North Coast Journal September 27, 2007 : IN THE NEWS : SHORT STORIES

September 27, 2007

Hot Season | Nine Ways to Die

Hot Season

Tyler Duncan shows off his giant catch. The salmon weighed an estimated 40 pounds, and Duncan gave the prize catch to Native Americans fishing nearby that day. Photo courtesy Rich Denaio.

People packed the banks on both sides of the Klamath River two weeks ago, holding fishing poles on the crowded river’s edge. The lines, 40 to 75 people long, shuffled from time to time as others came out of shade tents with gill nets and brought them down to the shore, yelling for anyone in the way to move.

“Everyone was just making a killing at the mouth of the river,” said local sport fisherman Akash Patel. A senior recreation major at Humboldt State, Patel makes it out to fish the Klamath fishery every weekend of the season. “The salmon are pushing upstream later, but there are more of them and they are twice the average size of salmon last year. My friend caught a giant 40-pound King salmon last week at the Klamath.”

The Klamath River fishing that Patel described, while just beginning, is already more promising than last year. This year, Patel said, fishery regulations allow each fisher to keep two adult salmon per day. In recent seasons, he said the only sport fishing on the Klamath was catch-and-release only, due to low numbers of salmon.

Sara Borok, an associate fisheries biologist at the Arcata office for California Department of Fish and Game, specializes in the Klamath River fishery. “Over-harvesting of fish in the ocean over the last three years triggered a review of modeling methods and more stringent rules,” Borok said. “That’s why the guys in the river got hosed last year -- the ocean guys received most of the harvest.” She said this year river fishermen have the bigger harvest quota, while the ocean harvest was more limited.

Borok said the run of salmon upriver is about two weeks behind schedule this year. She said high river water temperatures kept the cold-water-loving salmon in the ocean longer, and only as the river cooled did fish move inland. At the same time, she said, a slightly warmer ocean current along the North Coast increased the food supply for salmon and other fish. This improves the size and fat content, aspects that indicate a good year for the fishery despite warm water. She said the salmon will move upriver through mid-October, and the river is open all season for sport fishing. Borok said the northward change in the Pacific Coast salmon distribution reflects the warmer temperature phase of ocean climate cycles, but scientists are not sure what it would take to exceed the limits of the natural cycle and cause permanent change.

“There’s so many of us out there driving our gas-guzzling S.U.V.s, we’re making more dramatic spikes in the cycle,” she said.

That is where scientists like Eric Bjorkstedt play an important role. Bjorkstedt, a fisheries biology researcher for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the Trinidad Marine Lab station and an adjunct professor in the same field at Humboldt State, works to translate fishery data into advice for management.

Bjorkstedt said he works on creating computer models to synthesize the data on ocean characteristics like temperature and salinity, providing a big picture of the fishery to help the experts understand what factors influence a population.

“Just recently people found there are long-term cycles in the ocean lasting 10-30 years,” he said. “This means the average productivity in California will change with the cycles. We are looking for how global warming impacts will manifest in this area, but we don’t know how things will happen,” Bjorkstedt said.

Fishermen like Patel express concern about the fishery’s long-term health, but count their blessings to be here for the strong salmon runs, even if it is just due to a warming cycle that won’t last. “It would make the next few years of fishing up here just outrageous,” Patel said.

-- Elizabeth Hilbig

Elizabeth Hilbig is a journalism student at Humboldt State.

Nine Ways to Die

Pacific Lumber Company Log Pond, ca. 1960. Photo courtesy sunnyfortuna.com.

Brace yourselves. Ready? OK: The draft Humboldt Operational Area Hazard Mitigation Plan is ready for your perusal! The multi-jurisdictional plan considers nine possible disaster scenarios in the county that could seriously disrupts lives -- dam failure, drought, earthquake, fishing losses, flood, landslides and other mass movements, severe weather, tsunami and wild fire -- and suggests ways to avoid or offset damages from such events. You can read this nearly 300-page baby -- that’s just Volume 1 -- online at the county’s website.

OK, I know what you’re thinking. You’re easing out of the chair. You’re putting down this paper. You’re standing up to walk out the door to see if a sharp sea breeze might slap you back awake. Hazard mitigation plan. Three hundred pages. Heck, printing the thing could jam office equipment, delay projects and create small personal disasters.

But reading the plan is worth the risk -- if only because it’s a Humboldt-miscellany-lover’s paradise. Did you know that there have been 14 presidentially declared disasters here since 1964? There was the tsunami in April 1964, and then record flooding in December that same year; a drought in 1977; tornadoes in 1983; landslides in 1995; extreme fires in 1999; and, in between, more major floods and severe winter storms.

And did you know that there are at least 20 dams on the rivers that flow into Humboldt County -- including the big ones on the Mad, Eel, Trinity and Klamath whose failure could endanger (if they all failed at once) nearly 5,000 people and about 2,400 houses? But while that sounds fairly major, did you know that the little old log pond in Scotia might actually be the most dangerous in the lineup? Quoth the hazards plan:

“[O]nly those found on the Klamath, Trinity, Mad, and Eel Rivers pose major threats to property or populations in Humboldt County. An arguable exception is the Scotia Log Pond, which impounds up to 210 acre-feet of water directly above 49 homes. Though the dams on the large rivers in the County hold significantly more water and would inundate far more area, the Scotia Log Pond poses the most immediate threat to life. A total failure of this dam would inundate some or all of these homes, which range from 60 feet to 400 feet from the dam. At this close proximity, inundation would most likely occur without warning.”

Forty-nine homes in Scotia -- whoosh.

And there’s more stuff like that in the plan. Entertainment value aside, you can think of it as an extra-early warning system about anything catastrophic and nature-caused that could happen in the county. Short of a meteor impact. In simplest terms, you’ll know where to run if there’s time for running. And emergency officials will know where the vulnerable people are who can’t run and will need help. Pre-disaster, it gives your local officials detailed proof of need when applying for grants from the state and feds to bolster infrastructure or fix things, and sound facts to justify redirecting future development if necessary.

But the plan does not go so far as to describe the current conditions of, say, dams. It’s more of a catalog of potential disasters. And as for the earthen dam built in 1910 to contain the water that Pacific Lumber Company once used to float logs? Stop worrying. “I’ve never heard Palco or anyone express concern about dam failure,” said Pat Kaspari of the engineering firm Winzler & Kelly, which helped craft the plan.

A public workshop on the plan is scheduled for Oct. 4, 6-8 p.m., in the Bay Room of the Wharfinger Building, 1 Marina Way in Eureka. You can find the plan at www.co.humboldt.ca.us/planning. Comments are due Oct. 19.

-- Heidi Walters

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