash were left in the streams. Road construction debris was routinely side-cast, much of it in the stream. Studies of land management effects on fish usually focus on stream blockage by logging debris and lethal temperature increases resulting from removal of the tree canopy. More recent fish management programs have called attention to additional specific habitat requirements, such as spawning substrate, sedimentation, cover, pool volume, minimum instream flows, and the effect of land management practices on these requirements. Single-objective programs—for example, to increase the amount of suitable spawning substrate—often do so in the absence of the necessary collateral knowledge of sediment transport me-

chanics, channel morphology, and other aspects of fish habitat. Such programs are often a disappointment; they do not attain the objective of increased return of adult salmonids. The programs fail because they ignore major attributes of stream ecosystems that support the fisheries.

Clearly an ecosystem approach at an appropriate spatial and temporal scale will be required if progress is to be made on the question of forest practices and fish production. Regulating individual timber harvest units is not enough. Regulation must be made at the drainage basin scale, taking into account the effects of past and present practices. It is not sufficient to have streamside management regulations designed to maintain stream temperature. Regulations must also consider changes in streamside input of solar radiation, nutrients, food, litter, woody debris, and sediment over both the short and the long term.

As one example, management decisions in the riparian zone can substantially affect the supply of large woody debris without significantly affecting the other streamside inputs. If the management policy is to harvest continually only the large and decadent trees, leaving the vigorous intermediate and small-sized trees, little change would occur in any of these other streamside additions. The incidence of tree-fall, however, would be dramatically lowered. The quantity of large woody debris in the stream would gradually be reduced by stream export and decay, but new additions of large material would seldom be available. Eventually the stream would become devoid of large woody structures and the morphology of the channel would adjust, as would cover and other aspects of the aquatic habitat that are tied to the presence of large pieces of wood.

Besides transporting water, the stream transports sediment, nutrients, detritus, and organic matter from the surrounding forests and hillslopes. The riparian zone links hillslopes to streams and moderates the transport and delivery of these watershed products. The riparian ecosystem functions within the context of changing fluxes of these products, and anadromous fish use the streams draining the forested watersheds for only a portion of their life cycle. A recent symposium at the University of Washington assessed the state of the science on forestry/fish interactions. A reading of the 471-page proceedings clearly demonstrates that there has been progress in understanding pieces of the forestry and fish puzzle,

Tractor yarding equipment at a logging site. More stringent rules, coupled
with stricter enforcement, are needed to reduce damage to streams from
such operations, particularly in northern coastal California watersheds.
(Herbert Joseph)

but much work remains before we can predict the effect of a proposed land treatment on fish production in any given drainage basin.

Since D. W. Chapman discussed the issues of forestry and fish resources a quarter-century ago, the populations of salmon and steelhead trout have continued to decline. Robert Z. Callaham, of the Wildlands Resources Center, U.C. Berkeley, and Bruce Vondracek, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Biology, U.C. Davis, point out that "reversing the decline depends, in part, upon having new technology to improve management of these fisheries and that technology would be applied by a strong research, development, and extension (RD&E) program." The needs and costs of an RD&E program to improve the management of salmon and steelhead trout

have been identified by others. Because of the importance of salmon and steelhead trout resources to the economy of the Pacific Northwest, these programs, recommended by commercial and sportfishermen, government resource managers, university scientists, and consultants, need financial and political support to move beyond the planning stage to implementation. The California Advisory, Committee on Salmon and Steelhead Trout, in its 1988 report, emphasizes the urgency of the task: "California must aggressively confront the problems challenging salmon and steelhead survival. It is not too late to restore and protect this natural heritage. The time to act is now."

While complete reversal of anadromous fishery declines will depend on results of the research described above, promising interim actions are being taken. Tightening and better enforcement of the State Forest Practice Act is one such action. The high priority given to fisheries by the U.S. Forest Service, as outlined in its "Rise for the Future" program, is another such action. The Bureau of Land Management has announced that it intends to address fishery problems more vigorously. These actions, coupled with an ambitious research and development program, are certainly a glimmer of light at the end of what has been a very dark tunnel.

Chapter Eight—
The Red Bluff Diversion Dam

Richard J. Hallock

One of the major causes, and perhaps the single most important recent known cause of the decline of salmon and steelhead in the Sacramento River is Red Bluff Diversion Dam (RBDD). Completed in 1964, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's diversion dam is located on the Sacramento River two miles downstream from Red Bluff. Initially incorporated into the diversion complex were state-of-the-art fish protection facilities that were plagued with problems and modified structurally and operationally. Key features were determined to be unusable in recent years.

The bureau presently maintains and operates RBDD and the upper two or three miles of the Tehama-Colusa and Corning canals, including the Corning Canal pumping plant. The Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority, an association of water users, now operates and maintains the remainder of the Tehama-Colusa and Corning canals. The Tehama-Colusa Fish Facilities have been deactivated, and the salmon spawning and rearing areas are no longer in use. Some of the funds formerly allocated to operation of these facilities have been transferred to Coleman National Fish Hatchery; a portion is still used for maintenance of the deactivated facilities. The Tehama-Colusa Fish Facilities offices, shops, and storage buildings are now occupied by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (USFWS) Fisher-

Sacramento River chinook salmon like this one typically weigh from
twenty to thirty pounds.
(California Department of Fish and Game)

ies Assistance office. This office, among its other duties, operates and maintains in part the fishways at RBDD and is also responsible for fish counting operations there.

The Bureau of Reclamation is presently replacing the inefficient louver-type fish screen at the entrance to the Tehama-Colusa Canal

Part of a grand design that failed. Despite hopes of engineers and fishery
planners in 1966, the Red Bluff Diversion Dam is now considered a major
cause of recent declines of salmon and steelhead populations in the upper
Sacramento River.
(Dave Vogel)

with a positive, 32-revolving-drum type of fish screen. The bureau also is increasing canal diversion capabilities from 2,800 to 3,200 cubic feet per second by adding one new bay at the entrance. During an average water year (without the new bay) 700,000 acre-feet of water is diverted into the Tehama-Colusa Canal and an additional 50,000 acre-feet is diverted into the Corning Canal. The diversion headworks near the right-bank abutment is screened to prevent fish in the river from entering the canals.

Sacramento River water levels are controlled by eleven dam gates, each 60 feet wide and 18 feet high, incorporated in the 752-foot-long structure. Water is released by raising one or more gates. A fishway, with closed-circuit television to count adult salmon and steelhead, is located on each dam abutment. A fish trap is incorporated into the left-bank fishway, where adult salmon and steelhead can be examined and released or selected for transfer to other locations.

Fyke net being repaired. These nets are used for sampling fish
populations for study.
(California Department of Fish and Game)

Spawning Distribution Changes

Shortly after RBDD became fully operational in 1966, portentous changes occurred in the distribution and total number of fall-run salmon using the upper Sacramento River system. Prior to 1966

more than 90 percent of the total salmon population spawned above the dam site and less than 10 percent below. During the first decade of the dam's operation, the spawning distribution pattern changed: less than 40 percent were spawning above the dam and more than 60 percent below. Changes in these percentages have coincided with overall declines in total populations. Thus both relative and actual numbers of salmon that spawn in waters above the dam have dropped dramatically.

Problems

The problems at RBDD are primarily related to passage of both adult and juvenile salmonids. Adult salmon are delayed below the dam from one to forty days, and more than 26 percent that approach the dam never get past it. Of the four salmon runs, adult fish passage problems cause the most damage to winter-run salmon. Delay time, which adversely affect spawning success, increases with increases in flow, since the adult fish have more difficulty finding the fishways at higher flows. Juvenile salmonids that do not have to pass the dam on their way to the sea have a greater chance of survival than those that do—fingerling fall-run salmon 46 percent greater and yearling steelhead up to 25 percent greater. Studies conducted in 1974 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service showed losses as high as 55 to 60 percent being suffered by juvenile salmon passing the dam during daylight hours.

Fish losses specific to RBDD are caused in part by (1) inadequate attraction flows from the fishways, which result in delay and blockage of adults moving upstream, and (2) turbulence immediately below the dam, which disorients both juvenile and adult salmonids. In particular, the juveniles moving downstream are thrown to the surface after passing under the dam gates, where they become easy prey for predatory fishes, especially Sacramento River squawfish. Other documented losses of juveniles have resulted from the canal headworks fish screen.

Fish Losses

Historical data are lacking for all but fall-run salmon, resulting in less accuracy in estimating the effect of RBDD on late fall-, winter-, and

spring-run salmon, as well as steelhead. Between 1969 and 1982, however, RBDD has caused an estimated loss in the upper Sacramento River system's adult salmon populations of 114,000 fish: 57,000 fall run, 17,000 late fall run, and 40,000 winter run. These losses have deprived the fisheries of about 228,000 salmon a year at a catch-to-escapement ratio of two-to-one. Other researchers agree with such estimates. In a 1986 report to the USFWS, R. R. Reisenbichler estimated that solving the problems at RBDD would return the fall-run salmon population to 1955–1956 levels. In addition, an estimated decline of 6,000 sea-run steelhead in the upper Sacramento River has been attributed to RBDD.

Problems of Handling Ripe Salmon

The Department of Fish and Game routinely samples fish migrating upstream in the trapping facility at RBDD to separate the total closed-circuit counts into the various runs and to look for marked and tagged fish. Between 1971 and 1974, about fourteen hundred ripe female salmon (losing eggs when handled) with an estimated average potential of seven million eggs were handled annually. The number of ripe females handled currently (1989) would no doubt be less, even with increased sampling, because of population declines, especially in winter-, spring-, and late fall-run salmon. At present, these fish are still released in hopes that they will eventually spawn successfully, but success seems unlikely.

To solve this problem of ripe spawners, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service constructed an incubation station near the left-bank fishway that became operational in 1979. It has not been used to date, primarily because of lack of personnel and management interest. The handling of seven million eggs in this facility annually could have added between seven thousand and thirty thousand fish to the ocean catch, depending upon their size when released. Moreover, this procedure could have given a boost to the now endangered winter-run salmon, since in the 1971–1974 period more than a million of the total eggs would have come from ripe winter-run salmon in May and June. Since the winter-run chinook population declined to about five hundred fish in 1989, such an egg take would no longer be possible. The problem is further compounded by the fact that the incubation station will apparently never be used for its original purpose, since it is

now being transferred by the USFWS to the U.S. Forest Service, managers of the adjacent recreation area.

Squawfish Predation

Between 1978 and 1985 the number of adult Sacramento squawfish counted annually as they passed upstream through the fishways at RBDD ranged from a low of thirteen thousand in 1983 to a high of twenty-five thousand in 1978 and averaged about eighteen thousand. Squawfish concentrate below RBDD in the spring and early summer, where they prey heavily on juvenile salmon and steelhead on their way to the sea. Turbulence caused by large volumes of water flowing under the dam gates disorients the juvenile salmon and increases their vulnerability to predation immediately below the dam. Squawfish sampled below the dam during two sampling periods in June 1977 had consumed an average of 0.5 and 1.5 juvenile salmon shortly before capture. In May and June 1977, an estimated twelve thousand squawfish were concentrated below RBDD—representing a potential daily consumption rate in excess of one hundred thousand juvenile salmon. During the spring and summer months of especially dry years, striped bass also become quite numerous and are serious predators of juvenile salmon immediately below RBDD. For example, during one study the stomach of a twenty-five-inch-long striped bass captured below the dam was found to contain the remains of twenty-one juvenile salmon. Studies in April and May 1984 showed that squawfish predation was causing losses among juvenile salmon as high as 55 percent during the daytime.

To control squawfish at RBDD an electronic shocking device was installed in the left-bank fishway and tested in 1985. This device was quite successful in destroying adult squawfish in the fishway as they were migrating upstream. Its operation had an adverse effect on salmon migration, however, so use of the shocker was discontinued. Apparently when squawfish, and certain other species, are under stress a warning odor is emitted. In 1987 a new device, its purchase funded in part by the Marin Rod and Gun Club, was tested in the left-bank fishway. Its purpose was to reduce stress by capturing squawfish alive in the fishway and then destroying them elsewhere.

Currently, electronic device testing is at best intermittent since the gates at RBDD are raised for a four-month period between December 1 and April 1 to provide "free" adult passage for the endangered winter-run chinooks. The National Marine Fisheries Service also funded a study to determine whether a commercial squawfish fishery might be feasible. A contract was let to a commercial fisherman to remove squawfish at RBDD, but harvested fish cannot be sold commercially because their flesh has been found to be contaminated with dioxin.

Lake Red Bluff Power Project

The city of Redding applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 1983 for a license to operate Lake Red Bluff Power Project. FERC denied the permit, but Redding has appealed. The city of Redding's plan is somewhat similar to a plan developed by the Bureau of Reclamation to develop power at RBDD—a plan that the bureau is not actively seeking to implement at this time.

A major concern with the city of Redding's proposed power project is the potential direct turbine mortality of juvenile salmon and steelhead migrating downstream—that is, those fish which cannot be diverted or screened from passing through the turbines. Indirect mortality—that is, increased predation on stunned, disoriented, or debilitated juveniles that have passed through the turbines—could also be significant. Adult salmon and steelhead passage upstream at RBDD could also be adversely affected, since the proposed project provides for inadequate fish attraction flows to the fishways.

Recommendations

To help solve adult fish passage problems at RBDD, both fishways should be modified to provide exit flows two to three times what they are now. At the same time, comparative evaluations should be made of proposals to improve fish passage by further enlarging the east-bank fishway or by constructing a new fish bypass channel around the east side of the dam. These recommendations are in agreement with some of the key recommendations made by the

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in their three action study programs aimed at implementing solutions to fishery problems at RBDD.

Even with these recommended actions, it is doubtful that manipulation of RBDD operations, within the constraints of present and proposed future water demands, will ever completely reverse present losses. Strictly from a fishery standpoint, the logical solution to RBDD fish passage problems would be to replace the dam with a pumping plant to supply water to the Tehama-Colusa and Corning canals. At the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, a pumping plant similar in size to the one that would be required at Red Bluff was installed at a cost of $10,000,000 in 1984. If RBDD is not to be replaced with a pumping plant, or another source of water is not developed that would allow raising the gates, a formal agreement should be made relative to raising the gates at least during the nonirrigation season to improve fish passage.

Until studies demonstrate that ripe salmon handled at the RBDD trapping facility spawn successfully in the river if released, they should be spawned artificially and their spawn placed in the USFWS incubation station constructed for that purpose. Operation of this facility should be funded by the Bureau of Reclamation, owners and operators of RBDD. Moreover, studies should be intensified to develop a positive plan for eliminating squawfish predation at RBDD. Finally, the city of Redding's proposed Lake Red Bluff Power Project should be opposed unless all the fish protective measures recommended by DFG and USFWS are incorporated in the project.

Chapter Nine—
The Sacramento River Winter Chinook Salmon:
Threatened with Extinction

Jack E. Williams and Cindy Deacon Williams

The Sacramento River winter chinook salmon are nearing extinction. The unacceptable loss of this distinct and valuable race of salmon would be the result of conscious management decisions that demonstrated a lack of concern for the needs of the species. The winter chinook salmon are adapted to entering the main Sacramento River in late winter and spawning far upstream during the early months of the Central Valley's long, hot summer. Their ancestral spawning grounds were in the McCloud River, a tumbling, spring-fed tributary of the upper Sacramento. Eggs hatched and fry matured in the cold, consistent flows of the McCloud, seemingly oblivious to the hot summer weather.

All this changed when Shasta and Keswick dams were built on the Sacramento. Migrating adults, blocked by the dams, no longer could reach historic spawning areas. Pollution, water diversions, and stream channelization also exacted their toll. As recently as 1969, more than 100,000 spawners were tallied. Annual counts from 1982 to 1988 average only 2,334 adult fish—more than a 97 percent decline. At the reduced population levels of recent years, extinction is likely from continued habitat losses or a chance event such as drought or flood.

This disastrous decline has called fishery biologists, anglers, and

Map 2
 Upper Sacramento River and Tributaries

environmentalists to action. They began efforts in 1985 to protect the winter chinook salmon pursuant to federal and state endangered species acts. Faced with the precedent of possibly listing a salmon as endangered or threatened and having to restrict water development in the Sacramento Valley, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the California Fish and Game Commission hesitated to apply the protections afforded by strong endangered species laws and ultimately did so only after extensive legal wrangling and a further precipitous decline to only five hundred and seven spawners in 1989. This chapter traces the unique life history of the Sacramento River winter chinook, efforts to save them from extinction, and the anticipated impact of endangered species protection on sport and commercial anglers, water users, and the fish.

Biological Background

Four races of chinook salmon occur in the Sacramento River system: fall, late fall, winter, and spring runs. The runs are distinguished by timing of adult upstream migration, spawning, egg incubation, and juvenile downstream migration. Most adult winter chinook typically move upstream in December through March and spawn in May and June. Eggs incubate during summer months when water temperatures often are critically high. Downstream migration of winter chinook juveniles occurs from early August through October. In addition to temporal separation of the runs, the winter chinook are further distinguished by their choice of spawning gravels in depths of about ten feet and by their younger age at the time of upstream migration. Historically, winter chinook were mostly three-year-olds, with a few four-year-olds, whereas other runs had a larger proportion of the older fish. Other distinguishing features are their relatively low fecundity, rapid upstream migration of adults, and extended staging period of adults in headwaters before spawning. For these reasons, the winter chinook are considered to be racially distinct from all other runs of chinook salmon.

State of the Resource

Spawning winter chinook salmon were first observed in the McCloud River in 1902 at the site of the Baird Hatchery. In 1942,

To be extinct? This winter-run Sacramento River chinook salmon, having
traveled more than two hundred miles upriver without feeding, still
appears ocean-fresh. The hardy species, which originally populated the
McCloud River drainage, is nearing extinction.
(California Department of Fish and Game)

however, Sacramento River salmon were blocked from reaching McCloud River spawning habitat by the construction of Shasta and Keswick dams. Neither dam has fish passage facilities. At first, winter chinooks were nearly eliminated because successful spawning was impossible in the warm Sacramento River water below the dams. By 1946, however, releases of cold water from the depths of Shasta Reservoir were cool enough to allow successful egg incubation. By the late 1960s, cool-water releases from Shasta and Keswick dams maintained winter chinook spawning

Size of 1967, 1968, and 1969 winter chinook spawning runs passing Red
Bluff Diversion Dam. Subsequent generations are plotted on three-year
cycles to reflect typical ages of spawning adults.
(California Department of Fish and Game, unpublished data)

runs of fifty thousand to one hundred twenty thousand fish. Runs have declined dramatically since that time (see graph).

Many other problems plague the winter chinook: pollution from agricultural runoff, toxic waste from Iron Mountain Mine, gravel mining in tributary streams, channelization and bank stabilization of the Sacramento River, and obstructions to migrating adults and young created by the Anderson-Cottonwood and Glenn-Colusa irrigation districts' diversion dams. Decline of runs was further exacerbated by construction of Red Bluff Diversion Dam in 1966. Water below the dam is rarely cool enough for successful spawning, and fish must ascend fish ladders in order to reach cooler waters released by Shasta and Keswick dams. During the first nine years of operation of that facility, each three-year generation of winter-run fish ascending the ladders declined by one-half. Random environmental events, such as the 1976–1977 drought and the 1982–1983 El Niño, further depressed the winter chinook populations. The 1976 spawning run of 35,096 adults, for example, produced a spawning run of only 2,364 fish three years later.

A Threatened or Endangered Species?

With spawning runs of the winter chinook salmon reduced to only a few thousand fish, the California-Nevada chapter of the American Fisheries Society petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service in November 1985 to list the run as a threatened species pursuant to the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which establishes that "species" can include "any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any species [of] vertebrate fish and wildlife which interbreeds when mature." The Sacramento River winter chinook salmon thus could be listed as a threatened or endangered species. Furthermore, recent studies elsewhere on the West Coast have documented the genetic distinctiveness of various salmon runs along and within large river systems.

After a review of the winter chinook's status, the National Marine Fisheries Service determined in February 1987 that listing was "not warranted." Although the service found that the run qualified as a species as defined by law and that numbers of winter chinook had seriously declined, it determined that listing was not warranted because resource agencies had informally

agreed to a ten-point conservation plan. Major provisions of the plan include:

1. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation would raise the gates at Red Bluff Diversion Dam to facilitate passage of winter chinook adults.

2. Gravel would be introduced to supplement riverine spawning habitat.

3. A winter chinook propagation program would be initiated at Coleman National Fish Hatchery.

4. A temperature control curtain would be constructed at Shasta Dam.

5. Iron Mountain Mine would be cleaned up with Superfund money.

6. Fishery restoration plans for the Sacramento River would be developed pursuant to California Senate Bill 1086. (This bill established an advisory committee to develop and recommend recovery actions for Sacramento River fish, wildlife, endangered species, and riparian losses.)

In February 1988, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund on behalf of the American Fisheries Society and others filed suit in U.S. District Court to force listing of the Sacramento River winter chinook as a threatened species. The plaintiffs argued that because the run is in fact biologically threatened, the federal government, under the Endangered Species Act, has a nondiscretionary obligation to list the fish. They argued further that the incomplete and nonbinding nature of the planned conservation measures was insufficient to prevent extinction of the species, especially if a drought were to occur or if additional habitat were lost to hydroelectric projects or other human endeavors.

Meanwhile, the Sacramento River Preservation Trust petitioned the California Fish and Game Commission in September 1986 to protect the Sacramento River winter chinook pursuant to California's Endangered Species Act. In June 1987, the commission rejected the petition, refusing to consider the need to protect the winter chinook. After a coalition of eight environmental and sportfishing groups filed suit in state court, the attorney general advised the Fish and Game Commission to accept the petition for consider-

ation. The commission did so in February 1988, granting "candidate" status under the state's Endangered Species Act for one year to provide time for further study.

Late in 1988, pursuant to a stipulated agreement filed with the court, the National Marine Fisheries Service reconsidered their "not warranted" determination, mainly because of poor water condition resulting from low runoff during the previous winter. The service formalized aspects of its ten-point plan by signing an agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the California Department of Fish and Game that mandated voluntary compliance but included no penalties for failure to perform. Thus the agreement failed to guarantee that its conservation policies would be implemented fully. The National Marine Fisheries Service nonetheless reaffirmed its negative decision. Concluding that the agreement was seriously flawed, the American Fisheries Society urged the court to set an early trial date on the merits of the lawsuit.

On November 7, 1988, all parties met in U.S. District Court in Sacramento to make their arguments to Judge Haul A. Ramirez. Opening discussions focused on the request of the Pacific Legal Foundation, representing a number of water users and districts, to intervene oil the side of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Ramirez, characterizing the request as one based solely on economic interest and therefore untenable under the Endangered Species Act, denied the motion to intervene. The main ruling, however, went against the salmon. Judge Ramirez ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service has the authority to determine a species' status and declared he would not interfere. The American Fisheries Society immediately appealed the trial court decision, and in April 1989 the salmon case was joined by a case involving the listing of the spotted owl that had been heard in U.S. District Court in Seattle before Judge Thomas S. Zilly on November 9, 1988. Although the spotted owl case involved a different species and a different agency (the Fish and Wildlife Service), the legal specifics were the same. In both situations an attempt had been made to avoid listing by developing some form of conservation plan. Nonetheless, the respective judges had made opposite rulings.

Meanwhile, disturbing news was coming in from the field. Engineering analysis by the Bureau of Reclamation was calling into

question the feasibility of the critical temperature control curtain proposed for Shasta Dam. With estimated costs jumping from $5 million to $50 million, the project was sent back to the proverbial drawing board. Early estimates of the 1989 run size also were worrisome, indicating approximately five hundred and sixty winter chinook. The final number ultimately dropped to five hundred and seven adults. Further, the Fish and Wildlife Service was able to capture only forty-two of the hundred adults desired for artificial propagation at Coleman National Fish Hatchery.

By early May 1989, the outlines of a disaster at Coleman were becoming clear. More than half of the winter-run adults captured had died before spawning because of antibiotic reaction, fungal infection, and furunculosis. Ultimately eggs could be taken from only one female. The final three survivors were returned to the river in the hope that they might spawn under natural conditions. Serious questions arose about the hatchery's ability to mitigate recent losses.

With the dramatic decline in population size from the two thousand adults that many had argued was the new "stable" population size, the California Fish and Game Commission reversed its February 1989 decision not to list under California law and on May 16 declared that the winter run should be listed under state law as an endangered species. Pressure was building at the federal level, too. In a surprise announcement during a briefing conference on May 25, attorneys for the National Marine Fisheries Service conveyed the service's intent to list the salmon. In the August 4, 1989, issue of the Federal Register, an emergency rule was published that granted threatened status to the winter chinook under federal law. Given the earlier decision by the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the spotted owl, both potentially landmark cases regarding an agency's obligation to list became moot. The legal answer awaits another day.

Effects on Sport and Commercial Anglers

If the Sacramento River winter chinook salmon were to be listed as endangered pursuant to federal law, ordinary taking of the fish (killing, capturing, harming, or angling for it) would be a violation of that law. But since it is to be listed as threatened, as the American Fisheries Society has requested, take agreements can be devel-

oped or special regulations added to allow for sport and commercial harvest in accordance with other applicable regulations. Numerous precedents exist for regulatory flexibility in such cases.

Even more harvest flexibility is present in California's Endangered Species Act. The Fish and Game Commission may authorize sportfishing of any species listed as endangered, threatened, or a candidate. Also, the state act exempts commercial take if it complies with other state laws and regulations.

The National Marine Fisheries Services has noted that winter chinook probably are subjected to a lower ocean harvest rate than other runs of Sacramento River salmon. Because their adult migration is temporally separate from the more numerous fall-run chinook salmon and their average size is smaller, few winter chinooks are harvested commercially. Sportfishing has less impact, as well, but because large inriver take could reduce population numbers unacceptably, the Fish and Game Commission has established a "rolling closure" on this fishery as adults migrate upstream.

Recovery of the Winter Chinook

Chances for survival and eventual recovery of the winter chinook should improve once listing pursuant to federal and state endangered species acts is finalized. Perhaps the most significant consequences of listing under either act would be requirements for interagency consultation. The federal act requires all federal agencies that authorize, fund, or carry out projects affecting the threatened or endangered species to consult with federal fishery offices on possible adverse effects. Projects likely to be subject to this requirement would include bank stabilization work by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, operation of all Bureau of Reclamation dams on the Sacramento River, and new hydroelectric projects licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. State agency consultation with the Department of Fish and Game will similarly be required when their projects affect the resource.

Projects seldom are stopped through consultation requirements, but they occasionally are modified to mitigate harm to the threatened or endangered species. A 1987 General Accounting Office study found that no western water project was terminated as a result of consultation. Operations of Shasta Dam and Red Bluff

Diversion Dam are key factors ill providing suitable temperatures lot spawning, egg incubation and rearing, and allowing fish access to water of favorable temperature. The Bureau of Reclamation, without pressure from the Endangered Species Act, has yet to guarantee adequate conditions for the winter chinook. In 1988, for example, the bureau raised the gates at Red Bluff Diversion Dam to improve fish passage but prematurely lowered them when conflicts with water contracts became apparent.

Propagation of the winter chinook at the Coleman National Fish Hatchery is a tempting way to recover the run. As has been shown, however, implementing a successful winter chinook propagation program will not be easy. Already more than $2 million has been spent to build deep-water holding ponds at Coleman National Fish Hatchery to accommodate the prolonged period that the winter chinook hold in spawning areas prior to egg maturation.

Numerous other technical problems are likely to be encountered as the effort continues. Some problems are more complex. Salmon produced at hatcheries often are biologically or genetically inferior to wild fish. Researchers from the University of California at Davis have documented that hatchery chinook salmon were more vulnerable to predation by Sacramento squawfish as they pass Red Bluff Diversion Dam than were wild chinooks. Severely depleted anadromous salmon stocks may lack the genetic plasticity necessary to adapt to culture or later readapt to natural environments. Impacts on the success of natural reproduction also must be evaluated before individuals are removed from the wild population to establish a hatchery stock.

Restoration of the Sacramento River ecosystem would be of enormous benefit to other salmon runs in the river. The spring chinook, for example, is seriously depleted from historic levels and fast approaching the need for protection under the Endangered Species Act. In the preamble of the act, Congress declared that "various species of fish, wildlife, and plants in the United States have been rendered extinct as a consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation." The act has the tools to rebuild the winter chinook salmon by restoring habitat and reducing mortality factors. Listing is only the first step. It's time we put every available tool to its intended use.

Chapter Ten—
What's a Salmon Worth?

Philip A. Meyer

Value is a broad concept, capturing diverse perceptions and concerns. Indian elders link the survival of salmon with survival of their tribe as a people. Commercial fishermen value the fact that salmon enable them to live in a place and manner special to them. Sportfishermen often use the term "priceless" to describe a salmon striking in the solitude of a breaking dawn or the warm experience of fishing with family or friend.

Such values extend beyond fishing people. Residents of the San Francisco Bay area and Sacramento, most of whom do not fish, assign hundreds of millions of dollars of value to maintaining viable salmon stocks in the Sacramento/San Joaquin system and passing them on in good health to future generations.

All these perceptions are valid, but such material, cultural, and philosophical perceptions of the value of salmon and steelhead are often balanced against other alternative uses of California's streams and coastline. This balancing is often done in terms of dollars, and it typically results in decisions adverse to these salmonids. Here I want to discuss such "economic" measures of value—what is and isn't measured and how manipulations by economic analysts often make economic values appear small or large.

What Can Economics Measure?

At its narrowest, economics deals with the exchange of goods, services, and resources in the marketplace. It describes costs of pro-

This remarkable underwater video shot shows a chinook salmon in the
Pacific Ocean off the Golden Gate just beforestriking a sportfisherman's
 bait.
(Dick Pool)

duction, revenue received from sales, and resulting income and employment for persons who produce and sell. Thus the economist's product should be useful for commercial businesses associated with salmonids—either those catching, processing, and/or selling fish or those providing services to sportfishermen.

But problems emerge in this market value process because most of the human activity associated with salmon and steelhead in California is not dictated by markets. Heir to a legacy of open access to natural resources in the American West, sportfishermen incur only nominal access costs, and the values that residents associate with knowing California's salmon and steelhead are "alive and well" are not directly marketed at all. This has led economists to develop a second level of evaluation: "nonmarket" valuation. Nonmarket valuation attempts to estimate the dollar worth of sportfishing for

salmon and steelhead as if, in fact, such fishing opportunities were bought and sold in markets. Economists employing this device test their assumptions about what motivates human behavior by actually observing sportfishing activities and questioning sportfishermen or residents directly.

Nonmarket valuation techniques are only one yardstick of value. The ultimate value is how salmon and steelhead affect people's material, social, and psychological well-being in California. The dollar yardstick can never capture more than some of this value. Several fundamental reasons for such undervaluation are discussed below.

Market economic values inevitably understate total values for salmon and steelhead in California. Even when nonmarket valuation techniques are incorporated in economic analysis, it is doubtful that dollar economic estimates can ever deal fully with the value of salmon and steelhead in the state. Dollars simply cannot capture every cultural, aesthetic, or spiritual value that Californians associate with salmon and steelhead. Consequently, the key issue for those who consider economic value is not whether a combination of market and nonmarket values is all you need to know, but rather what component of value can realistically be described in dollar terms.

Economists have traditionally used four procedures which ensure that economic values for salmonids will be a small component of total value. These procedures do not reflect Californians' values so much as they do the untested assumptions built into economic models. The first two procedures are based on a simplistic belief that Californians are a pretty homogeneous people lacking significant diversity in motivations, beliefs, preferences, and circumstances.

Thus, on the business side, some economists assume that all Californians are very mobile; if a person can't get a job on the North Coast, for example, he need only pack up and get a job elsewhere. In fact, if the person does not move, he is seen, in this view, as less worthy. Although such inferences obviously do not fit the facts, economists holding such a view reduce business values associated with salmon and steelhead by up to nine times—or ignore them entirely.

On the recreational side, some economists expand the economic assumption that Californians are a pretty homogeneous lot to assert

that ready substitutes for salmon and steelhead sportfishing exist. This assumption recently led one economist to consider a loss of over nine thousand California salmon as not very serious and to underestimate the associated nonmarket impact on sportfishing by up to twenty times. Despite the lack of empirical evidence, some economists adhere to this position, and salmon and steelhead continue to be undervalued.

A further assumption of some economic calculus is that "beyond ten or twelve years, the future doesn't matter." Thus some economists discount future benefits at seven percent or more, reducing salmonid values to trivial amounts after a decade. This practice affects small streams severely. Yet, if properly cared for, many such streams are capable of producing moderate levels of salmon and steelhead in perpetuity. Again, such practice is based primarily on economists' assumptions, not observable reality. Californians do care about future generations. This practice, however, while still widespread, is diminishing.

Finally, some economists assert that significant losses of salmonids in California will have value effects equivalent to those for significant gains—and inquire how much California's commercial and sportfishermen "would pay to avoid losses" caused by water export and other instream degradation. This posture defies overwhelming empirical evidence that economic estimates of losses to salmon and steelhead that are based on fishermen's "willingness to pay" for mitigation underestimate salmon and steelhead value by as much as twenty times. Psychologists tell us that people will value losses of salmon and steelhead fishing they now have more highly than additional fishing successes they might obtain. Further, adherents of the "willingness to pay" economic school seem to defy recent public trust doctrine decisions confirming Californians' right to fish.

In sum, economic evaluation of California salmonids should not be expected to produce a complete accounting of the values Californians associate with these fishes. Dollar value estimates nonetheless play an important role in determining salmon and steelhead futures—particularly when other activities deleterious to salmon and steelhead are being considered. Also, the assumptions implicit in an economist's analysis often have a determining effect on both the comprehensiveness and the magnitude of salmon and steelhead

values reported. It is consequently incumbent upon those contemplating use of economic values for salmon and steelhead that they ask several questions of the economist:

How does he view the question of population mobility? Does his analysis assume that fishers readily move from place to place and consequently unemployment in certain areas is a short-term phenomenon—or, because fishermen prefer their particular lifestyle, is a degree of unemployment seen as a chronic condition?

Does economic analysis assume existence of ready substitutes for sportfishing—or does it recognize a degree of uniqueness of California's sportfishing opportunities?

Does the analysis give proper weight to long-term salmon and steelhead values—or does it seem to suggest that future values do not matter?

Does economic analysis assume that California's salmonids are or should be for sale to the highest bidder—or does the analysis assume that Californians who value salmonids should be adequately compensated for losses?

Only when these questions have been asked and answered can citizens and decision makers determine whether a particular economic analysis adequately represents the values they hold relative to California's salmon and steelhead.

Present Estimates of Economic Value

The general role of economics in representing value for California's salmon and steelhead has been shown. Key issues that will determine the relevance of an economic study have been identified. One further qualification must be borne in mind: even the best estimates of the importance of salmon and steelhead to Californians are far from complete. Most economic estimates to date have considered value at a point in time and have not adequately addressed the issue of the long-term importance of salmon and steelhead to California's fishermen, businessmen, and Indian peoples who depend upon them for material survival—nor their importance to the small communities where these groups often live.

The estimates presented here in tabular form represent a "snapshot" selected from recent work by the author but do not address these important broad issues. These estimates assume that:

1. Commercial fishermen, fish processors, and businessmen supporting sportfishing cannot easily change their occupation or location. Revenue generated by salmonids for these sectors is consequently significantly beneficial.

2. Sportfishing locations and opportunities are scarcer in California than they were a decade ago and have a degree of uniqueness. Conversely, substitute locations and activities are not freely available.

3. Californians seek a better balance between salmon and steelhead benefits for themselves and future generations beyond the next ten to twelve years—and use discount rates reflecting long-term concerns.

4. Adequate compensation is the proper measure for valuing losses to salmonids—or in valuing restoration of previous losses. The proposition that losses to California's salmonids should be valued according to what fishermen would pay to avoid them is incorrect.

Contemporary estimates of the economic value of California's salmon and steelhead, expressed in dollars per fish, are presented in Table 1. Value for the full present population of California salmon and steelhead is presented in Table 2. Again, these values are incomplete and do not incorporate full sustaining occupational and life-style benefits for commercial businessmen, other dependent California residents, or Indian peoples. Values associated with the "existence" of salmonid stocks and passing them in good shape to future generations (bequest values) are not included. Existence and bequest values for Sacramento/San Joaquin River chinook salmon alone were recently calculated to be several billion dollars annually. It should be noted that commercial and sportfishing values have been evaluated using differing economic procedures of differing comprehensiveness. Estimates of sportfishing value are more comprehensive. For this and other reasons, such estimates cannot be compared, fish by fish, with commercial values.

In sum, California's salmon and steelhead values are substantial—with the greatest portion of that value lying outside commercial markets. As economic methodology improves and is more realistically applied, the component of total value that can be captured by

economic estimation will increase. This progression is important if prior economic underestimation of the value of salmonids is to be reduced. Even under ideal conditions, however, the decision maker must recall that economics provides only one measure of a broad range of values associated with salmon and steelhead in California.

Chapter Eleven—
The Human Side of Fishery Science

Dave Vogel

The desire to understand natural phenomena and an intense fascination with fish and water are fundamental reasons one becomes a fishery field biologist. To better understand fish, it helps to "think like a fish." Such a thought passed through my mind as I narrowly cleared an enormous boulder while being towed upstream along the bottom of the Sacramento River, thirty feet below the surface. Clinging tightly to our underwater planing boards and stretched out like Superman in flight, my buddy diver and I waved about in the fierce, erratic current like the long strands of green moss growing on the riverbed. As the turbulent water in the deep, narrow river channel pummeled us, we hoped our scuba gear was well fastened.

Our U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field crew was conducting a study below Keswick Dam to map out the salmon spawning gravels and the distribution of deep-spawning winter chinook salmon in the three-and-a-half-mile river reach between Redding and Keswick. The purpose was to determine the potential impact a proposed mainstem hydroelectric power plant might have on upstream salmon spawning habitat.

When the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Shasta and Keswick dams were completed in the mid-1940s, chinook salmon and steelhead lost half of their historic spawning grounds in the Sacramento River basin and were forced to spawn only in areas downstream from the

dams. These downstream spawning grounds are relentlessly disappearing, however, because the dams sealed off the river's principal source of gravel. Results of this underwater survey would ultimately reveal just how much valuable spawning gravel remained following more than forty years without significant replenishment.

A deep, throaty hum of the powerful V-8 engine in the large jet boat somewhere above us was barely audible as it pulled us slowly along the riverbed darkened by the considerable depth. A quick glance upward revealed a disconcerting lack of the familiar shimmer of sunlight experienced in shallower depths. We could see only the tow ropes and radio communication cables bowed into the swift current and disappearing up into the pea-green, low-contrast water.

Sights no other human had ever seen unfolded: enormous and unusual bedrock outcroppings sculpted into convoluted, ethereal forms over aeons by the raging torrent from the immense upper Sacramento River watershed. These sights had been seen only by fish such as chinook salmon and steelhead as they skillfully negotiated the river's hydraulics on their upstream migrations, enticed by the smell of their natal waters where they would complete their life cycle.

Conducting field investigations of this nature isn't new to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Fifty years before this spawning gravel study, Fish and Wildlife Service field investigations were being conducted at almost the same location. Those earlier scientists were studying salmon and steelhead run sizes to develop baseline information for evaluation of the potential impact of Shasta and Keswick dams before and during their construction.

The Reasons for Field Studies

There are numerous national policy statements and congressional authorities by which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducts field investigations. The following are just a few examples.

The Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956 authorizes the development and distribution of fish and wildlife information to the public, Congress, and the president, as well as the development of policies and procedures that are necessary and desirable to carry out the laws relating to fish and wildlife. This includes steps required for the

development, advancement, management, conservation, and protection of fishery resources. Results of fishery studies can become an integral part of this information.

The Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, first enacted by Congress in 1934, is one of the oldest environmental review statutes. Its primary, purpose is to ensure that fish and wildlife resources receive "equal consideration" among aspects of resource development. This act requires that any water resource developer (federal agency or other party subject to federal regulation) must consult with appropriate federal and state fish and wildlife resource agencies. In all cases, this includes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; the service presents the project sponsor with recommendations on how to avoid negative impacts on fish and wildlife resources. Results of field investigations are often used to develop these recommendations. If adverse effects cannot be avoided, recommendations are made for proposed compensation or mitigation of damages.

The Fish and Wildlife Service functions similarly for reviews of hydroelectric projects licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) under the authority of the Federal Power Act. Upon request by FERC, the service conducts environmental review before project construction begins. In these instances, needed information on baseline resource conditions is often developed through field investigations. After review of the data, the service sometimes recommends that the water project not be constructed because its impact would be too detrimental to fish and wildlife resources and could not be sufficiently mitigated. Examples include two proposed hydroelectric projects on the mainstem Sacramento River near Redding and Red Bluff. After extensive review, both the Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game found that these two hydro projects would cause major damage to the salmon and steelhead resource that would not be mitigated by actions proposed by the license applicant. Sometimes, however, the responsible federal regulatory agency decides otherwise and the project gets built.

Salmon and steelhead stocks of the Central Valley and the Klamath and Trinity basins are among the highest-priority, nationally significant fishery resources in need of restoration. Because of the depleted status of the runs in these watersheds and because of major federal water development impacts, the service has a signifi-

cant responsibility to assist in the restoration of these stocks. In March 1988, the service released a promising plan to implement the agency's fishery program responsibilities:

1. To facilitate restoration of depleted, nationally significant fishery resources

2. To seek and provide for mitigation of fishery resource impairment due to federal water-related development

3. To assist with management of fishery resources on federal (primarily service) and Indian lands

4. To maintain a federal leadership role in scientifically based management of national fishery resources

Field studies will play a key role in implementing these responsibilities.

Technological Advances

In conducting field investigations, modern-day fishery biologists benefit from a recent proliferation of sophisticated mechanical and electronic devices to assist them in data collection. Elaborate fish trapping devices allow scientists to capture fish alive and release them unharmed. Recent advances in scuba technology now permit biologists to study salmon and steelhead directly without significant danger. The advent of video and major improvements in underwater communication devices have greatly increased the ease and accuracy of conducting fishery investigations in the watery realm of salmon and steelhead. When direct underwater observations are not feasible, technological advances in miniaturization and electronics enable scientists to attach small tags or radio transmitters to fish and study their life history characteristics.

These technological advances in field equipment can sometimes lead to unexpected findings in biological studies. Service biologists experienced an example of this when they were using directional antennas to monitor downstream migration behavior of radio-tagged six-inch-long juvenile steelhead. Over the course of the study, a curious behavior pattern emerged among the young steelhead. Some of the fish would stop at one point in their downstream migration near an island and reside there for several days

Modern technology at work. This U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist
is monitoring movements of radio-tagged salmon below the Red Bluff
 Diversion Dam.
(Dave Vogel)

until the small battery inside the transmitter was drained and radio signals ceased. After the first one or two occurrences of this unusual behavior, it was assumed that the radio transmitter had fallen off the fish and was on the bottom of the river against the bank, beeping away while its porter continued its seaward journey.

But as this pattern continued, biologists became suspicious and decided to make a closer examination of this mysterious site where the transmitters apparently chose to abandon their free ride to the high seas. Precise record keeping by the biologists showed that, in all cases, the transmitters were pinpointed to a very specific location near the uppermost tip of the island, where a cluster of large, dead cottonwoods hung over the water. Down among the root wads in the river, transmitters were accumulating at an alarming rate. When biologists saw that the dead trees were home for an extensive cormorant rookery, the enigma was solved. The hapless young steelhead migrating past the cormorant nests carried on their backs

shiny transmitters that caught the sharp eyes of the always-hungry piscivorous birds. Radio tags were subsequently camouflaged to reduce that hazard.

Fish Tagging

Overall, fish tagging is one of the most powerful tools a biologist has to study salmon and steelhead. Tagging enables biologists to study many biological facets of salmon and steelhead. Information on their early life history, migratory characteristics, distribution and movements, harvest rates, age and growth, mortality rates, and population sizes can all be obtained from fish tagging data.

The development of miniaturized coded-wire tags opened many doors of fishery research that were previously closed. These tags, about the size of the broken-off tip of a sewing needle, enable scientists to study fish from their fry and juvenile life stages up to their adult phase. Every year, hundreds of thousands of juvenile salmon released from state and federal hatcheries in California carry these small tags. When the young fish is only two or three inches long, a microscopic metal tag with a unique binary code is harmlessly implanted inside the snout cartilage. At the same time, the small adipose fin on the back of the fish is excised. This fin, about the size of a large coin on an adult salmonid, is not regenerative. Therefore, when a fish is later captured (for example, by an angler fishing in the ocean) the absence of an adipose fin indicates that a coded-wire tag is probably present in the fish's snout. After the fish is caught by an angler or returns to a hatchery, a biologist can then remove the tag from the fish by using a metal detector, a microscope, and surgical equipment. The binary code on the tag establishes the origin of the fish, the exact time and location of its release, and its size when released. This tool has enabled fishery biologists to dramatically improve the survival of fish released from hatcheries by determining the best time, size, and location to release them.

Despite many success stories, biologists have learned that tagging studies don't always bear fruit. During an initial attempt to artificially propagate Sacramento River winter-run chinook at Coleman National Fish Hatchery, nearly twenty thousand young salmon were tagged with coded-wire tags by Fish and Game and the Fish

and Wildlife Service and released to obtain biological information on the least understood run of chinook in California. Not a single one of the fish was ever seen again. What fate befell them may never be known. Understanding this dangerously depleted stock of salmon remains one of the greatest challenges to salmon biologists today.

But sometimes biologists glean unanticipated information from fish tagging studies. During a cooperative study between the Fish and Wildlife Service and Fish and Game, reward tags were attached to steelhead smolts released from Coleman National Fish Hatchery to determine how many of the catchable-sized trout were caught by anglers during the steelhead's migration to the ocean. One of the reward tags was returned from an angler fishing near the American River two hundred miles downstream from where the fish was released. Surprisingly, the angler wasn't fishing for trout. He'd found the tag attached to an eight-inch-long young steelhead inside the swollen stomach of a hefty striped bass.

A Fish Eye's View

Despite all the technological advances in field investigations, there can be no substitute for simple, direct observations. This was well exemplified during the service's study of the impacts of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Red Bluff Diversion Dam on salmon and steelhead. The primary purpose of the dam, which was put into operation in 1966, is to provide irrigation water for the Tehama-Colusa and Corning canals. A fish bypass system was constructed to route young downstream-migrating salmon and steelhead away from the canals and back into the Sacramento River. The point where these fish were jettisoned into the river resembled five small geysers boiling and spewing water just downstream from the dam.

Bureau of Reclamation engineers called the exit structure in the river a fish bypass terminal box. From the surface, only a spectacular turbulence could be seen because the structure was deep underwater. A quick peek down to the bottom of the river in the vicinity of the bypass terminal box seemed essential to biologists in order to understand its effects on fish. It wasn't difficult to understand why anyone hadn't done so earlier because the site was intimidating—even terrifying—for the most adventurous scuba diver.

Once submerged, our diving team encountered disorienting, pounding turbulence and blinding air bubbles coming from all directions. We quickly found refuge from the angry boil in a back eddy on the downsteam concrete wall of the terminal box. We held our position there momentarily, feeling like meteorologists making observations from the eye of a hurricane. Tightly grasping jagged boulders for leverage, we slowly crept along the river bottom and cautiously poked our facemasks around the corner of the wall's safety and peered into the maelstrom. A shocking sight leapt into view.

Large, decaying salmon carcasses, their heads caught in heavy vertical steel grates, fluttered in the powerful current exiting the structure like pieces of ribbon tied to a cooling fan. The cause of the problem was immediately apparent: adult salmon migrating up the river were attracted by the high-velocity water surging from the structure. They attempted to swim into the terminal box and became fatally trapped when they rammed their gills into the four-inch-spaced vertical steel grates.

The engineers' "terminal box" now took on a whole new meaning. The structure had been there for more than twenty years and had been killing adult salmon every year without anyone having the slightest inkling of the deathtrap on the bottom of the river. When asked about the purpose of the four-inch grates, engineers replied that it is the optimal spacing for trash and debris deflection at dams and other man-made structures in the river. When informed of the severity of the fishery problem the bureau agreed to cut out alternate grates, thereby making eight-inch openings to allow unimpeded movement of fish in and out of the terminal box. Subsequent underwater fish tagging operations showed that adult salmon could then come and go as they pleased without physical injury. A crude solution, but effective.

Engineering versus Biology

After several years of scuba diving in the Sacramento River around the fish bypass terminal box, Fish and Wildlife Service divers began to believe that one of the five bypass pipes had less flow compared with the other four. Because of the extreme turbulence and the divers' inability to get close to the pipes, direct measurement of

water velocities couldn't be performed, but it was clear that something wedged inside that one pipe must be restricting the flow.

Knowing that millions of young downstream-migrating salmon and steelhead must pass through these pipes every year, biologists confronted bureau engineers with their concern. After hours of poring over the original bypass blueprints and engaging in heated discussions, the engineers were adamant: it was impossible for anything to be wedged inside the fish bypass system because the inside of the pipes was "smooth as silk and contained no sharp bends." "After all," they maintained, "who would know better than the engineers who had designed the system?"

Ultimately, the service's field biologists prevailed with their arguments and persuaded the bureau to shut the pipe down, seal off upstream and downstream openings, crack open a manifold they said had never been opened, and conduct an inside inspection of the drained pipe. Feeling a little guilty over the apparent hassles we'd created for them by insisting on an action they believed would be fruitless, I volunteered to be the "spelunker" and crawl up through the several-hundred-foot-long, thirty-inch-diameter pipe. My less than eager offer was eagerly accepted.

Access to the manifold was buried deep underground in a musty, dark concrete chamber, much like a 1960s cold war bomb shelter. Once the manifold was cracked open, the subterranean chamber was filled with a putrid, eye-watering, gut-wrenching smell. "That's just because it was sealed off for so long," bureau workers said as I donned a diving suit for a long belly crawl. With the echoing roar of motors high overhead pumping fresh air down into the manifold, I grabbed a flashlight and extra batteries and squeezed inside the narrow pipe. The anticipated long journey lasted no more than several feet up into the pipe.

Just a short distance from the manifold opening, wedged tightly inside the pipe, was a grotesque accumulation of tree limbs, assorted river debris, and fish and animal (cats? otters?) carcasses. The entire mass was jammed up against three large steel vanes welded to the inside of the pipe.

According to an old-timer with the bureau who'd been there since the fish bypass system was constructed (sheepish because he'd forgotten it until now), the steel plates were added shortly after construction as "flow straightening vanes" to improve the accuracy of water velocity measurements. Engineers' flow meters had

long since been removed, but the steel vanes were left. By the end of the week, the bureau had cut all the vanes from the five pipes and ground the surfaces smooth.

Working Conditions in the Field

During those cold winter evenings when driving rain beats against the windows and bone-chilling wind howls through the trees, most sane people confine themselves to the safety and warmth of their homes. Under these conditions, many a fishery biologist is shivering in the field, out on the rivers and streams—home to California's salmon and steelhead during the freshwater phase of their life cycle. It is then that nature allows scientists to unravel some of her mysteries.

Field investigations conducted after sunset have revealed some of the more interesting characteristics of young salmon anti steelhead growing and migrating in California's streams and rivers. Nighttime field investigations have shown that nature tells the fish to migrate downstream to the ocean at night to avoid such hazards as sight-feeding predatory fish and birds. This simple fact prompted biologists to recommend that the bright lights routinely found on dams and diversion structures be turned off at night to reduce nocturnal predation on small salmonids.

Biologists have also learned that many of the young salmon and steelhead move downstream during times of winter turbidity. Efforts to acquire this particular item of information on salmon and steelhead biology involved a near disaster. The winter of 1983 was unusually wet, and many streams and rivers in northern California approached or exceeded record flows. Service biologists had recently constructed a new river trawling apparatus designed to capture young fish live during their downstream migrations. The logistical problems in using the device on a flooding river seemed immense but not insurmountable.

Fishery biologists, more often than not, have to work on a shoestring budget and make do with very limited resources. The result is equipment, such as this novel sampling gear, built by improvisation, ingenuity, and scrounging for parts. Hardly recognizable as a boat, it was a floating complex of metal frames, cables, winches, pulleys, planing boards, and a large pile of fine-mesh net. Several rigorous tests during low river flows had provided convincing evi-

dence that it would perform well under any condition. Thus when the rivers were rising to flood stage that winter, we took to the field—confident that essential new data would be acquired.

With anticipation in the air as on Christmas Day when a child tries out a new toy, the trawl net was spooled out midriver into the roiling, muddy floodwater. The cold, driving rain added excitement to the moment. The trawl boards opened the net in the current, steel cables twanged taut—and the trawl boat suddenly lurched backward under the strain. Something was terribly wrong. Forward momentum ceased and the vessel with its three wide-eyed biologists, mouths agape, was swept uncontrollably downstream. Scrambling, fumbling fingers flipped toggle switches and activated winches to retrieve the trawl. The electric motors immediately growled out their disapproval under the tremendous load.

The trawl net was eventually retrieved after a harrowing ride with the boat full speed in reverse in order to chase the swollen net downstream to ease the strain on cables and winches. Close examination of the net revealed that extremely small pieces of vegetation invisible in the muddy floodwater had plugged the small mesh the instant the net opened, creating a sea anchor hell-bent on sweeping the boat out to the ocean. Debris accumulation was expected, but over a course of minutes, not seconds. In those brief moments, though, much to our howling delight, dozens of inch-and-a-half-long salmon had accumulated in the live trap at the end of the net. We learned several lessons from that experience.

The Reward

Salmon and steelhead field biology is a tremendously challenging profession in this environmental age. The greatest challenge is the urgent need to solve seemingly unsolvable problems.

With proliferation of water development in California, competing demands on salmon and steelhead freshwater habitat have never been more intense. Procedural decisions guiding development require sound biological data on affected fish and wildlife resources, and good data require sound field investigations.

The ultimate reward is seeing an increase in runs of these magnificent fishes and knowing that findings from field investigations contributed in some measure to their resurgence.

Chapter Twelve—
Women and Fishing on the North Coast

Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good

"I'm not a fisherman's wife, I am a fisherman."
—Lee O'Bryant

Although women are seldom associated with California's commercial salmon fishery, their energetic participation in numerous voluntary and political organizations, such as the Salmon Restoration Association (SRA), the Noyo Women for Fisheries (NWFF), and the Pacific Coast Fishermen's Wives Coalition (PCFWC), has enhanced the vitality of the fishery and the industry. Yet it is as "fishermen," particularly as salmon trollers, that women have recently crossed the historical barriers of gender in the world of commercial salmon fishing. In this essay, the experiences of women who fish or who are partners in family fishing enterprises at sea and on shore give insight into the range of roles, not always evident, that women provide fishing communities.

On Being Fishing Women

Although it is no longer unusual to find women in fishing partnerships with men, when Betty Roberts first began to fish with her

Commercial salmon fishing, once solely a male occupation, now includes
women, such as this one fishing off Cordell Bank. Fishermen's wives
typically are part of a fishing team and often go to sea with their husbands
(Marie De Santis)

husband in 1963, women were a rarity in the commercial salmon fleet. Betty recalled the cultural barriers that existed at that time to women fishermen, even those who fished with their husbands:

The old-time fishermen believed it was bad luck for a woman to be on a boat. . . . They really believed it. I don't know why they name their boats after women! It really upset them that I went fishing with Vernon. They wouldn't fish near us, talk to us, and weren't very nice, period! Vernon said to them, "My wife's going to go fishing whether you like it or not. This is a free country. I don't believe your stupid superstitions." And so I just kept going with Vernon and pretty soon we were catching more fish than they were. By the end of the season all of them were talking to us. They enjoyed me being out there . . . and hearing a woman's voice on the radio.

Cultural barriers, such as traditional beliefs that women on a both bring bad hack to a fleet, were overcome in one season for Betty; however, it was and continues to be much more difficult for women to be regarded as "fishermen" in their own right. Women who fish either independently or as equal partners with their husbands still find it necessary to distinguish that they are "fishermen" and not fishermen's wives.

Lee O'Bryant, who had fished for over a decade with her husband, Wayne, spoke graphically of being a "fisherman," not just an assistant to her husband. As the first female board member of the Noyo Salmon Trollers Marketing Association (1983), she earned public recognition for being a "fisherman" from her male salmon troller peers. Yet in our interviews, Lee felt the need to assert that her experiences of fishing, the sense of independence and competitiveness, the sense of being "dedicated or crazy," were also common to other salmon trollers—to male fishermen. She related: "I think all fishermen have to be a tiny bit touched just to be fishermen! And that comes from one. It's one of the last frontiers . . . being able to be your own boss, go when you want to go . . . only they are stopping that too."

Lee also captured the competitive facet of fishing, usually associated with men but clearly experienced by women as well, especially by women who make decisions of when to go out and where to fish: "When it comes to where you're going to fish now—grrr . . . I'm a real competitive person, and if someone else's got fifty fish, I want to know why I don't have fifty fish. I don't want to be in the middle of the bunch. I want to be in the top! I'm not. Very seldom."

Dobie Dolphin, a woman in her early thirties who had recently entered the fishing fleet at Albion, had quite a different experience from that of the older women "fishermen" who worked out of the more traditional Noyo harbor. Dobie became involved in fishing, first as a diver, placing and finding moorings, and second as a boat hand, pulling fish. It was the excitement and satisfaction of pulling fish that led her to think, "Maybe I could have a boat." She received "good support" from the Albion fishing Community in her endeavor. Albion has a noted counterculture community of migrants to the coast, and "tradition" is neither powerful nor restrictive.

Thus women have crossed the boundaries that traditionally separated the ocean world of fishing and fishermen from the home communities and fishermen's wives.

Dividing the Tasks

Women and men who fish in partnership often divide up tasks in such a way that the men do most of the pulling, of bringing the fish in, and the women run the boat and cook. Although both partners may ice and clean the fish, it is this common division of labor that allows for the persistence of the distinction between "fishermen" and the women who are their partners. Although some women become pullers (with a "decline in the complexity of meals prepared when working in the pit," as Printha Platt noted), and fish equally with their partners, others first experienced the exhilaration of catching fish while their husbands were asleep. Betty Roberts recounted how she came to be a "salmon puller" one afternoon while her husband was asleep and the fish weren't biting:

I was going around in circles and doing all these goofy things . . . and all of a sudden these lines started going. Boy, they were really pulling on the springs. So I put the pilot on . . . I was trying to be really quiet—so Vernon wouldn't wake up. I was going to pull the fish and surprise him. I tell you, I got the line up and this huge fish was on there. And I could see there were two more fish on the line. Big fish. And I thought, oh my goodness, what do I do now! Well, I got hold of the leader and I started bringing it up. And I went to gaff it and I threw the gaff away. It just went flying out of my hand. So I netted that fish! Back there, by myself, which is hard to do. And I wrassled that thing onto the boat. And I got this other one coming up and I got it into the net and I threw it on the boat. And I look up, and there comes Vernon, asking, "What the hell are you doing?" I

said, "I'm catching fish!" He couldn't believe it. Here's these two really pretty ones and a whole bunch more on the line. And he said, "Well, let me get them," and I said "NO! They're mine!" I think we had about eight fish from that rigging at that time, and then they really got going. That's what really did it. I really had a ball that day!

Women on the ocean also contribute in unique ways to the fishing enterprise. The women from the fleet who had fished in the past or were currently fishing felt that women frequently play an integrative role in the commercial fisheries. Betty Roberts speculated that a woman's presence on a boat changes the relationships among fishermen, makes them more cooperative, more united, less cliquish, more politically aware. This integrative role at the personal level carries to the political and community level, through activities in the political and voluntary organizations, such as the SRA, the NWFF, and the PCFWC:

Just a women being there, they couldn't be man-to-man . . . it's kind of like our coalition. We have women from all the states (Washington, Oregon, California), and we have helped all the fishermen to get along. Because we brought things out in the open. We discussed things. We helped each other out with all of our problems—where men would not do this. We would go home and talk to our husbands and inform them about things. A fisherman was a fisherman, and all he thought about was going out there and catching fish. But they have a lot more to think about today.

The Fishing Relationship Ashore

On land or sea there is a bittersweet aphorism current in the fishing community that a successful. fisherman is one who has a working wife. Many wives have become full partners in the fishing endeavor. Others are involved in fishing through the support they give their husbands on land, by running errands, buying groceries, picking up gear, assisting with boat maintenance, and managing finances. "Turnaround time," the time spent in ports between trips, is reduced by such activities.

It was as a full-time fishing couple that Printha Platt and her husband missed the support activities other fishermen's land-based wives provided—"We missed that wife, missed her very much."

Women who are involved in their own careers, who provide a steady income against the seasonality and vagaries of the fishing

income, find that being married to fishermen can at times be trying. Printha, who gave up fishing for a career ashore and engagement in fishing politics, commented on the new season:

I feel far less anxious approaching this season as a fisherman's wife from shore than I have as a fisherman. . . . Under the right circumstances, yes, I'd rather be fishing. To me, the right circumstances are—you know the old joke about the fisherman. If someone gives him a million dollars, he uses it until it's all gone!

Management of the fishing relationship from ashore requires that women also be independent, and many are resilient and move between the two worlds of being involved in fishing and committed to careers of their own. Printha conveyed this sense:

I know when the guys are gone, I need my separate life, and make myself as flexible as possible. . . . Before I went fishing with Buzz, whenever he came in from a trip . . . , I'd drop everything. I ran my life that way. I'd call my boss and say, "I'm not going to be in for two days, the boats are in!" You give up a lot of your own life. The paradox of it all is that in order to survive its a fisherman's wife, as a wife who is left behind, you have to have something to make your own life worthwhile.

The unpredictability of their husband's occupation poses difficulties for women who are maintaining the family household and caring for children. Lyndsey Miller expressed that uncertainty:

The hardest thing for me is never knowing from day to day, from minute to minute, if Larry is going to be fishing or not. There are a lot of things that I am doing now that I like doing, but the children have to be taken care of. . . . I feel strongly that Larry should be with them . . . and of course he's not during fishing season. So that's really the hardest thing. Never being able to plan anything. But on the other hand, it would be very tiresome to always know what you are going to do. Fishing is a strange one!

Being on the Ocean

Although "fishing is a strange one," being on the ocean is compelling for many women, be they "fishermen" or "fishermen's wives." Jayne Bush, who sustains the partnership with her fisherman husband through her involvement in the Noyo Women for Fisheries and the Salmon Restoration Association and her professional career

on shore, still relishes the fishing days when the beauty of the ocean overwhelmed and "the sunsets consumed the sky."

Fishing women talk about the ocean with fondness, as if it were the most natural place to be. The language of challenge, often used by men speaking of the sea, rarely arises spontaneously in women's conversations about the ocean. Women more often speak of the ocean in idioms of endearment, often with a depth of passion, as well as in terms of beauty. Dobie Dolphin explained her "love" for the sea this way: "I am an ocean person . . . a double Scorpio. I would much rather be out on a boat than on land. . . . It is the movement, everything is in flux, exciting, special."

Susan Bondoux, who had owned her own thirty-two-foot Monterey, compared her love of the ocean as "nearly stronger than the love I have for my children." She reflected on the call of the ocean, even in fishing seasons wrought with economic and legal difficulties:

From the first time I went out there, I was never all right after that. . . . Everything is magic out there. . . . The ocean has always been a real thing for me. Peace. It's always peaceful to me. Being out there seems the most peaceful, most beautiful thing I've ever done. And things can happen really fast. . . . I'm not afraid, I have never been afraid. Whether it's lack of good sense, I have no idea. . . . It's rockin' in your Momma's arms. You anchor up at night. And everything is so beautiful. I feel safe out there.

Concluding Note

Fishing is largely a family business, and wives of fishermen have traditionally made important contributions by maintaining stable home lives, providing shore support for fishing activities, and more recently by devoting time and energy to political activities and restoration efforts required to make the industry viable. It is by going to sea as a "fisherman," however, that women have crossed the traditional boundaries between male and female, boats and home, and life on the ocean and life in the community. As a result, traditional roles have been reorganized on some boats, women have entered business and political activities as owners, and a particular sense of relation to the ocean has enriched the cultural language of fishing. With a special passion for the sea, for fishing, and for the industry, these women contribute to the vitality of the salmon trolling enterprise.

Chapter Thirteen—
The Lower Klamath Fishery:
Recent Times

Ronnie Pierce

During the 1800s, progressive white settlement of California had drastically disrupted Indians' lives. One event at the close of that century had a tremendous effect on the Klamath/Trinity fishery: in 1894 a through road from Eureka to Crescent City was completed, and it crossed the Klamath estuary. With improved access, the Klamath River soon gained a reputation as one of the finest sportfishing rivers on the West Coast. In addition to commercial fishing, Indians could now supplement their income or earn seasonal living as guides for sportfishermen.

A succession of poor salmon runs in the late 1920s led sportfishermen, through the Klamath River Anglers Association, to initiate state investigation of causes. Even though non-Indian commercial salmon trollers out of Eureka were fishing off the mouth of the Klamath, investigative committees appointed by the legislature in 1929 and 1932 determined that the decline was caused by Indian commercial river fishermen. They recommended closure of that fishery.

In 1933, after several years of controversy, the state of California

Last of its kind. This cannery at the mouth of the Klamath River, owned
and operated by non-Indians, employed Indian fishermen and plant work-
ers. It was closed by law in 1933.
(Peter Palmquist collection)

closed the commercial Klamath River fishery, which had been operating since 1876, and reinstated the Klamath as a navigable waterway. Opponents of the ban on commercial fishing felt that the closure would deprive many Indians of their livelihood. Proponents countered that the Indians could make more money as guides and boat pullers for tourists. The National Waltonian, August 1933, reported: "Sportsmen the country over will rejoice that the Klamath, famed for its piscatorial delights . . . has been saved for the public."

The Yurok fishermen took no such delight as the state of California, unchallenged by the federal government, banned both commercial sales and the use of gillnets by Indians for subsistence fishing in the lower Klamath. Indians lost more than their jobs—their most efficient method of fishing for food was made illegal. The propriety of state control of Indian fishing made manifest in this 1933 action was not legally addressed for several decades.

In 1969, the California Department of Fish and Game seized the gillnets of Raymond Mattz, a Yurok fisherman, and sought superior court permission to destroy or sell the "illegal" nets. Mattz claimed that state code prohibitions against net fishing did not apply on an Indian reservation. Although the state won in the lower court, Mattz appealed. The California Supreme Court upheld the lower court's judgment, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in Mattz v. Arnett (1973), reversed that judgment. In this unanimous decision, the Supreme Court held that the lower twenty miles of the Klamath River was still a reservation, despite its having been settled by non-Indians.

The case was then remanded to the trial court for a ruling on the applicability of state regulation to Indian fishing. After several appeals by the state, the U. S. Supreme Court, in Arnett v. Five Gill Nets (1976), upheld the rights of Indians to fish on the reservation free from state regulation.

The cases evolving from the confiscation of Mattz's nets created a jurisdictional void in the matter of Indian fishing regulations on the reservation. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), as the federal trustee of Indian resources, moved to fill that void. In a key decision, the U.S. solicitor general concluded that "we know of [no authority] that would limit an Indian's on-reservation hunting or fishing to subsistence. The purpose of the reservation is not to restrict Indians to a subsistence economy, but to encourage them to use the assets at their disposal for their betterment. . . . Moreover, Indian fishing rights have on several occasions been interpreted . . . as extending to commercial fishing."

In 1977 the BIA published its first regulations to govern Indian fishing on the reservation. These allowed restricted commercial fishing in addition to subsistence fishing, but they were vague as to the amount of commercial harvest allowed and determination of which Indians were legally qualified to fish.

Improved regulations were published for the 1978 season, but the clamor resulting from the reinstatement of the Indian gillnet fishery continued to grow. A new sportfishing organization called the Klamath River Basin Task Force, as well as Del Norte County and the Hoopa Valley Business Council, initiated action to place a moratorium on commercial Indian gillnet fishing pending completion of an environmental impact statement.

A "strike force" of federal agents and park police, numbering up

to seventy-five men, in a hostile confrontation closed the Indian net fishery in midseason 1978. This "conservation moratorium," as it came to be known, lasted until 1987. Subsistence fishing was still permitted, and some violations of BIA regulations were reported during the period.

During the years between the Indian commercial fishery closure in 1933 and the mid-1970s, conservation had indeed become a key word in relation to the Klamath. Conservation measures were obviously needed. Intense logging, construction of major dams, and burgeoning offshore and inriver fishing took their toll. Two natural disasters, the 1964 flood and the 1977 drought, added to the destruction. The once fabled salmon runs of the Klamath River had become a national concern.

In 1976, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) was created by the federal Fishery Conservation and Management Act. Its primary role is to develop and monitor biological management plans for fish stocks from three miles to two hundred miles off the coast of Washington, Oregon, and California. This territory includes the Klamath Management Zone (KMZ), the commercial fishing area where Klamath River salmon are most vulnerable to harvest.

The initial PFMC management plan for the river called for a spawning escapement (the number of fish permitted to reach spawning grounds) of 115,000 fall chinook. From 1979 through 1982 the average actual number was 35,000 fish. Rather than close the ocean fishery, which would devastate local economies, the PFMC decided to institute a long-term correction, a phased twenty-year rebuilding schedule. The plan did not work: after only two years, spawning escapement had declined to 22,700 fish.

With the further decline of stocks because of the 1983 El Niño, PFMC felt its only option for 1985 under the rebuilding schedule was to prohibit ocean commercial harvest of salmon in the Klamath Management Zone. The impact of this action led to the formation of a "Klamath River Salmon Management Group" under the auspices of the PFMC. Representatives of lead agencies, with representatives of all affected fishing groups, met at the table—many tables!—to negotiate. By March 1986, they had worked out an agreement.

This innovative, nonadjudicated agreement included a new management scheme for the river. The new plan, called harvest rate

management, was based not on a fixed spawning escapement goal but on percentages of maturing adult fall chinooks that could be harvested by all fishermen—ocean or river—with a fixed percentage of the year's mature stock being left to spawn. Conservation responsibilities would be shared equally among user groups. Because its mathematical formulas promised to consider the needs of all groups, including the fish, it was guardedly acceptable to everyone involved. The resulting formal agreement was to be in effect for five years.

Under the new plan, the ocean fishermen were allowed a limited fishery in the KMZ in 1986, and in 1987 the Indian fishermen finally achieved an allocation of fish that was sufficient to lift the "conservation moratorium" placed on them in 1978. They were legally allowed to harvest fish commercially for the first time in fifty-four years (discounting the ill-fated effort during the late 1970).

In its second year, however, the new plan had to deal with problems not fully anticipated during negotiations: migrating salmon stocks from many separate river systems mix in the ocean and therefore contribute at different rates to the ocean harvest. Current technology dictates that the contribution rate of Klamath-origin salmon can only be estimated after the season's closing. That rate, a natural biological function, fluctuates according to location of catch effort and relative strength of stocks from other contributing rivers.

Before the season opens, biologists and regulatory agencies can only estimate what the abundance and contribution rate of the Klamath salmon will be, and from that estimate they shape a season to determine a harvest goal for Klamath fish. If their ocean population or contribution rate predictions are in error, serious harm to the fishing economy or the spawning escapement can result.

If the Klamath contribution rate is underestimated, ocean fishermen in the predetermined season may inadvertently take many more Klamath salmon than the allocation agreement permits. In such a situation, as occurred in 1987, with total abundance and contribution rates underestimated, both ocean and river fisheries are allocated fewer fish than accurate data would have allowed. The problem for Indian fishermen in such a case is that although the salmon catch of the river fishery can be accurately tallied—every fish entering the Klamath River is a "Klamath fish"—Indian harvest

is still restricted to the erroneous preseason predictions. While ocean trollers may harvest fish in other zones when their KMZ allocation is met, Indian river fishermen have no such compensating option.

Thus problems remain. While ocean regulations severely limit fishing within the KMZ, areas north and south of the zone have relatively liberal seasons. Fishermen in these areas of mixed-stock fishing take almost all of the Klamath salmon allowed for ocean harvest under allocation agreements, leaving few to allocate to their fellow fishermen inside the zone.

No one is happy. Ocean fishermen are distressed with limited seasons, and agency biologists are frustrated with the demand, both biological and social, for management numbers they are unable to supply. Nor are the Indian fishermen happy. Most perceive any increase in the allowable ocean harvest, while they in the river fishery must conform with the numbers of the agreement, as yet another breach of trust.

Negotiations continue on overall harvest rates and allocation. Ocean trollers want more Klamath fish to harvest in the KMZ. Their counterparts to the north and south are unwilling to reduce harvest of other stocks to protect Klamath fish mixed with them. The Indians, with their revitalized commercial fishery economy, will certainly fight to keep their allocation. And, above all, a spawning escapement must be developed and maintained that will allow for perpetual renewal of stocks.

While conservation efforts, through negotiation and regulation, are working to a certain extent, as evidenced by increases in spawner escapement, companion efforts in the restoration of fishery habitat in the Klamath/Trinity basin must also be addressed. Indian people residing on the river from its headwaters to the ocean have long decried the destruction of the spawning and rearing habitat of the river. Impacts of the modern world are many: logging that denudes hillsides and dumps silt onto spawning beds; dams that reduce the river's flow; streambanks stripped of trees, which causes overheated water; unscreened diversions for agricultural irrigation that bleed off juvenile fish; road-crossing culverts that block passage to spawning beds; months of streams filled in with deposited gravel, blocking fish passage. All these conditions contribute heavily to the decline of fish production.

Young fishermen, ageless site. Karok tribesmen hoopnetting for salmon at
the Klamath River's Ishi Pishi falls in 1989. This fishing site has been used
by Native Americans since ancient times.
(Andy Kier)

Life cycle nearly complete. These salmon are migrating to spawning areas
in the Trinity River. Most salmon return to their native waters to spawn.
(Bureau of Reclamation)

Cool water needed. Dredging, equipment removing gravel to create cold
water pools for protection of salmon and steelhead on the Trinity River.
(Bureau of Reclamation)

In 1982, the Bureau of Indian Affairs responded to concerns about declining salmon runs by commissioning the Klamath River Basin Fisheries Resource Plan. The plan provided the needed insight and direction for congressional action to restore Klamath River fishery resources. Legislation enacted in October 1986 provides that $21 million will be appropriated by the Department of Interior from October 1, 1986, through September 30, 2006. A matching $21 million is to be provided by nonfederal sources. Under the act, a fourteen-member Klamath River Basin Fisheries Task Force has been created that embodies all pertinent management agencies, fishing groups, and counties of the basin.

Tribal management of tribal resources is the goal of Indian people nationwide, and the U.S. government, through the Bureau of

Indian Affairs, promotes this goal of Indian self-determination. The Yurok people, as they now move toward the twenty-first century, have managed to hang on to their fishing rights and have reestablished the right to sell a portion of their harvest.

On October 31, 1988, Congress created a separate Yurok Reservation and actuated formal organization of the Yurok tribe. The right to restore and manage the fishery resources of the reservation, both "in the gravel" and at the policy level, has always been a high priority of Indian fishermen. This most recent action has the potential for future resolution of the confusing jurisdictional issues that have been inherited. The stage is set for great strides in Indian self-determination, as well as restoration of the Klamath basin's fishery resources.

Chapter Fourteen—
The Commercial Troller

Bill Matson

Since ancient times, those hardy men and women who "go down to the sea in ships" have held a mystique for us all. The sleek lines of a ship capture the imagination as one studies her, and few can escape the temptation to imagine themselves at the helm, guiding her out to the open sea.

On a typical Sunday afternoon all across America, waterways are filled with boats of all kinds and sizes, as modern man tries to capture a bit of the sea's adventure and beauty—and perhaps escape for a while into that simpler world where nature makes all the rules and man's tasks are reduced to humble compliance and skilled navigation.

There is something alive about a ship on the open seas as it rises and falls with the swell. After riding out a storm, man and ship seem somehow bonded together in a rugged union of appreciation for each other. Each new storm and each passing year strengthen that bond until seamen and ship find contentment only in the gentle roll of the open ocean.

The commercial troll fishermen from the beginning has been a blend of seaman and fisherman. Although diesel engines have replaced the sails, the call to the sea remains unchanged. The earliest trollers used sail power and pulled their heavy trolling lines by hand to land a fish. Even after gasoline engines became common after the turn of the century, hand lines were used for more than twenty years until the modern powered gurdy was invented. To-

Commercial salmon troller preparing to land hooked salmon. Note power
winches (gurdies) that raise and lower troll lines.
(Marie De Santis)

day, efficient diesels have replaced the old undependable "one-lunger" gasoline engines. Electronic equipment to allow navigation in fog and at night makes the ocean safer, and improvements in troll gear; especially monofilament leader, make fishing more effective. But the ocean remains the same.

The demands upon men to navigate, operate cranky equipment in all kinds of sea conditions, and still manage to catch fish have produced seamen as fine its any in our great past. Commercial fishermen are rugged individualists who daily must contend with unexpected weather changes, deciding where to go when the fish disappear, maintaining and repairing equipment, and cooking their own meals while the galley floor keeps shifting.

Accountable only to themselves, dependent upon their own skills at reading ocean conditions and catching fish, it is little wonder these men find the complexities of bureaucratic procedure unnecessary nonsense unrelated to the real issues.

It was mid-July 1969 and life seemed uncomplicated. Everything was good: good fishing, good weather, good time to be alive.

The ocean was flat this morning, I observed with satisfaction, as we left the Humboldt Bar just after first light. No swell at all today.

I set my compass heading for NW and relaxed as my little troller, M&M, steadily put the bar behind. I thought I would go out to about sixty fathoms to start with and then go from there. Reports from other fishermen were encouraging, so I looked forward to a good day. Not many kings had been reported, but silvers were abundant, so as I ran I looked for silver signs—surface feeding. I wasn't disappointed.

Not long after passing the fifty fathom line, I began to see fish on the water. I could see other trollers working outside of me, scattered over it wide area. Before long, I slowed down and set my gear. Fishing was pretty good at first, and I quickly caught thirty to thirty-five silvers. Then, as the sun climbed higher, the fish quit biting but remained on the surface, often jumping right out of the water.

For the next three days the pattern was the same: I would catch a few fish in the morning and late evening, and endure long, unproductive hours between. All through those long days, I watched fascinated as I passed through acres and acres of salmon. They were finning near the surface, they were jumping out of the water—but they would not take a hook.

As I worked my way north from Eureka to Crescent City, the pattern was the same: a hundred miles of silver salmon on the surface of the water!

But it wasn't all idyllic. On the second day out I sighted my first Russian trawler. He was working among the salmon fleet, dragging his nets just south of Redding Rock. Later I found out there were several such factory ships in the area. That same day the skipper of the City of Eureka, it large trawler out of Eureka, tried to catch up with the Russian vessel, but soon learned it was impossible with his boat. Even towing nets, the Russian ship moved faster than City of Eureka could go at full speed with no nets out.

That was my introduction to the speed, size, and efficiency of the foreign midwater fleet. Convinced that these foreign vessels were fishing for salmon, irate fishermen approached Congressman Don

Clausen for protection. The cry for a two-hundred-mile economic zone became our theme as the best solution for keeping the foreign fleet out and providing opportunity for the American fishermen. When the two-hundred-mile bill (the Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, 1976) passed, we were confident this meant long-term security for the American coastal fishing fleets.

Most of us in the fishing industry know that catching large numbers of fish is not hard at all if that is the only concern. Large, powerful boats with nets are capable of quickly cleaning out the fish resources of the Pacific Ocean's narrow continental shelf. Salmon are especially vulnerable to overfishing because of the ease with which nets can harvest them and their delicate dependence upon healthy streams in which to spawn.

The troll industry has no interest in depleting the resources by overfishing. We are committed to fighting for restoration of salmon. We also believe trolling to be the best method of harvesting salmon. Here's why.

First, by its very nature, trolling is inefficient. The chances of overfishing with troll gear are slim because of the finicky fish that do not always bite a hook, the small size of the boats that can economically afford to troll, and the unpredictable weather conditions on the ocean.

Second, ocean harvest always includes at least two year classes: three- and four-year-old fish. This reduces the impact on the older, spawning class and thins the population to some extent, which functions to improve conditions for survival of remaining fish—fewer fish competing for the same food supply. Even if not caught by hook and line, the overwhelming majority of salmon that enter the ocean as smolts do not survive to return to their home river.

Third, the fish are harvested during the ocean phase of their lives, providing the highest-quality product possible.

Fourth, harvest opportunity is spread over the widest area, providing economic value to dozens of communities along the coast and thousands of fishermen.

In recent years the troller has felt irate at times over management philosophies that emphasize harvesting of upmigrating adults at river mouths (called terminal harvest) and management that fails

A bustling commercial herring fishery survives in San Francisco Bay.
Many commercial salmon fishermen harvest herring, crab, and other salt-
water species when salmon season is closed.
(Marie De Santis)

to act upon real issues facing the salmon in its efforts to survive. Management of the resource so far has really been management of the fishermen. Only superficial efforts have been made to increase streamflows, reduce water temperatures, solve gravel recruitment problems, and improve other elements of habitat. A good example is offered in the report of the Klamath River Salmon Management Group Allocation Committee In-River Caucus Platform, December 15, 1986: Goal Number 1 is "to shift towards more of an inside harvest of the Klamath River stock between Ocean and In-River users." Of six stated goals, only one addresses enhancement of runs, and even then in only a general way. Four of the six address a single issue: how to divide up the pie for harvest.

If managing the fishery resource comes down to a fight over how large each user group's share should be, none of us has a future: not

Spud point marina in bodega bay was constructed in 1985 solely to accom-
modate commercial fishing vessels.
(Earl Carpenter)

Short season. In 1988, offshore commercial salmon trollers in the Klamath
Management Zone caught their quota within four days of opening. Most
Eureka-based fishermen had to move south to complete the season—or
sell their boats, such as the F/V  Pelican .
(Mark Lufkin)

Aerial view of Lewiston Dam and Fish Hatchery on the Trinity River,
built to mitigate loss of salmon and steelhead habitat associated with the
 construction of Trinity Dam.
(Bureau of Reclamation)

the troller, not the Indian, and not the sportsman. And certainly not the salmon.

A management scheme that starts by focusing on habitat, from spawning gravels all the way downriver to the ocean, and then manages harvesters by regulating gear, number of fishermen, and seasons, will provide fish for everyone. It will also provide healthy streams, forests, and wildlife areas for future generations.

A management scheme such as that of the past eight or nine years, which pits users against each other, insists upon using bad

data to predict fish abundance, and cannot respond to economic need or obvious calculation errors—such a system is doomed to fail miserably. And as that failure develops, a whole industry will be lost, a priceless resource depleted, non-Indian and Indian alienated from one another.

Chapter Fifteen—
Rivers Do Not "Waste" to the Sea!

Joel W. Hedgpeth and Nancy Reichard

Flowing rivers are part of the circulation system of our globe. They bring nourishment to the land and to the estuaries in which they end as they pass into the sea, where their last waters evaporate from the surface of the sea and become again the falling rain and snow that renews them. Their waters as they flow are the life of the growing plants along their banks and of the fishes and other beings that live in them. They carry with them the sediments that enrich the land and help the waters carve their channels and their banks. Their ultimate effect is to wear down the mountains and level the earth.

The hydrologist Luna Leopold has estimated that there are about three million miles of river channels in the United States, but beyond a few of the greatest rivers of the globe it is difficult to rank streams because their three principal dimensions—length, area of drainage basin, and volume of annual discharge—are independent of each other. But no matter how rivers are ranked, the streams of the Central Valley of California fall far below on a scale of magnitude, and even in California the combined drainage area of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers is little more than three-fourths the area of the Klamath River drainage (9,676 to 12,000 square miles), although their combined average annual discharge is almost fifty percent greater, that is, 21.8 million acre-feet to the Klamath's 12.9 million acre-feet. California's largest rivers are two

orders of magnitude smaller than the Columbia. Probably no river system in the country is under the stress of greater use in proportion to its size than California's Central Valley rivers.

Rivers are not just sources of water to be used by the most destructive organisms yet to inhabit the earth; in their natural state they are dynamic equilibrium systems that have characteristic morphologies in common. For example, the bed load of sediments is roughly in balance: the sediment load carried away during floods is rebuilt during low flow periods so that on the average there is a tendency for scour to be balanced by fill. A river, apparently, can only stay straight so long, not much more than ten channel widths, and there is a constant relationship between the width of a river channel and its meander radius. In his studies, Leopold emphasized that the intermediate flows of the river, because they are the most frequent throughout the year, typically have the greatest cumulative effect on the landscape they move in.

Massive dams on a river upset this natural equilibrium of the movement of sediments as they accelerate deposition in the still waters above the dam and assist the unburdened waters below to cut back the natural banks, especially where vegetation has been removed from the banks and floodplains, as on the Sacramento River. Where the drainage is in forested terrain, logging activities may add to the sediment load and shorten the life of the reservoir downstream.

Our civilizations were first built along the rivers, the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, and the world's great cities are river towns, Rome, Paris, London, New York. Indeed, a city without a river is incomplete. In our times we have learned to bring the rivers to the cities by great systems of dams, tunnels, canals, and pipes from distant mountains and irrigate vast fields to raise food to support them. Too often the engineers and business people who have made these developments possible have forgotten the real nature of rivers, the effects their changes and withdrawals may have on the structure of the rivers, and consider that any water which escapes their purposes is "wasted."

The fish that live in the rivers are the last thing water developers think about. This is especially true in California, where the great dams being built before World War II were started without any

concern for the fish. How was it that Shasta Dam was designed and partly constructed before anyone remembered the salmon? It was planned only for power and irrigation; even when "amenities" were thought of, fish were remembered last. People and government agencies focusing on irrigation wanted to have nothing to do with any other purpose.

A Case in Point

Although the dynamics of river systems may vary from region to region, a look at the potential effects of the Dos Rios high dam project on the Eel River, a proposal much in the news in the 1960s and 1970s, illustrates many of the problems associated with river diversions. (That proposal is currently dormant because of protections by wild-river acts, but developers still look longingly at the Eel River basin, with its thirty-seven hundred square miles of drainage area, as a potential source of exportable water. A change in political will could strip North Coast rivers of their current protections.)

California's northern coast is a geologically unstable area. Its rivers, such as the Eel, are unique in that rates of sediment production from their watersheds are greater than those of any other region of comparable size in the country. Because of this, impacts due to diversion of water from this region may be significantly different from those associated with similar projects elsewhere. A major diversion on the Trinity River substantially hurt fishery resources of that stream, and complex and costly attempts to mitigate the impacts have not yet proved successful. The Eel, with a headwaters diversion into the Russian River, has likewise been impaired, but on a smaller scale.

The most serious effect of a new dam on the Eel River would be a reduction in sediment transport capacity of the river downstream of the diversion. Large volumes of sediment are dumped into the river from tributaries and streamside landslides. High flows needed to flush this sediment downstream would be totally eliminated by a large project. Accumulation of sediment in the river would cause spawning gravels and pools used by salmon and steelhead to become choked with fine sediment, as has occurred in the Trinity River. As

the streambed rose, bank erosion would become more frequent, and the resultant threat to streamside property would tend to offset any flood protection benefits. The whole river would be changed.

The Eel River ranks second statewide in production of steelhead and coho salmon and third in production of chinook salmon. A large water diversion project would make inaccessible one hundred fifty or more miles of anadromous fish habitat upstream of a dam and severely harm downstream habitat. It would eliminate the endemic strain of Middle Fork Eel summer steelhead, a federally designated "sensitive species."

At the lower end, ocean beaches would be affected. The Eel River is the chief source of sand for the stretch of beach northward to the mouth of Humboldt Bay and southward for thirteen miles. A large upstream diversion project could result in extensive beach and seacliff erosion by reducing the sand supply. The importance of the Eel River estuary to fish and wildlife is well recognized. Flow regulation and reduction would cause severe disturbances in the estuary, with harmful consequences for estuarine-dependent organisms such as salmon and steelhead.

In sum, water moving down river channels plays many valuable roles. The undiverted North Coast rivers are not wasting away to the sea—they are working their way to the sea.

What Is "Wastewater"?

The popular notion that rivers simply "waste away to the sea" is a dangerous myth. There are several meanings of "wastewater." For chemists and sanitary engineers it means water that is degraded by discarded chemicals or human wastes. Specialists in irrigation systems consider wastewater to be that which leaks away or evaporates between the outlet at the dam and the plants in the fields. Water-thirsty people consider that water not used by man himself, or his plants or his factories, is wasted.

We need to refine our terminology. Agribusiness people consider that water not held back by dams and not flowing into canals is "wasted water." That water cannot properly be termed wasted, however, because it is the water that maintains the fish and other aquatic life of the flowing stream and the estuary where the river

undergoes its process of mixing with and ultimately reaching the sea. Sanitary engineers use the term "wastewater" for the tainted and polluted water that comes from sewage treatment plants and factory effluents. Because this water has become, in effect, an ore that may not be processed economically, they think it best simply to dump it into the ocean.

The truly wasted water is the water that escapes between the points of diversion and the roots of the plants because of leaky gates and valves, unlined canals, and excessive flood irrigation. In California alone this loss is about 40 percent of all the water diverted for irrigation. It disappears into the air or sinks into the ground (where it may become part of the groundwater). Then there is much wasted water in the home, especially by toilet flushing, that adds unnecessarily to the wastewater of sewage treatment plants. Several states and counties are now requiring more efficient toilets for home use. We also use much water in excess for crops that may grow in other parts of the country without irrigation. Although it is pleasant to drive along the great rows of sprinklers on a hot day in the Central Valley, such air conditioning is conspicuous waste.

All of these wastes are part of our habit of externalizing the cost of our agriculture and industry, and those costs include such environmental degradation as fouling bays and estuaries and reducing fisheries at the expense of the essence of rivers or making domestic water unusable—the city of Sacramento is currently suing rice growers on this basis. To deal realistically with problems of wastewater, we must change our premise from the utilitarian, mechanistic realm to a broader view in which biological factors—the living essence of streams—are considered uppermost.

Without rivers and brooks, the land as we know it cannot exist. For several years during his boyhood in Vermont, George Perkins Marsh—whose book Man and Nature was the first environmental impact report on what we are doing to our world—was not allowed to read because he had strained his eyes, so he could only observe the world around him. He said that during that time "the bubbling brook, the trees, the flowers, the wild animals were to me persons, not things." Some years later, in 1853 on the distant western side of the continent, Chief Seattle made his famous speech of surrender to

the ways of the white man, in which he said (according to the version in Joseph Campbell's Historical Atlas of World Mythology ):

The shining water that moves in the streams is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. . . . The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

The Rivers are our brother. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother.

Chapter Sixteen—
Steelie

Paul McHugh

It took a long time to find them. I'd glimpsed the silvery torpedoes of the steelhead trout—those huge, sea-wandering rainbows—when they thrashed up the waters tumbling down the old fish ladder at Van Arsdale Dam on the Eel River. But the vision only whetted my thirst, stimulated my imagination. I'd heard so much about these magnificent game fish, how they struck a lure like lightning, and fought like tigers once hooked. And more significantly, how they fought their way home to spawn, leaping even further up the whitewater of California coastal streams than salmon. . . . And how their life cycle, when permitted to play out, revealed California mountain forest, cool stream, and vast sea as connected in one organic whole.

On the North Coast, a steelhead has the potent status of a totem animal—it stands for all that is best about all that's still wild here. So even a dramatic glimpse of them struggling upstream against the swollen waters of the Eel wasn't enough. Their ancestral home was what I wanted to see, the clean gravel shoals of the upper headwaters. The place where these fish spawned, and their forebears before them. Where the waters contain a unique chemical "thumbprint," a faint smell that persists in the river's outflow some two hundred miles downstream. A taste of home, which these fish had sensed, and recognized, and turned toward weeks earlier as they swam the ocean coast off Humboldt County—as we might recognize the strains of a song unheard since childhood.

Sensitive to chemicals at the subtle level of parts per billion, they had noted and recognized the waters of this river estuary from scores of them along the California shore. They had run the gauntlet of sea lions, harbor seals, and human anglers at the delta mouth. Then a cold winter storm had swept over the Coast Range, and the spate of water rushing downstream had sent another signal to electrify the nerves of these powerful fish. Now. The time was now. It was time to go home. The water would be deep enough to leap the chutes of the rapids, cold enough to ensure the survival of eggs after spawning.

I started my hike up Bucknell Creek late on an overcast day, not long after a major storm. Twists and turns of the canyon, walls of tangled brush and jumbled rock, meant that soon I had to hike in the frigid creek itself. Soon after that it fell dark, and I sought a campsite.

When I awoke the next morning, my old army surplus bag was coated with a quarter-inch of hoarfrost. My shoes and socks were frozen stiff. Laboriously, I collected dry twigs from the ends of oak branches to make a fire that would thaw and dry them enough to wear. But within an hour, I found myself hiking in the footnumbing water again. Past streambanks lined with drifts of old snow. Up boulders upholstered with frozen moss. Along jams of slippery logs. But every once in a while, I would see a long silver flash in a pool that would tell me the fish were still here, still traveling upstream. Once I even saw an improbable leap, a soaring, gymnastic effort that carried a big fish up and over a cataract to flap once or twice on a shallow rock and then slip safely into a pool.

Part of me felt pulled along by the drive of the steelhead toward the headwaters, a bullish determination to succeed at all costs. It was as though a part of my mind and heart had identified with them, and I continued long after my legs lost sensation below the knee due to the cold. Following the way of this totem animal, I continued fighting upstream until finally I found myself clinging by my fingertips to a steep canyon wall with no possible way to move even an inch further ahead, and facing a terrifying fall onto the rocks of a rapid below if I even tried.

The steelhead were still moving upstream as, defeated, I made my way back to my car by sunset and drove home. And fell into a week-long fever from the overexposure and exhaustion, with my

temperature sometimes spiking to a neuron-threatening hundred and seven degrees. When my housemates brought me in to the emergency room, blood tests revealed no infection by virus or bacterium. But perhaps modern medical science has no way to treat someone who has temporarily lost a piece of his soul to a fish.

Weary of the strange dreams and visions of sickness, I at length broke the fever by opening my bedroom window and letting the cool winds of the new storm wash over my body.

After my strength returned, I went back to the headwaters of the Eel River. And finally, after hiking up another creek where I could stay on the bank, I found them. It was a clear crisp day, the sort of winter morning when brassy sunshine comes shouting down through cerulean skies. As I came around a bend in the creek, there they were, metallic bodies flashing in the sunlight as they sparred and mated in the crystal shallows. The silvery torpedoes of the males, darting against each other, shoving competitors into jets of current where they would be washed downstream. The long large female, weighing twenty pounds or more, her body flashing rainbow markings and the bright red blotches that steelhead acquire after their return to fresh water. I watched her turn on her side to dig her redd in a shoal of gravel with powerful thrusts of her tail. The victorious male joined her then, and their bodies shivered in muscular spasm, side by side, as the eggs drifted down into the nest through a cloud of milt.

Ah, the passion and raw power and wild beauty of that! When people mention the glory of the wild earth, this is my image—that supreme moment steelhead achieve after the ordeal of their pilgrimage, touching in the cold, clear creek, bodies spattered by sparkling chains of sunlight, the whole scene framed by forest and snowy hills.

We learn something important from watching the steelhead. They can remind us that some of the same force driving them impels us. Though at times its power is half-strangled by the fear or doubt in our trepidacious human minds. Though at times that force is hyped and distorted by those trying to sell our wildness back to us without a clue as to its essential dignity.

Unlike the salmon—who ascend their home rivers just once, to spawn and die in an orgiastic finale that seems the closest thing in the animal world to Greek tragedy—steelhead trout embody a

tougher optimism. A few will survive, rest briefly, then head back out to sea, and return another year, and then the year after that, to repeat the arduous challenge of the spawning cycle. If they can.

The presence of wild steelhead and salmon in California rivers is charming, magical, fascinating. But—if you're aware of it—contrasting that rich presence to their absence can have an even stronger impact.

In Trinity County I was privy to a scene that suggested the glories of the past. Jim Smith, a World War II vet and county supervisor, stood in a long, dry gulch of rounded stones near his home. In an emotional voice, he told me about the salmon and steelhead runs that he'd seen here when he came home after the war. Runs that were nearly extinguished when a huge federal dam and diversion project took most of the Trinity River's water away in the 1960s.

"From hundreds of yards away, you could hear a bedlam of splashing, like kids in a swimming pool. The river was a series of big deep pools and long stretches of gravel with just enormous redds of salmon. You could wade out into the middle, and there would be salmon spawning everywhere around you. If you stood still, you were like a tree or anything else: fish would drift into the eddy of your legs.

"There'd be a pack of steelhead kind of idling downstream of a redd. One would reach in and lure the male off into an attack, and the rest of the steelhead would gobble up the salmon eggs. How could there be reproduction with that much predation? Well, the reproduction was just that much heavier. But personnel in the agencies don't believe me when I describe this because they have no experience or frame of reference for it; it just doesn't make sense to them."

The most poignant part of Jim Smith's story to me was not the loss of this scene of intense biological beauty from his childhood—all of us who grew tip in the backcountry in the twentieth century have similar stories to tell—but what he subsequently did about his loss. For the next two decades, Smith fought in the political arena for restoration of the Trinity River. He gave endless interviews and speeches, wrote letters, organized committees, criticized studies and the bureaucracies that spawned them, and found like-minded souls in various agencies with whom to ally himself in the struggle.

And today, increased water flows are being returned to that ravaged stream. New spawning riffles have been built. A federally financed sediment catchment dam has been approved to reverse some of the damage. And the heroic efforts of an underbuilt hatchery are finally bearing fruit. And it was here that I finally felt the excitement of a tug-of-war with a steelhead at the other end of the line. My 1986 small fish, part of a run of "half-pounders," was a far cry from the hefty eight-and-a-half-pounder that was Bing Crosby's first steelhead, taken on a fly from this same river in 1963. That was the year the big water diversion dam was completed and the fish runs began their dramatic slide toward oblivion.

But if my fish was small, it was still part of a much larger run, numerically, than the mere thirteen steelhead that showed up here to spawn in 1977. The efforts of Jim Smith and his friends and allies were starting to pay off.

Once there were steelhead spawning in coastal streams as far south as Mexico. Once nearly all the northern California streams were choked with vibrant salmon and steelhead runs. Twentieth-century civilization has attacked them in ways almost too varied and numerous to catalog: water diversions and dams; siltation from road-building and logging; overfishing with instream gillnets; and pollution of various sorts.

The only really heartening part of the picture is the way that humans have also sought to make amends for their depredations. I remember volunteering for a few days on a project to clear old logging debris from the Albion River. Every summer morning that year in 1976, young people would stumble down into the cold river water to breathe chainsaw fumes and wrestle with wood, mud, and steel chains just to remove obstacles and improve the chances of the river's remaining steelhead runs. That gritty Albion River restoration scene, like Jim Smith's ultimately productive jog on bureaucratic and political treadmills, has also been repeated in various river valleys up and down the coast.

Some of that immense effort has been doubtless due to selfish motivations. After all, life provides few thrills like the one that comes when a big wild steelhead inhales your lure and sends the unmistakable quiver of the presence of a powerful life back up your line. It's like the tingle that precedes a thunderbolt, because the very next thing which happens is that the surface of the water

Catch 'em and let 'em go. Catch-and-release fishing is encouraged as one
means of preserving steelhead stocks.
(Herbert Joseph)

explodes and the fish tries to tear the rod out of your hands, or, failing that, strip all the line from the reel in a screaming downriver burst of speed. It is not given to us to touch very many wild beings in that way. I am thinking now of a specific twelve-pound wild steelhead on a northern river in 1987.

But I like to think that a lot of the work for the well-being of salmon, steelhead, and rivers comes from a deeper motivation: the understanding that steelhead are canaries. That's right, canaries. You've heard this metaphor before, but it's certainly true enough to bear repetition. In the old days, coal miners would bring a caged canary down with them in the shaft. Because the birds were so sensitive, miners knew that if the canary ever stopped singing and fell to the base of its cage, it was a warning that a poisonous gas was spreading, and it was time to drop their tools and get out.

In the same way, vibrant steelhead runs are a living testimony to the health of the streams, the forests that surround them, and the oceans that are their vagabond home. When we can no longer

maintain runs of wild steelhead, an important quality of life will be dying. And soon after that, life itself for us may become rather difficult. So we try to reverse our damage, and keep them alive in the hope that we ourselves may survive as a species.

In the course of writing this piece, I've taken a few chances and talked about some things that I've never spoken about to anyone before. I'd like to continue with one final stretch for a piece of truth.

Once I got into trouble with the editor of a publication I worked for because I ran a photo of a man getting ready to eat a raw tuna heart. The man had just fought and landed his first big albacore tuna. The tradition of this particular tuna boat was that the angler was then presented with the fish's raw heart and commanded to eat it. In the photo the man's grin looks a little tight, but he has a can of beer in his hand to wash it down, and it's clear he's getting ready to do the deed.

The editor's position was that this primal image was going to make most of the readership feel like throwing their breakfast right up onto their morning paper. I acknowledged he was probably right, but I was still glad I'd run it. Because, in my opinion, we are a little too far away from the primitive belief that we take on strength from the things we fight, and the things we eat. And because if we are too squeamish to know the taste of the heart of a fighting fish, maybe we'll wind up too squeamish to get down in the muck with a saw and jam dirt under our fingernails as we work all day to partially restore a ruined river. Maybe we'll wind up without the grit and persistence we'll need to plumb the depths of our convoluted bureaucracies and emerge on the other side with the prize of a coherent policy.

A coherent policy that allies us with the wild beauties of our environment; instead of one that compels us to destroy them.