Eugene weekly., August 28, 2014, Page 10, Image 10

FISHING GUIDE BOB REES NETS
A CHINOOK SALMON NEAR THE
ASTORIA-MEGLER BRIDGE
PHOTO BY MICHAEL O’LEARY
To Catch a Salmon
Columbia River salmon face dams, predators
and coal trains BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
I
t’s dawn at Buoy 10 on the Columbia River, and
some of an estimated 1.5 million fall Chinook
salmon are swimming through the mouth
of the river heading home to their spawning
grounds. The silvery speckled fish, like their
fellow coho, steelhead and sockeye, face a
gauntlet of challenges as they swim upriver to
spawn and die — if they are not caught and eaten first by
humans or other predators.
The first fish hooked on fishing guide Bob Rees’ boat
on this August morning is an unclipped coho salmon.
Brad Halverson of the Sandy River Chapter of the
Northwest Steelheaders reels it in quickly after an hour or
so of trolling through the rolling waters. Salmon fishing is
long periods of quiet interrupted by a fury of reeling and
netting that’s over in minutes.
Rees unhooks the fish without pulling it out of the
water. “It’s fun to catch, but you can’t barbeque a memory,”
he says, putting another herring on the hook and sending it
back to the bottom to lure a fish that can be kept and eaten.
Rees, who is also the executive director of the
Association of Northwest Steelheaders, says he expects
to be out on the water every day between this mid-August
morning and mid-September. Based on estimates from
last year’s run, this season is predicted to be an epic run
of Chinook on the Columbia, and 600,000 coho are also
supposed to return — 2 million salmon in all.
Guides like Rees depend on salmon for their livelihood,
and thousands of people spend their workweek dreaming
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A ugust 28, 2014 • eugeneweekly.com
of hitting the water with rod and reel in hand. But this
year’s big salmon run pales in comparison to the 10 million
to 16 million salmon that once returned to the Columbia.
The fish numbers shot down drastically after dams on the
Columbia and Snake rivers were built creating a minefield
of turbines and predators.
Dams aren’t the only power-generating strongholds
that salmon are up against on the Columbia: Coal trains
not only threaten the salmon habitat, they threaten the
economics of the fishing industry.
JOBS VERSUS JOBS?
Just offshore from Astoria, Halverson looks around the
waters of Buoy 10 and jokes that in a week or two, as the
fishing season gets under way, he’d be able to walk from
Oregon to Washington by stepping from fishing boat to
fishing boat. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
says there were 1,590 boats from Oregon alone fishing for
salmon at Buoy 10 on Aug. 16. Buoy 10 encompasses the area
from buoy number 10 at the mouth of the lower Columbia
upstream 16 miles to Tongue Point, east of Astoria.
According to the American Sportfishing Association,
Oregon ranks seventh among destinations for non-resident
anglers, and “recreational fishing accounts for $2.7 billion
a year to the Washington and Oregon economies.” Boat-
building companies such as Alumaweld in White City and
Koffler Boats in Eugene flourish in Oregon.
According to the coal industry-backed Alliance for
Northwest Jobs and Exports (ANJE), coal exports by
out-of-state companies to Asia through Oregon and
Washington could also inject millions into those states’
economies. The proposals call for mining coal in the
Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming and
putting the fossil fuel in open-topped cars on trains to ship
to Northwest export terminals.
The train tracks run along the Columbia River, through
the scenic Columbia Gorge, home to people, wildlife and,
of course, salmon.
Columbia Riverkeeper has filed a Clean Water Act
lawsuit in federal court against BNSF Railway Company
for discharging a pollutant (coal dust) into a waterway.
ANJE argues that spraying the cars with a “thick coating”
reduces dust “by a minimum of 85 percent.”
The recent denial of Ambre Energy’s permit for
building a dock for coal export at the Morrow Pacific
Terminal “hurts all trade related industries and workers in
our region,” according to ANJE. The group’s spokesperson
Kathryn Stenger says ports are “the few bright spots in
Oregon’s economy today.” The alliance called the decision
by the Oregon Department of State Lands “political.”
For Rees and the Northwest Steelheaders, Oregon
already has an economic and environmental bright spot
in its rural areas — fishing. People who come to fish will
spend $145-$200 for a guided trip. They also buy fishing
licenses, eat meals in coastal towns and spend money on
hotels, Rees points out.
Northwest Steelheaders recently teamed up with the
National Wildlife Federation (NWF) to do a study on the
effects of coal export on salmon fishing and the threats
range from ocean acidification to increased river traffic.
Michael O’Leary, who works with both organizations
on coal export issues, says he doesn’t mind if the permit
denial is indeed political. He says it’s time Gov. John
Kitzhaber came through on promises to halt coal export
in Oregon. “Having this permit rejected is a sea change in
momentum,” O’Leary says. “We’ve gone from Dr. Hope
to some real positive bedside manner.”