Wednesday September 25, 2024
The Columbian —
This year’s Pacific lamprey return in the Columbia River is nearly 30 percent lower than the average run in the past 10 years, according to counts from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers taken at Bonneville Dam.
The dismal numbers come after decades of slow and small progress in restoring populations of the important if unusual-looking fish after it was driven to the brink of local extinction in the 1990s and 2000s.
Last year’s returns were higher than the 10-year average; experts cautioned returns can vary substantially year-to-year.
The 87,365 adult eel-like fish that traversed Bonneville as of Sept. 14 make up 10 percent or less of pre-dam returns, according to lamprey biologists.
“People say they returned in the millions, and you could walk over their backs. Or, at Willamette Falls, it was like Medusa’s hair with all the fish hanging off the rocks,” Laurie Porter said of historic runs. Porter is the Lamprey Project lead at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa from Wisconsin. “They were abundant and plentiful, which they are not now.”