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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM
Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Be mindful of the balance between predator, prey
A
local editorial cartoon from more
than a century ago recorded the
adversarial relationship between
fishermen and all the species that enjoy
eating salmon. Specifically about out-
ward-bound young salmon, the cartoon
singled out alleged culprits including
kingfishers, osprey, cormorants, river
otters and an array of predatory fish,
from carp to dogfish.
Decades later here on the Columbia
River estuary, it remains a challenge
trying to balance the scales between
predators and expensive-to-produce
and highly coveted salmon. A story
last week described ongoing efforts to
limit the population of cormorants nest-
ing on East Sand Island, a campaign
that has proven controversial but which
may help salmon returns by allowing
more young salmon to survive the per-
ilous passage through the estuary to the
ocean.
This is predicted to be a poor year
for some salmon returns. Predation
on young salmon in past years is an
unquantifiable aspect of this year’s
problems. More important has been the
now-dissipating “Blob” of too-warm
water off the Northwest coast. By low-
ering the amount of nutritious plankton
and other sea life at the base of the food
chain, this phenomenon thoroughly
rattled the delicate balance on which
salmon and other higher orders of life
depend.
Some other key factors in salmon
prosperity include habitat in the
Columbia-Snake watershed, harvests by
humans and marine mammal predation.
These last two are likely to be again in
the news as this year moves on, with
efforts to save endangered southern res-
ident killer whales starting to take on
massive importance.
Some orcas eat the seals and sea
lions that prey in turn on adult salmon.
Greater awareness in recent years that
orcas spend considerable time in local
waters has brought uninformed cheering
that they might bring sea lion numbers
back into something closer to balance
with the quantity of salmon we’re will-
ing to let them consume. Some orcas
belonging to transient ocean-roaming
pods do indeed eat other marine mam-
mals. However, the orcas of the south-
ern resident killer whale pods based
in Puget Sound specialize in eating
Chinook salmon, or other kinds of fish if
Chinook aren’t available. In the winter
and spring, the Columbia River plume is
where many Puget Sound orcas come in
search of their favorite menu item.
An executive order by Washington
state Gov. Jay Inslee earlier this month
to significantly increase efforts to save
the Puget Sound orcas is nearly cer-
tain to have direct impacts on fishing
seasons here, especially as Oregon and
Idaho have been asked to join in for-
mulating a response to the crisis fac-
ing these orcas. Amendments to fish-
ing rules could come as early as next
month. In an ordinary season, this might
not be especially noticeable. In a year
like this one, it’s impossible to predict
what a salmon set-aside for orcas may
mean to the harvest equation.
It’s probably safe to say that most
fishermen — nowadays almost all recre-
ational, along with the charter boats that
serve them — bear no ill will toward
orcas, which are certainly an iconic and
majestic native species of this region.
But the same could probably once have
been said of efforts to recover sea otters,
which on some areas of the West Coast
have returned in sufficient numbers to
seriously aggrieve commercial crab-
bers. It will be interesting to see how
orca preservation plays out within the
context of the Lower Columbia’s cultur-
ally and economically important salmon
seasons.
For now, we should continue paying
attention to these efforts and make every
effort to participate in them. It is always
better to have a place at the negotiat-
ing table than to grouse about decisions
from the outside. Restoring balance
between all the species of the Pacific
Northwest is going to remain expensive
and complex.
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
The Good Friday quake
O
n March 27, 1964, a magnitude
9.2 earthquake struck Alaska
— the second most powerful in
recorded history, behind Chile’s 1960
magnitude 9.5 quake.
In Cannon Beach, described by
author Henry Fountain in his new book
“The Great Quake: How the Biggest
Earthquake in North America Changed
Our Understanding of the Planet,” as
“a sleepy town in Oregon,” participants
in a late-night poker game ignored one
telephone call warning them of the
possibility of a wave.
“A second call a short time later
relayed that a wave had
just hit the shoreline,”
Fountain writes. “Some
houses floated away
and a bridge into the
town was destroyed,
but everyone, including
the poker players,
R.J. MARX survived.”
Cannon Beach
author Peter Lindsey recalls in his
memoir, “Comin’ In Over the Rock,”
that after the wave, Elk Creek Bridge
washed away and pipelines swept away
with the bridge. The town was without
water for a week. One home drifted off
its pinnings and stumbled up Elk Creek.
Elaine Murdy-Trucke, executive
director of the Cannon Beach History
Center and Museum, described the
1964 tsunami as hitting the north end
of town hardest. “Tsunami debris was
distributed throughout the town,” she
wrote in the Cannon Beach Gazette.
“Though Cannon Beach did not expe-
rience the fatalities or devastation of
other coastal communities, it was a
shocking occurrence that changed how
those who live at the coast react to a
tsunami.”
Henry Fountain/Crown Books
The damage on Fourth Avenue in Anchorage after the March 27, 1964 earthquake.
Crown Books
Crown Books
Trail of destruction
Henry Fountain
“The Great Quake” paints a picture
of the people and the landscape, which
fell on a Good Friday at 5:36 p.m. “The
day had been an ordinary one, overcast
but not too dark and not too cold,”
Fountain writes.
To one eyewitness, “it was as if the
earth were swallowing everyone.”
A family car disappeared into the
water, taking everyone with it. The high
school basketball coach and teacher
vanished with his two preschool-aged
sons. An elementary school was a total
loss and a hospital narrowly escaped
destruction when land gave way.
Near Sherman Glacier, Alaska, the
top 500 feet of a 4,300-foot-high moun-
tain broke away during the quake. The
ensuing landslide hurtled 25 million
cubic yards of rock at 200 miles per
hour.
In the city of Valdez, Alaska, pipes
from the city’s sewer system spouted
into the air, reaching heights of 20 feet
or more of water, mud and sewage. The
ground rose and fell about 3 to 4 feet
with every wave that passed through.
When a tidal wave is out in the deep
ocean, Fountain writes, it has little or
no effect on the surface. Not so as it
nears land. Waves grow taller and can
slow to a fraction of their initial speed.
Large waves, some more than 20 feet
high, left a trail of destruction south-
eastward along the North American
coast to Oregon, California and into
Mexico. Waves spread out across the
Pacific, to the Hawaiian Islands five
hours after the quake and to Japan a
few hours later. Tidal waves spawned
by the ground movement along the
fault traveled across the Pacific at
hundreds of miles an hour, reaching the
Antarctic Peninsula 10,000 miles away.
At the southern edge of the Olympic
Peninsula, high water washed away a
bridge in the town of Copalis Beach,
Washington. Boats sunk in Santa Cruz,
California, and 10-foot-waves carried
off fishing boats near Catalina Island.
Four children were swept away in
Newport as waves hit in two surges;
only one body was recovered.
In Crescent City, California, 10
miles south of the Oregon border, the
waves proved most lethal.
The 1964 Alaska quake killed 139
people; 13 of those as a result of waves
in California and five in Oregon.
Cannon Beach History Center and Museum
Effects of the 1964 Alaska earthquake caused extensive damage in Cannon Beach.
Plan ahead
Fifty-four years later, the conver-
sation continues. The Jan. 23 Gulf of
Alaska quake measured 7.9, prompting
a tsunami watch stretching 3,000 miles
from the Aleutian Islands to Canada’s
border with Washington state.
The magnitude 7.9 earthquake was
recorded in the Pacific Ocean at 12:32
a.m. on Jan. 23, about 170 miles south-
east of Kodiak, home to one of the
nation’s largest Coast Guard bases.
Close to home, cities throughout
Clatsop County monitored events
throughout the late night and early
morning. Gearhart City Administrator
Chad Sweet and Police Chief Jeff
Bowman received overnight alerts and
arrived at Gearhart City Hall around 2
a.m.
Management at Camp 18 Restaurant
on U.S. Highway 26 reported more
than 40 cars of people trying to evacu-
ate in their parking lot at 4 a.m.
In Cannon Beach, Fire Chief Matt
Benedict and first responders made
the decision to open a joint emergency
operation center for Cannon Beach,
Arch Cape and Falcon Cove, before
closing after the tsunami watch was
called off around 4 a.m.
In the aftermath, Tiffany Brown, the
county’s emergency management direc-
tor, told The Daily Astorian’s Brenna
Visser she hoped to turn January’s tsu-
nami scare into an educational moment
for the county, cities and people in the
community.
Brown wants to launch a public
education campaign about how tsunami
alerts work to address confusion.
She’s also encouraging more people
to register with the local alert system.
The majority of the 18,000 residents
registered are on landlines, with only
3,200 registered on cellphones — a
factor that could hinder the county’s
ability to get the word out in an actual
emergency.
“This was a great scenario to put
us through,” Benedict said. “With this
occurring near Alaska, it gave us some
time. … I’d rather plan ahead than play
catch-up.”
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astorian’s
South County reporter and editor of
the Seaside Signal and Cannon Beach
Gazette.