{"id":12485,"date":"2020-09-24T17:51:09","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T17:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/first-pepperoni.flywheelsites.com\/?p=12485"},"modified":"2026-03-24T19:23:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T19:23:53","slug":"springchinook1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildsalmoncenter.org\/2020\/09\/24\/springchinook1\/","title":{"rendered":"First Salmon, Last Chance | Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Urgency of Now<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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An estuary mixes with the Pacific, its channels braided in deep green, dun, and cobalt blue. In a long, glassy tail-out, one pool looks alive\u2014churning and flashing silver in the bright May sun, drawing in curious cormorants, gulls, and a few still-distant seals.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are spring Chinook<\/a>, and they seem to be playing: slicing v-wakes, rolling purple-gray backs onto iridescent sides. The salmon move through the water with muscle, strong from years of marine forage. They weave like music, in no apparent hurry to start their final journey.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Perhaps they should. For millennia, spring Chinook returned in staggering numbers to rivers from central California<\/a> north to the Fraser in British Columbia<\/a>. Their inscrutable behavior\u2014arriving early in the year and holding in freshwater till fall spawning\u2014is part of a bold and unique survival strategy. Success depends on their ability to climb high in river systems, claiming distant spawning grounds unavailable to later salmon. This gamble takes time and energy, so spring Chinook return from the ocean plump enough to fast for months. To the Indigenous salmon people of the West Coast, this dazzling fish means everything: new life, health, vital sustenance, the annual physical and spiritual renewal of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The inscrutable behavior of spring Chinook\u2014arriving early in the year and holding in freshwater till fall spawning\u2014is part of a bold and unique survival strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But not all humans living here have shown similar respect. More than 150 years after western contact, the pristine Chinook strongholds of the past are unrecognizable: dammed, ditched, and straightened, overfished and scarred by mining, made volatile and hot by deforestation. To complete their journey, these ancient, hardy travelers\u2014whose ancestors survived ice ages and landslides, predators and floods\u2014must now survive us.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re proving an existential threat. In recent decades, scientists and salmon managers have tracked a precipitous decline in spring Chinook runs across their range. In California\u2019s Shasta River, once a salmon stronghold, spring Chinook have been functionally extinct for decades. In the upper Columbia, they\u2019re driving a heated debate over hydropower dam removal. And in the Fraser, dwindling spring runs are linked to the heartbreaking starvation of coastal Southern Resident orcas.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these dark days for spring Chinook, there is fresh hope: on the Klamath River<\/a>, where springers still run, four massive dams are slated for removal. Here, Tribes and scientists are fighting to make sure we\u2019re not too late. The alternative is shattering: will we be the last humans to live with the first salmon?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Several dams are scheduled to be removed in the upper Klamath above the Shasta, Scott, and Salmon Rivers, where spring Chinook runs were once abundant. (Salmon River Restoration Council)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

9 a.m. on a storm-threatening morning in late July.<\/em><\/strong> Amy Fingerle stands knee-deep in the upper Salmon River, a tributary of northern California\u2019s remote Klamath River. She\u2019s heard people say that spring Chinook here once outnumbered all other salmon, but that\u2019s hard to prove without official records. None really existed until at least the 1960s\u2014and none<\/span> good<\/span><\/i>, she stresses, until the 1990s, when the Salmon River Restoration Council began coordinating its annual fish dives.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fingerle would know; for several years she helped run the dives. Now a doctoral student at UC-Berkeley, she\u2019s returned for the 2020 counts, this time as an expert volunteer. Spring Chinook are her passion, and she feels personally invested in their success.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, snorkeled and snug in her wetsuit, Fingerle wades to one side of the river and waves at her survey partner across the main channel. Today the pair will walk, swim, and stumble their way five miles down this canyon-walled river stretch, surveying for returning spring Chinook.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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Above video and photo: Spring Chinook surveys on the Salmon River, courtesy of Will Harling, Mid Klamath Watershed Council.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It\u2019s the final day of the three-day dive, and Fingerle is excited; she worked this stretch last year and still remembers exactly where she saw each of the 11 fish she counted. Not many, she admits, but Fingerle reminds herself that if she sees even one springer\u2014as fish folk call them\u2014then maybe her fellow surveyors upriver and down are spotting more.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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PC: Salmon River Chinook by Scott Harding.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Two miles without sightings, and she remains stoic. Then hopeful: the pair is approaching a stretch of deep pools and the cool, aerated confluence of Knownothing Creek\u2014all excellent habitat for spring Chinook riding out the summer heat.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI saw several here last year,\u201d Fingerle says, recalling that moment. \u201cThe best part was that I was with someone new to the survey, and I got to watch her face light up\u2014that\u2019s one of the true joys of doing this work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She remembers being a bit chilly in her wetsuit then, but now, as she snorkels slowly by the creek confluence, she realizes she\u2019s far too warm. At these temperatures, fish struggle to breathe; they also burn too quickly through precious energy reserves, and are more vulnerable to disease. If they were here, they\u2019ve fled; one after another, the pools are empty. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At these temperatures, fish struggle to breathe; they also burn too quickly through precious energy reserves, and are more vulnerable to disease.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Tamping down a growing unease, Fingerle presses on through the last mile. Water turbidity increases, making it hard to see, but now, more than ever, Fingerle and her partner are determined not to miss a single flash of bright silver. Their concentration is acute, even grim. And then, with the midafternoon sun riding high above them, a distant bridge becomes visible on the horizon\u2014the endpoint of their survey stretch.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when I started feeling panicky,\u201d Fingerle says later. \u201cWe\u2019d seen mergansers, bald eagles, even a steelhead. I told my partner to go ahead; if there were any springers to be observed, this would be the place, and I wanted him to have that experience.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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Amy Fingerle on a recent spawning survey for fall Chinook–spring Chinook’s later-migrating and more populous cousin–on the Salmon River. PC: Deja Malone-Persha.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

None. Defeated, the pair exited the river, wrote zeroes on their survey sheet, and reported back to survey headquarters. They were the first team to return.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had to hope that the fish had just gone higher in the watershed,\u201d Fingerle says. \u201cI had to hope that if the water was too warm downstream, they\u2019d moved upstream.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day, Fingerle heard the final total count for the 2020 Salmon River spring Chinook dive: just 106 spring Chinook across 83 river miles.<\/strong> The tally marks a staggering population decline in a river that saw more than 1,500 spring Chinook as recently as 2011\u2014a number that itself represents a mere drop in the historical bucket.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At these levels the risk of extinction  becomes very real. You can feel it. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For the fourth straight year, the annual dive had tallied fewer than 400 fish. At these levels, says Wild Salmon Center Science Director Dr. Matt Sloat, the risk of extinction becomes very real. You can feel it. Weeks after the dive, Fingerle fell into a deep, confusing depression. It took help from her friend Jason Reed, a Hoopa tribal member of Karuk and Yurok descent, to trace that funk back to her springerless swim.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just 106 fish\u2014and yet Klamath and Trinity River spring Chinook aren\u2019t listed under the Endangered Species Act, as some runs are in the upper Columbia and California\u2019s Central Valley.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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On California’s Salmon River, spring Chinook are in alarming decline, culminating in a four-year historic trough in returning salmon counted in annual dives. Source: Salmon River Restoration Council.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Matt Sloat ponders this reality from his home office in Corvallis, Oregon,<\/em><\/strong> between fielding calls from colleagues and \u201chelp\u201d from his fish-crazed six-year-old daughter. In his own early years, Wild Salmon Center\u2019s senior fisheries scientist spent summers at a family cabin on the Trinity, fishing from Junction City downstream to Weitchpec. Now, he\u2019s casting for hope that its salmon and steelhead will survive to dodge his grandchildren\u2019s fishing rods.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe situation on these rivers is dire,\u201d he says. \u201cThe annual dive counts seem to be chronicling a species nearing the brink. Yet it\u2019s been hard to get anyone\u2019s attention.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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Dr Matt Sloat conducting fish surveys on Oregon Coast (from the video Oregon Forest Waters<\/em> by Brian Kelley).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

One problem, he says, is that it\u2019s tricky to compare today\u2019s salmon runs with the past. Oral histories, photos, and personal accounts from the early 20<\/span>th<\/span> century imply that 20-pound springers returned to the Klamath and Trinity in huge numbers. But the records to prove it are scarce. So salmon managers and policymakers set baselines from more recent data: runs already vastly dwindled, or even vanished.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSpringers are essentially gone from the Shasta and Scott, where they once numbered in the thousands,\u201d says Dr. Sloat. \u201cIn the South Fork of the Trinity, springer returns were close to 10,000 fish in the early 1960s. And this year they counted what, maybe 11 fish? We\u2019ve got to recognize the magnitude of what\u2019s already been lost, or we won\u2019t meet the urgency of this moment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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In a 2023 study published in Fish & Fisheries, a teams of leading salmon researchers led by Wild Salmon Center\u2019s Dr. Will Atlas analyzed abundance data for 81 Chinook salmon populations across North America. See larger map.<\/a> (Image credit: Jon Hart.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Another problem, says Dr. Sloat, is how long it\u2019s taken western science to distinguish springers from larger fall Chinook runs. To the Karuk and Yurok Tribes, who have fished the Klamath for millennia, spring Chinook have always been their own, distinct animal. But federal and regional agencies often lump the two cousins in the same management schemes, muddying both the specifics and seriousness of springers\u2019 decline.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause spring Chinook arrive early, they can hopscotch up rivers in hot months,\u201d says Dr. Sloat. \u201cEarly return is their only competitive edge over other salmon, who\u2019ve got just one shot to reach their spawning grounds. Springers lose that advantage the minute that fall Chinook can spawn with them\u2014or worse, replace their run wholesale.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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Leaping Chinook courtesy of Will Harling, Mid Klamath Watershed Council.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Now, scientific breakthroughs are unlocking the secrets of this amazing fish, and powerful, grassroots efforts are reasserting Indigenous knowledge in how we manage salmon rivers. From the Rogue River to Puget Sound, this new way of thinking is amplifying efforts to reopen and restore the upper river reaches that springers need. On the Klamath, it\u2019s driving a high-stakes campaign to recover spring Chinook while there\u2019s still time. Without spring Chinook, say the campaigners, the long-promised teardown of four dams on the California-Oregon border\u2014the largest dam removal in history\u2014will be a hollow victory. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe science is finally clear on this: if you lose a spring Chinook run, it\u2019s gone for good,\u201d says Dr Sloat. \u201cWe\u2019re running out of time for the Klamath and many other rivers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those 106 Salmon River springers need our help, and fast.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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Spring Chinook by John McMillan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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