Due to the collapse of the Sacramento spring Chinook run, Pacific Marine Fisheries Council cancelled the commercial salmon fishing season which was to begin on May 1st.
There is a lot of speculation as to the decline of the fish runs, but the biggest, of course, is the dams. Dams are used for electricity and irrigation. Dams block salmon from getting upstream and juveniles from getting down stream. In electricity generating dams juveniles are often sucked into the turbines as they attempt to head down stream. Irrigation dams lower water levels to irrigate farmlands created in deserts. Lowered water levels make it difficult for salmon to get upsream, let alone past the dam. It also raises water temperatures which kill salmon and expose them to diseases like the 33,000 killed in the Klamath River in 2002 (see photo).
Now combine that with other factors: dead zones off of the West Coast, global warming, industrial trawling, military pollutants, military sonar, etc., and you have one helluva lotta dead salmon.
Oddly, it wasn't until this hemisphere became "civilized," that we started seeing plants, animals, people, insects, etc., go extinct or be driven into near extinction. A good example is the buffalo, estimated at 50,000,000 when Columbus spearheaded the invasion, to 203 in 1903.
This fishery cancellation will also impact businesses who employ people. Thousands will be out of work. Some salmon trawlers are restructuring their businesses, others are giving up. With 80,000 jobs lost in this nation last year and more manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas, I think it is safe to say that not even simplistic ideas like "retraining" is going to help. However, if these salmon dependent folks were multi-millionaire idiotsticks that ran their businesses into the ground bringing about suffering to thousands and if there were a large number of congress type folks who invested in said idiot stick ran business, it is safe to say that the fisheries would get around $30 billion, but since they aren't, they will have to struggle harder to get money for help and services.
This will also effect our salmon culture. Not just indigenous folks whom the U.S. has been forcefully fucking for the last two centuries in this area, but all of you who live in this area and USED TO enjoy eating salmon. It will put into perspective a little more the destructiveness of civilization. And still, little or nothing will REALLY be done about this. At least, that remains to be seen. But sooner or later, we will all be forced into a corner and asked "are we gonna let the giant crush us, or by sheer weight in numbers, are we gonna take it all back?"
This weekend, Shusli and I went to Celilo Village where there was a powwow and the first salmon ceremony was to be held the following day, which we couldn't stay for. We had a great time at the powwow, and when leaving, Shusli got into a conversation with a man wearing a shirt that had the name of a social organization on it. She asked what it was and he said that it is an organization he is a part of that helps feed the poor overseas, and he helped bring the program to the Indians of this nation. That's nice, Shusli said, but it is a systematic problem that keeps the Indians and others starving. It is the system that needs to be dealt with as well.
Celilo Falls April 12, 2008
The WEAPON used to attempt to slaughter Celilo Falls, the salmon, and the Indians.
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