Wednesday October 15, 2025
The Columbian —
STEVENSON — The harvest moon’s reflection danced through the churning wake of Jakub Bednarek’s 16-foot aluminum jet boat on a recent night along the Columbia River.
The boat sounded a siren as two probes extending off its bow shot electricity into the water. The boat’s bright lights cast a green glow on the dark water as Lilith White and Bradley Blackwell strained to net stunned fish.
“This is why everyone thinks we’re aliens,” Blackwell said.
Contrary to what 911 callers have reported after witnessing the trio conducting their nightly work, they are actually researchers with the Washington Department of Ecology. Their efforts lead to health advisories that warn hungry anglers about the invisible dangers hiding within their catch.
That night on Oct. 6 wasn’t without challenges. Some were inevitable because it was opening night of the window for field work. But other struggles were tied to the increasingly warm water that’s driving algal blooms and exploding populations of some invasive species in the river.
By midfall, the team will have surveyed the Columbia between Bonneville and McNary dams to measure pollution in fish.
Fishing in the dark
“We’re here to capture fish so that we can find out how much toxics are basically bioaccumulating in their filet tissues,” said Bednarek. “Edible tissues mostly are what we’re looking at.”
Bednarek leads the state Department of Ecology team that monitors freshwater fish contaminants. Every October after salmon runs wind down, the team hits the road, heading from its Olympia headquarters to rivers around the state to catch and test enough fish for Ecology to figure out if they are safe to eat.
The team spends the rest of the year “getting ready for October, wrapping up October, processing October,” White said.
By processing, she means selecting batches of three fish at a time to run through a KitchenAid meat grinder to create a uniform paste to test in a lab. It’s a messy but scientific process.
The goal is to catch at least 15 fish of one species, and then 15 to 25 of another species at each site, Bednarek said. Those numbers are large enough for the group to say with a higher degree of confidence if resident fish in a stretch of river are safe to eat and at what levels.
The work takes place at night because that’s when they’ve found fish bite.
The team faced windy and choppy conditions Oct. 6, but the main problem was the thick carpet of plants growing from the river’s bottom up to its surface. The plants extended from the shore to the shipping channel and quickly choked the motor despite deft piloting by White then Bednarek.
Over the course of the night, the team managed to catch only five Northern pikeminnows, a rare failure for the team.
Last year, the team surveyed the lower Columbia River and did not encounter as much vegetation. Studies show the river’s dams, combined with the changing climate, elevate water temperatures. The warming water favors invasive plants and fish over salmon.
The three remained undeterred. They have a tight timeline for their work due to permits, funding and weather.
Moonlight on the water
Back on shore about 35 fish lighter and five hours earlier than usual, the trio filled out logs and planned for the rest of the season. On a normal night, they would be collecting data on the freshly caught fish before putting them on ice to haul back to Olympia, Bednarek said.
After the fish puree is sent to the lab, it can take as long as a year to get results. Once the team has them, they put the data into a public database, and then publish a report describing the results to send over to agencies like the Washington Department of Health.
“Without these data we could not evaluate any health risks associated with fish consumption,” said Roberto Bonaccorso, a spokesman for the Health Department. “Our advisories help anglers in the general population, subsistence fishers, tribal government, and local government make informed decisions and fill in data gaps surrounding human health risks.”
The process takes a year or two start to finish.
If the state is to fill large gaps in the current mid-Columbia data — an important task given the population density along the river — the team will have to succeed this month.
And they may yet. On Oct. 7, the team used a mixed strategy — gillnets, fishing with rods and shocking — and it paid off.
“Still kind of just trying our best to troubleshoot it and do the best we can at this site,” Bednarek said. “But luckily, we exceeded our target at our other site.”