Barges Aim to Keep Salmon Going

C A S C A D E   L O C K S,   Ore.,   June 28 -- Gray clouds hug the Cascade Mountains along the Columbia River as a barge called the Chinook chugs into the Bonneville Dam lock with its cargo — 200,000 live salmon.

For more than two decades, the federal government has been shipping young fish downstream past eight federal dams, hoping the fish will swim back upstream on their own to spawn. So far the fish are losing the battle.

Only about 1 percent of the salmon on this barge were expected to make it back to spawn.

Fifteen types of salmon in the Columbia Basin have been put on the threatened or endangered species list since 1991.

Needed, or Making Things Worse

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ salmon barging program is either a vital crutch for the fish or a sure path to their greater doom, depending on one’s perspective.

“Barging just doesn’t work,” said Justin Hayes of the environmental group American Rivers. “As long as they keep flushing money and fish into the barge system, they’re going to fail.”

But Bruce Lovelin of the Columbia River Alliance, an industry group, said barging has “kept the salmon on life support. ... We’d define it as the best that the corps has going right now.”

On the deck of the Chinook, there is no political debate, just a stiff wind from the West.

Ruthanne Watkinson is all business. Her crewmates sometimes call her “the fish lady.”

Overseeing the Lifeline

For nearly two straight months, it is her job to ride the barge up and down the Columbia, making sure that young salmon captured behind the dams are loaded safely aboard, and then safely let loose at the end of their journey.

During the night, she emerges every two hours from a makeshift trailer on the Chinook’s deck where she sleeps and makes sure the fish are OK in their six 150,000-gallon tanks.

“The longer I’ve been in this boat, I’m wondering if there is a glamorous part of this job,” said Watkinson, a 22-year-old wildlife management graduate from New York state. Still, she feels the job is important, saying, “I’m their lifeline.”