Stick game
Is the Klamath River headed for
disaster, again?
By Japhet Weeks, Photo by Yulia Weeks, North
Coast Journal 7/19/07
 The
water in the Klamath is just right for swimming. That is,
unless you’re a salmon, in which case it may be the perfect
temperature for another fish kill.
At least that’s what Keith Parker
of the Yurok Tribe is saying. Parker sent out an e-mail alert
last week in which he reported that the water temperature a
few miles up from the mouth of the river was 76.2 degrees
Fahrenheit at midnight on July 9. He wrote in bold letters:
“WE ARE HEADED FOR DISASTER AGAIN ... IF SOMETHING ISN’T DONE
IMMEDIATELY.”
However, the scene last Sunday in
the town of Requa at the Klamath estuary was far from
apocalyptic. Motorboats and rowboats dotted the river’s
surface. A Yurok father and his daughter drifted listlessly in
a rowboat beside a net in the water, waiting for their catch
to come to them. Where the Klamath and the Pacific Ocean crash
stubbornly into one another, a large rock the Yurok call
Oregos, which watches over the confluence of fresh and
salt water, stood like a sentinel, while across from it two
fishermen cast their drift nets out into the brackish surf.
Arnie Nova, the lead fisheries
technician for the Yurok Tribe, said he hadn’t heard about the
temperature going up. But, he said, there was a weekend-long
Brush Dance that was still going on, on the south side of the
estuary.
The Brush Dance had been organized
to heal a sick child. Last year, the Yurok held a Brush Dance
to heal the Klamath River. Jim McQuillen, education director
for the Yurok tribe, said that even though this weekend’s
dance wasn’t specifically for the river, he still “heard a lot
of prayers for the water” on Saturday night.
That’s because the river is always
on the tribe’s minds, mostly because of the salmon, which
Yurok elder Walt Lara describes as “a tie between us and the
Creator in the past.”
Nova’s promise of a Brush Dance
didn’t exactly come through. Those who hadn’t already packed
up and left were cleaning up trash or munching on leftover elk
meat. In one corner of the camp, members of two tribes -- the
Yurok and Hoopa Valley -- played Indian cards, a game which
looks like a combination of pick-up sticks and poker. The
challenge is for one player to guess in which hand his
opponent is holding a particular stick, one marked with a
black ring. The game is played for money, which is spread out
in large and small denominations on the ground between the
players, each bill weighted down under a small stone.
The players sing songs as they
play, and the audience cajoles or encourages from the sides.
Youngsters rub the players’ backs to give them good luck.
There is no strategy involved; the game, it turns out, is left
entirely to lady luck.
A stone’s throw away, the Klamath
River begs the question: How much of the salmon’s future is
also a matter of things beyond our control?
“Things are going to resolve on
those dams and stuff, but it might take 15 or 20 years,” Lara
said, referring to the four PacifiCorp dams that may or may
not come out depending on what the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission decides. “Them salmon are tough. You see them
salmon beating their heads to get through [the dams] ... It’s
a sad thing that they didn’t put fish ladders up there in the
first place so the salmon could get through. It’s hard to
believe that you catch hell for shooting a dog with a BB,”
Lara said, his voice changing from tired to angry, “but you
can goddamn build a dam and kill thousands of fish without
nobody doing no damn thing about it.”
On the way back to the docks, Nova
took a detour past the spit of beach that extends to the mouth
of the river. Keith Parker was lifting his anchor off
the beach and carrying it over to his motorboat when Nova
pulled up to ask him if he’d heard anything about the high
water temperature. Heard anything? He was the one who sent out
the alert.
“We’re headed for disaster.” He
explained. “This is the middle of July, is all it is, and
we’ve got water temperatures of 76.2 degrees. What’s it going
to be like in the fall when the fall run comes in?"
When Parker saw how high the water
temperature was, he called the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries division (NOAA
Fisheries) in Arcata. “I figured we needed to go after the
base of the fire,” he said. “Everyone seems to be going after
the flames and going after the farmers, whereas they’re [NOAA
Fisheries] the ones that make the biological opinions that
control the flows from Iron Gate and Lewiston.”
But what he heard wasn’t very
reassuring: “The supervisor at NOAA, Irma Lagomarsino, said,
‘We realize there’s a problem and we are redoing the
biological opinion that will change the flows.’ And I said,
‘Roughly how long will that take?’ She said, ‘Our flow study
takes about two years.’ I said, ‘Well, we have like two
days.’”
Parker said he had caught eight
salmon the day before in the estuary and none of them had sea
lice on them, which according to him is a bad sign. “I catch
salmon at Blue Creek, which is 14 miles upriver, and they
still have sea lice on them,” he said. It’s the heat that’s
causing the lice to fall off. And that’s not the only problem.
Half the fish he caught were already turning dark. Usually, he
said, “They’re bright chromers for the whole lower river.”
Also, “a couple of them had that smell that they get in the
late fall when they’ve been in the river too long, because
they’re decomposing.” He blames it all on the increased water
temperature.
Jim Simondet, a biologist at NOAA
Fisheries in Arcata, attributed the unusually hot water to
“extremely high ambient temperatures in the basin” last week.
Parker, on the other hand, blames
the high water temperature on the low flows, as water is
diverted from the river to the farmers upstream. But Simondet
preferred not to point fingers. “You need to take a look at
the whole basin. You need to have a basin-wide perspective,”
he said. “Everyone is looking for the silver bullet.”
Simondet said that this year is no
different from other dry years. In fact, he added, “The flows
out of Iron Gate dam are proportionately higher than the
average flow for this time of year.” They are a little over
1,000 cubic feet per second versus a mean flow of 760 cubic
feet per second.
And as for whether or not another
fish kill is imminent, Simondet pointed out that the flows are
much higher now than they were around the same time in 2002.
Still, he admitted, “We do have poor water quality
conditions.”
As Keith Parker navigated his
motorboat upriver, he pointed out a massive, old bridge that
was knocked down in the ’64 flood. The law of this river, it
seems, is feast or famine. Either, there isn’t enough water,
or there’s too much. It’s all a big gamble.
As for which hand is holding the
stick with the black ring around it -- the one that will win
the basin farmers their much-needed water and the Yurok
fishermen their precious salmon -- there may be no strategy
for finding that out. But for Yurok tribesmen like Keith
Parker, there is reason to believe that the river is giving us
signs that cannot be ignored.
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