That's the genus and species name for the chinook salmon, the big fish that used to spawn in California's Central Valley rivers and streams in such huge numbers that -- well, it has become a cliche -- people who saw them swimming upstream said the waters were so full of salmon one could cross on their backs.
I guess I became interested in the disappearance of California's salmon at the same time a lot of other people here did. Back in the early '90s, after years of drought, the winter run of wild chinook on the Sacramento River was reduced to fewer than 200. In 1969, 100,000 wild chinook returned from their three or four years in the North Pacific to swim to their birth waters below Shasta Dam, dig redds (spawning nests) in the river gravel, lay and fertilize their eggs, and die.
What happened? Big dams to trap and divert water for big farms and big numbers of people. Destructive logging and grazing of watershed lands. Overfishing, perhaps. With the salmon population already low, the dry years of the late '80s and early '90s coupled with a lack of care by those who run the state's plumbing brought the Sacramento's winter run to a threshold that many other California runs had long ago crossed: extinction. Hope? The wild winter run still lives; biologists started a captive breeding program at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco to try to ensure that if another disaster occurs, the winter-run gene pool survives. Longer term, the only real hope for salmon survival is finding a way to permit the wild fish to make safe passage to their spawning grounds and young fish a clear outlet to the sea. All we need to do is reverse our history and habits.
- The Salmon Page could be a starting and ending point for those with salmon on the brain. It's a good directory of material maintained by a grade school in Oregon. The same folks maintain a mailing list for exchange of salmon information.
- The Institute for Fisheries Resources, based in San Francisco, is affiliated with the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, which has been in the thick of the salmon-preservation fight in California.
- Columbia Basin Research, University of Washington. Perhaps the best and most powerful collection of tools for anyone interested in delving into salmon conditions on the Columbia. Resources include Data in Real Time (DART), a collection of constantly updated statistics on fish passages and river conditions throughout the Columbia system.
- California Rivers Assessment (CARA) (Information Center for the Environment) is a great resources for anyone looking for information related to specific watersheds.
- Northwest Fisheries Science Center. Information from agencies in charge of developing recovery plans for endangered marine species like runs of the chinook, coho and sockeye salmon.
- Quick facts about salmonfrom the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Back to Holly Street
First posted 1995. Updated July 23, 2005