A8
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2021
Last hope for endangered sucker fi sh
Hatcheries
could help in the
Klamath Basin
Basin for restoration activi-
ties by the Fish and Wildlife
Service.
But a lot of restoration
work is needed , so any proj-
ects to help the suckers will
once again be competing for
resources with other fi sh,
birds and other priorities.
The older generation of
suckers don’t have very
much time.
By JES BURNS
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Sucker spawning season
is a chilly time to be snor-
keling in the Williamson
River, but if you need to col-
lect sucker eggs, that’s really
the only place to be.
Shortnose and Lost River
suckers from Upper Klam-
ath Lake only spawn on
the shallow rocky stretches
of a 5-mile section of river
near Chiloquin in s outhern
Oregon.
Catching them by hand is
tricky. Stealth is the key.
“Getting into the shal-
lowest areas and then just
trying to make as little noise
as possible is the way to go,”
said U.S. Fish and Wild-
life Service biologist Josh
Rasmussen.
Rasmussen, who until
changing jobs this past fall
was the service’s sucker
recovery program coordina-
tor in the Klamath Basin, is
following behind two div-
ers with a net as they move
smoothly upstream — a
sort-of drysuit ballet.
“Then you just have to
slowly get up behind them
and grab them by the tail
… What we call the caudal
peduncle, the fl eshy part ( in
front) of the tail,” he said.
Aside from being the
greatest anatomical name
ever, the caudal peduncle
provides the perfect spot for
holding on tight. Spawning
suckers can be close to 3 feet
long and put up quite a fi ght.
Fish technician Joel
Ophoff pulls himself along
the rocky bottom, appear-
ing almost motionless from
above. Then suddenly, his
body jerks as he grabs a
Lost River sucker. In one
smooth motion, he twists in
the water to sit on the bot-
tom, pulling the large fl op-
ping fi sh back and onto his
lap.
“Finally got a female!”
he said, cradling the fi sh in
his arms.
The crew needs to catch
and then release both females
and males. They collect eggs
and sperm so they can pro-
vide fertilized eggs to two
hatcheries focused on suck-
ers conservation.
These hatcheries could
be the last best hope to save
the two species that were a
vital traditional food source
for the Klamath Tribes,
who called the two species
c’waam and koptu.
“Every elder I’ve ever
talked to are just like, ‘Oh,
suckers are, they’re so good.
They’re so good.’ And I was
like, well, I can’t try it yet.
But you know, that’s the
goal. You know, one day
that the tribe will be able
to go out and harvest suck-
ers every year,” said tribal
member Jimmy Jackson,
who works at the tribe’s
hatchery, which is focused
on preserving genetic diver-
sity in case the wild sucker
populations vanish.
Vanishing fi sh
The Klamath Basin is
coming off a tough year.
Lifeline
Photos by Brandon Swanson/Oregon Public Broadcasting
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Joel Ophoff cradles a Lost River sucker hand-caught in the Williamson River. The crew will
collect fertilized eggs from the fi sh to raise in a conservation hatchery.
The Lost River sucker is one of two species of suckers that are endangered in the Klamath Basin.
Farmers, ranchers, fi sh,
birds — nobody had enough
water. And the crisis —
fueled by climate change,
politics and water policy
— doesn’t appear likely to
resolve anytime soon.
The two species of
endangered suckers in
Upper Klamath Lake are in
the middle of the turmoil.
“When I was a kid, there
was thousands and thou-
sands of suckers in the river
every spring … Now that
I’m an adult, you know, 20
years later, you go down
there and there’s only a few
hundred of them,” Jackson
said.
Despite being protected
as an endangered species
for more than 30 years, the
numbers of shortnose and
Lost River suckers have
continued to decline. Only
about 8,000 shortnose suck-
ers are left in the world.
But the problem is not
really the low number of
adults remaining, but that
the fi sh are all so old. All of
the fi sh the Fish and Wild-
life Service crew catches are
nearing the end of their nat-
ural lives.
“For
the
shortnose
sucker, the oldest individual
that we’ve ever aged was
33 years old,” Rasmussen
said. “Right now, most of
the individuals we have in
the lake were born in 1991.
So that puts them at 30 years
old. So they’re within three
years of the maximum lifes-
pan ever recorded for the
species.
That means within the
next three years, most of the
shortnoses could die or sim-
ply stop breeding because of
their age.
This is a serious problem
because in their traditional
stronghold of Upper Klam-
ath Lake, there are practi-
cally no new suckers living
long enough to reach spawn-
ing age. Nearly all the juve-
niles disappear right around
their fi rst birthdays.
“Upper Klamath Lake
is this amazing, spectacular
lake when viewed from afar.
And suckers, which happen
to be very tough fi sh, if they
can’t survive there, then the
whole ecosystem is in dan-
ger,” said U.S. Geological
Survey fi sh biologist Sum-
mer Burdick.
Burdick has spent several
years doing research out on
the lake, trying to fi gure out
why young suckers don’t
survive.
“It’s kind of like being
the detective in a murder
mystery case in which you
have many, many suspects,”
she said. “Trying to fi gure
out which of these suspects,
or if there’s a combination
of these suspects, that are
actually the ones causing the
death of the fi sh.”
During the summers,
when young suckers are
known to die off , her team
goes out on the water to
check submerged cages —
called mesocosms — at dif-
ferent spots around the lake.
The cages contain young
suckers, which are moni-
tored for disease and overall
health every few weeks.
One year the fi sh in the
experiment died of a para-
site that attacked their gills.
The next year they died of a
bacterial infection. Another
year, the young suckers suf-
fered from tail rot disease.
After studying years of
data, Burdick came to real-
ize that the real problem for
suckers isn’t infections or
parasites.
“The ah a moment was,
hey, it’s not the thing that’s
getting them in the end. It’s
some sort of stressor that’s
reducing their immune sys-
tem to the point that it
doesn’t matter what the dis-
ease is, it matters what the
stressor is,” Burdick said.
“And that’s really what
we’re looking for here is
that stressor.”
The stressor
Figuring out what’s in
Oregon’s largest lake that
is stressing the suckers
turns out to be even more
challenging.
But a few things have
become clear in the science.
“We know that air tem-
peratures in the Klamath
Basin have been increasing
over the last 100 years …
and the temperatures in the
lake right now in the mid-
summer are in the range that
are stressful for suckers —
and also in the range that are
perfect for their parasites to
thrive,” Burdick said.
High temperatures and
drought in the Klamath
region have been intensi-
fying because of human-
caused climate change
— the result of increased
heat-trapping carbon in the
atmosphere caused by burn-
ing fossil fuels like coal, oil
and natural gas.
In addition, water lev-
els in the lake aff ect water
quality and the availability
of sucker habitat.
And there’s another
factor.
“What would it take for
those ( young fi sh) to die
year after year after year
after year after year — for
30 years? In my mind, it
has to be something that’s
consistent, widespread and
applicable across the entire
population,” the Fish and
Wildlife Service’s Rasmus-
sen said.
The only thing he says
makes sense are the mas-
sive algae blooms that
choke large sections of
Upper Klamath Lake every
summer.
Scientists believe the
lake has always had algae
blooms, but human devel-
opment has increased the
amount of naturally-occur-
ring phosphorus eroding
from the soil into the water.
This phosphorus feeds mul-
tiple algae blooms every
year — intensifying them
and allowing diff erent kinds
of algae to thrive. The algae
changes the pH of the water
and releases toxins into the
water.
Then, when the algae
die and decompose, oxygen
levels in the lake crash.
“We start to see very, very
low oxygen levels, which is
poor for the fi sh. That’s the
same oxygen they need to
breathe,” he said.
Some work is already
being done to reduce the
amount of phosphorus get-
ting into the lake. And the
recently-passed
federal
Infrastructure Investment
and Jobs Act will bring
$160 million to the Klamath
This is where the hatch-
eries come in.
The Klamath Tribes’
hatchery is the fail-safe.
The primary mission there
is preserving sucker genetic
diversity in case the wild
populations vanish.
But for the newer Fish
and Wildlife Service hatch-
ery operation near the Cal-
ifornia border, it’s all about
numbers.
Fish counts show that
more than 80% of adult
suckers survive in the lake
from year to year, but for
juvenile fi sh, that fi gure
is close to zero. If the two
species of suckers are ever
to recover, an infl ux of
younger fi sh is vital. Rais-
ing them in the protection
of the hatchery could help.
“We want to get them to
that stage because if they
can become adults, then
we think they could be out
there for 20 to 30 years and
provide some stability for
us,” Rasmussen said .
Staff tag and release the
fi sh at diff erent ages, loca-
tions and times of year in an
eff ort to fi gure out if there’s
an ideal combination that
will promote survival.
Some of the young fi sh
have managed to make it
through, at least for a while.
They’ve been picked up
swimming by tag detection
stations in the watershed —
a result that suggests some
hatchery-reared fi sh are sur-
viving after their release.
But in a lake system
that’s so environmentally
degraded, where even the
fi ttest wild sucker fi sh aren’t
surviving, it may end up
being more about the quan-
tity of fi sh released than any
other factor.
After a couple of fi nal
releases of hatchery-reared
sucker fi sh into the lake,
which are planned this
month, its total number of
young suckers introduced
this year will reach about
25,000.
That annual number is
expected to rise signifi -
cantly over the next decade.
Last June, the Fish and
Wildlife Service’s sucker
fi sh hatchery was offi cially
designated a n ational fi sh
h atchery, while securing
a long-term lease on the
facility.
That means early next
year, the hatchery will begin
expanding, with the goal of
eventually releasing 60,000
fi sh every year.
“I think we will be able
to add to the population and
artifi cially support it,” Ras-
mussen said. “Such that we
have time to allow the envi-
ronmental conditions to
improve and allow the spe-
cies to get back on its own
feet.”
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