Thursday July 25, 2024
The Seattle Times —
There is a new king of the Columbia.
Each spring, a chrome tide of fish native to the East Coast floods the Northwest’s mightiest river by the millions. Shad, not salmon, are thriving in the warm, still water created by hydroelectric dams throughout the Columbia River Basin.
Some years, they make up more than 90% of fish migrating upstream. The 10-year average return of adult Chinook to the Columbia through 2023 was 690,906 fish. Shad? More than 3 million.
It’s the dammed and slowed waters of the basin, combined with climate warming, that make the conditions of the modern Columbia far more favorable for shad and other non-native species than for salmon and steelhead.