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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 2021
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 2021 • B1
WATER UNDER
THE BRIDGE
COMPILED BY BOB DUKE
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2011
C
ANNON BEACH — It wouldn’t be Earth Day
in Cannon Beach without a parade, even if that
parade consists only of a few puffi ns, some dogs
and about 30 people marching four blocks down the cen-
ter of town.
Led by Mayor Mike Morgan and Barbara Linnett,
this year’s Gaylord Nelson A ward winner, Saturday’s
parade was over almost as soon as it began.
“Come join us,” Ed Johnson shouted to passersby
who gawked at the parade participants suddenly appear-
ing in the middle of Hemlock Street. Johnson and his
wife, Barb Knop , an Earth Day committee member,
wore puffi n masks and waved to those enjoying the
midday sunshine.
Turn the clock back to early December of
last year for the North Coast Dungeness crab
fl eet and the picture was pretty bleak.
First, it was the crab — they weren’t consis-
tently full of meat — so crab fi shermen waited
extra weeks to start the season.
And then, once the season got started,
unforgiving storms rolled in through the rest
of December.
For John Corbin of the Astoria Crab Mar-
keting Association, and many Oregon crab-
bers, the outlook for the 2010 to 2011 crab sea-
son wasn’t bright.
“At fi rst, I was like, ‘Whoa, this isn’t good,’”
he recalled.
But before long, things shifted. Weather
improved, and pots came up fuller.
“It just started getting better and better,”
Corbin said. In landings and value, this sea-
son will probably end up being very close to
the last one, he added.
Supporters of the Cannon Beach Trail are led by a fi ddler down Hemlock Street in Cannon Beach during the town’s 2011
Earth Day parade.
SEASIDE — Seaside leaders are examining signs
and other safety features at a downtown boat ramp after
the deaths of two people.
A man and woman from Washington state died after
their SUV plowed into the Necanicum River at Quatat
Park Monday night.
Seaside Police Lt. Dave Ham said the couple might
have been lost and didn’t realize they were on a boat
ramp leading into the river.
The St. Jude, a commercial fi shing boat owned by Jeremy
Olson, motors through the Hammond Marina on the
Skipanon River in 2011 to deliver the day’s catch of crab
to Warrenton Deep Sea.
The North Coast’s troubled bus district has
been notifi ed by the state to stop illegally pro-
viding transportation to cruise ships immedi-
ately — or face a shutdown.
Although facing fi nancial diffi culties, the
Sunset Empire Transportation District has set
up temporary fi xed routes to the Port of Asto-
ria for cruise ship passengers at the charge of
$47 per hour. And those routes are open to the
public at regular bus stops, said Scott Earls,
the district’s operations manager.
But the Oregon Department of Transpor-
tation sees this as supplying a charter service,
which is against federal law, Dan Schwanz,
Sunset Empire’s interim director, told the dis-
trict’s board of directors at Thursday’s meeting.
A cease-and-desist letter has been issued,
Schwanz said, the latest in a series of diffi cul-
ties for the district.
Although it’s something that’s been in prac-
tice for eight years, it only recently caught the
state’s eye.
“All it took was a letter to the editor in the
paper,” Schwanz said.
That letter appeared in the April 22 edition
of The Daily Astorian.
In 2011, Larry Olson, left, and his son, Tyler Olson, deliver
a load of crab caught on the Columbia River to Warrenton
Deep Sea on the Skipanon River.
50 years ago — 1971
A Knappa resident was named Miss Clatsop County
1971 Saturday night after nine contestants vied for the
title.
Teresa Anne Hunt was crowned by Mary Craig, the
1970 Miss Clatsop. The red-haired lass is a senior at
Knappa High School.
A large aluminum plant, similar to the one
proposed for Warrenton by American Metal
Climax, would increase business in Clatsop
County by more than $20 million, according to
a study conducted by Oregon State University.
Salmon fi shing started Wednesday after proces-
sors and the West Coast Trollers Association reached
an agreement, ending the longest processing dispute in
recent years.
Jim Bolin, manger of the trollers’ association, said
processors off ered to pay 73 cents a pound for large
salmon, 53 cents for medium and 43 cents for small.
Trollers accepted the off er 290-61 in a vote, late
Tuesday, Bolin said.
Oil-polluted water touched Washington
state shorelines in two separate areas Wednes-
day, and 210,000 gallons of crude oil threat-
ened an important Chinook salmon river in
Canada.
The U.S. Coast Guard expects to complete
cleaning up an oil spill on the ocean side of the
Long Beach Peninsula, near Oysterville.
The spill appears to be bunker “C” oil. The
Coast Guard hired a commercial rig to scoop
up the worst parts of it, according to a spokes-
man at the Astoria Air Station. The oil had
apparently been in the ocean for some time,
and had congealed into small patches which
looked like tar, he said.
Although they took no offi cial action, members of
the Fishermen’s Interlocking Committee spoke against
fi lling of the Baker Bay estuary for expansion of the
Port of Ilwaco’s mooring basin.
Astoria troller Gene Hill prepares a boat in 1971.
The committee is an unoffi cial organization of com-
mercial and sport fi shermen who meet together to dis-
cuss mutual problems. Russell Bristow, of Astoria, is
executive secretary of the Columbia River Fishermen’s
Protective Union and the committee’s chairman.
Bristow raised the question of whether the Port of
Ilwaco could construct their proposed mooring basin
expansion “without fouling up Baker Bay.”
There is a question of what eff ect it will have on the
ecology, he said. “Estuaries are the bread basket for all
of the river fi sh. If it runs into fouled-up estuaries, it is
a dead fi sh.”
75 years ago — 1946
Portland may have its bear visitor, but Asto-
ria has its deer.
For the second time in a week, east end res-
idents had visitors from the nearby woods —
a sleek pair of does from the band of deer that
lives in the forests just beyond the city limits.
The two does wandered through the gar-
dens of several households, nibbling away at
vegetables just coming through the ground
and chewing up some blooming primroses and
other fl owers.
Salmon and civilization are incompatible so far as
present scientifi c knowledge is concerned. T he need to
keep the salmon in spite of man-made barriers presents
the greatest challenge in the fi eld of aquatic biology.
This was the assertion of Dr. Frederick F. Fish, in
charge of Pacifi c Ocean coastal fi sh culture investi-
gations for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in an
address to the seventh annual biology colloquium held
at Oregon State College under the sponsorship of Phi
Kappa Phi honor society.
The lower Columbia and much of the Pacifi c
Northwest is supporting the Port of Ilwaco in
Washington state in its eff ort to obtain federal
Teresa Hunt was crowned Miss Clatsop County 1971.
appropriations for deepening the west channel
to Baker B ay and establishing a mooring basin
for 350 fi shing boats in Ilwaco.
Representatives of the Seattle Chambers
of Commerce, Portland Chamber of Com-
merce and deep sea fi sherme n’s organizations
were among the many Columbia River fi sh-
ing and packing interests appearing at a hear-
ing in Ilwaco on the feasibility of the proposed
improvements.
Dredging of the west channel into Baker
B ay, which reduces the distance from the bar
to Ilwaco more than 10 miles by eliminating
the long trip around Sand Island, has already
been approved to the depth of 10 feet.
Two civilian divers from the U.S. N avy tug USS
Discoverer boarded a landing craft from which they
expected to descend into the sunken hull of the USS
Driver in the Tongue Point anchorage. The unfi nished
naval craft sank there, despite eff orts to keep it afl oat
by pumping.
Ocean fi shermen arriving in port this after-
noon reported that two U.S. N avy patrol craft,
being towed out of the Columbia River Friday
night by tugs, drifted into Peacock Spit when
their tow lines parted in a heavy sea just out-
side the port. Aboard the patrol craft, which
had no power, were skeleton crews.
Because of the rough seas, the fi shermen
reported, the tugs were unable to maneuver
in time to cast a line to the small patrol craft.
Fishermen said the U.S. Coast Guard motor
lifeboat Triumph rushed into the spit and with
naval craft succeeded in getting lines on the
patrol craft and bringing out the boats and
men safely.
U.S. Navy authorities denied that any considerable
quantity of materials of any value are being thrown
upon the city dump, as was charged by U.S. Rep. Wal-
ter Norblad.
Conceding that some quantities of usable material
undoubtedly have found their way to the dump from
ships being decommissioned here, despite naval pre-
cautions against waste, naval authorities appealed to the
public to “bring it to our attention so that we can take
corrective action.”
Orders to place the naval air station on a
caretaker status eff ective June 1 were received
by the commanding offi cer of the station on
Friday.
Receipt of the orders confi rms previous
reports received that the U.S. N avy was plan-
ning to eliminate the station as an operating
base.