COLUMBIA RIVER, USA AND THE ‘KING OF FISH.’

It starts with the bar.

Nope, not the type of bar you may be thinking of – that is to say a neon emporium serving ice- cold Budweiser – but instead an off-shore geographical feature of deposited sand and rock forming a ‘bar’, or obstacle to the mighty Columbia River, its westward current of six or seven knots flowing into prevailing winds from the Pacific Ocean. 

The result is a dangerous stretch of rolling surf and swift currents which even pilot boats find difficult to traverse – the boats would often plough into a massive green wave only to reappear a few seconds later.But of course deep-sea vessels are totally dependent upon the pilots for navigation.It’s no coincidence that this river entrance is known as the ‘graveyard of the Pacific’ – some 2000 large vessels being lost here since 1792.

(1)Anyway, the pilot disembarked from the cutter – the boat wildly gyrating on huge swells – to climb the ship’s ladder.”Morning, guys,” greeting all present on the bridge and producing a huge freshly-caught salmon from his bag.A salmon?

“Hiya Cap’n! – this is for all the crew, a present from natures’ larder here in Washington State”, he went on to say.I didn’t know this at the time, but evidently this is common practice with river pilots there, and in our case after a long voyage from Japan and Taiwan it was greatly appreciated.

This pilot, in common with many of his American compadres, had a down-home, folksy way of talking and I couldn’t but favourably compare this with many Brit river pilots who deign to talk to anyone who is wearing less than three gold stripes. This is a fact – don’t ask me why, but anyone else from the Merchant Navy will say more or less the same.

Anyway, that aside and the young steward soon whisked the salmon away to the galley for preparation.“Say bud, where ya from?” asked the pilot. “Ellesmere Port”, came the reply.“Ain’t that on the Hudson River?” he quipped back.

And so the voyage went: Portland, Oregon is about 80 miles from the sea – a totally absorbing trip with real- life stories from the pilot as we sailed into calmer waters past pine forests, farms and, of course, chinook salmon runs where the Columbia and Willamette rivers form a natural basin. To me it all seemed ‘Grizzly Adams’ territory personified, representing the area’s natural resource base of mining, logging, farming and fisheries.

“This State helps feed Asia” as he explained Washington’s exports of soya and wheat, “but a widespread practice is the clear-cutting of timber – felling trees an area the size of a hundred football fields is a major problem” he explained.“But it’s the salmon who really get kicked in the butt”, he added: “since the US Army Corps of Engineers built hydroelectric dams upstream, the fish get their nutrients depleted due to slowing of the current; the farmers put in pesticides and, furthermore, the army won’t stop building dams – they figure they were beaten in Vietnam and they won’t let environmentalists do the same to ‘em.”

He was referring to four hydroelectric dams way upstream in the lower Snake River.The salmon have a huge migratory route of over nine hundred miles from the ocean in order to spawn – a distance which puts salmon migration in Europe in sharp relief.

In Portland City, people were also eager to discuss environmental problems: the displacement of ‘real’ jobs in mining by minimum wage service jobs (‘McJobs’), they  said, but especially scathing about clearing forest land for retirement homes (“retirement killed more people than hard work ever did”) was one response. 

The Pacific states of Oregon and Washington in the Columbia River basin have always been seen as Democrat-voting and liberal-leaning, but signs were that a Conservative backlash was fomenting due to restrictive environmental laws.‘Carbon-footprint’ – that quirky expression from the nineties – was seen as an assault on the timber industry and a threat to employment.

As most seafarers do we like to discover what goes in in cities and what makes people tick. As you can imagine, most folks worldwide are happy when they have a job, food on the table and a roof over their heads – none of which are always mutually exclusive.

And in Portland we’d often call in a bar called ‘There Be Monsters’ – nice bar, albeit a strange name – (it’s on South Washington Street, by the way, if you ever go ) -but talk from locals about tourism as an alternative to well-paid primary industries in general wasn’t well-received – one guy scoffed that tourists arrived “for a few days with a pair of shorts and a hundred dollar bill without changing either.”It’s a friendly place with patrons from all walks of life – many holding dear the rugged values of the cowboy West – and, needless to say, we were glad to be introduced as seafarers, not tourists.

One regular wryly commented that “if the world’s now fighting over oil, wait till they start fighting over water,” – fairly insightful I thought, from someone who lives in Oregon, one of America’s wettest states!

But it was fairly obvious to us that the people were caught in a running political battle between environment and economy. The former dictated that conservation in fishing, mining and forestry quotas  should be adhered to although it was hard to agree with this when the job market was slackening.

Anyway, this was in 2001, a long time before additional problems for salmon were realised by way of global warming, a newer component of decline; and the only positive note since is that some of the dams have been dismantled meaning that the river can now follow a more natural cycle.

Still, an increase in numbers of this ‘King of Fish’ is only gradual. The Seattle Times reports that only 5% of salmon are making the return journey to the Columbia headwaters (2), a big decrease since the National Geographic (2) published data in 1994.Indeed, these figures are truly shocking.

But what’s the big deal with salmon anyway?They’re only fish aren’t they?Not quite, they’ve been around for anywhere between 4 to 6 million years, but are what’s called a keystone species insofar as they provide much needed nutrients and minerals from the marine environment: phosphorus, nitrates and calcium especially through the food cycle which nourishes the forests. Take that away and land and productivity suffers – the fish aren’t just a barometer of the river’s health but they provide food for the remainder of mammals and raptors which in itself constitutes the food chain.

Most people are aware of the salmon migration. The four years it spends out at sea conditioning itself for the long journey across an ocean fighting currents and tides until it enters the rivers. At this point it encounters more water turbulence as well as predators such as hungry bears and sea eagles, not to mention humans.Its quest to survive is one of Nature’s fantastical events.

So it makes you think doesn’t it?The affable American pilot who surprised our ship’s crew with the gift of a fresh salmon was right in pointing out that his offerings were minuscule compared to the losses the species suffer otherwise.In fact, the King of Fish is declining not only in North America, but worldwide – it’s part of a bigger problem in European rivers too.Global warming, pollution, overfishing both on the Columbia River and globally – the environmental group Extinction Rebellion don’t seem to be such nutcases after all, do they?

1) Shipwrecks of the Columbia River, https//en.m.wikipedia.org. Wiki (accessed 05.01.2020)

2) Environmental Impact of Salmon Decline, Seattle Times, 26.11.18 (accessed 05.01.2020)

3) Federal Lands, National Geographic, vol 185, no 2, , p.18, February 1994