Neighbors Along the Riverbed Episode 10: What We Can Learn

Neighbors Along the Riverbed Episode 10: What We Can Learn

Mickey Morgan 0:00
Now, what can we learn from the salmon and steelhead, especially endangered and threatened populations? The first time I talk about learning from non-humans is in episode 2 is with Leanne Betasamosaake Simpson sharing a Nishnaabeg story of a girl discovering maple syrup by learning from a red squirrel. NOAA along with several other relevant organizations has taken the opportunity during the pandemic to see how reduced noise in the ocean affects ocean health. That’s only one way that NOAA Fisheries learns about fish, and Brittany Struck from the Long Beach office is able to explain a bit about the rationale for this kind of widespread inquiry from NOAA’s end.

SCSC Workshop Speaker 3 0:52
From our group I can offer, and anyone else in the group can can add to this but I, I think we mentioned you know, looking towards other watersheds where steelhead populations are a little bit higher abundance or presence and seeing really, really kind of considering how those other watersheds are behaving, when we know that on average, when there is good habitat and there is the right water at the right time, you know, the species does, does thrive and is able to complete their, their lifecycle. So I think our group was saying we can learn by looking at possibly other watersheds or the species might be doing quite well given habitat conditions and water.

Mickey Morgan 1:48
We can also learn from salmon about stream health; because of how connected the ecosystem is, wild salmon and steelhead populations are indicators of how livable coastal waters are for the rest of the native ecosystem. Joe Sullivan from the East Bay Regional Parks district gave context to the BART weir, a flood control measure on alameda creek in fremont. Every year for the past 50 years, the channel which houses the weir had chinook salmon pile up because they could not get past the weir. In the past, by examining tags in their carcasses the parks district could tell which hatchery the fish came from. This winter is the first migratory season that a new fish ladder is in operation to allow fish to pass through on their migration.

Dan Logan from NOAA Fisheries’ California Coastal office was able to provide extra details about the fish ladder and how it was operating.

Dan Logan 2:53
There is a water district in Fremont, which is the city in which the BART weir is. And they helped, they designed and installed a fish way that would take fish past that BART weir and it's really a wonderful feature. It's really, they have a lot of high tech features to it besides the passage of fish, they had design that was passed amongst various agencies to get input from different passage engineers. One of the other things that it does is it has, it was designed to have the ability to work on lower flows and medium flows and higher flows. And that's a real challenge, but they were able to create that. And what was interesting, Oh, but some of the other heights have tag readers through there, that are tagged as smaller fish in the upper watershed, as they swim downstream, get detected. And as adults returning they get and there are multiple detectors in fish way so that you can get some idea of whether they're moving upstream or downstream and how long it takes an individual fish to move through this.

Mickey Morgan 4:31
In the same conversation, Brittany Struck a natural resource management specialist from NOAA in Southern California, described how the waterways move during a storm.

SCSC Workshop Speaker 3 4:43
And and a lot of times we see after the storm flows the river, the river channel and the natural river alignment, the active channel has moved back to its historical alignment. So we see that the river is just being the river, and where, where the post storm alignment of that channel is where the river naturally is, likes to be. But of course, in Southern California and other areas of California, we have, we have entities who, who shaped the river in a certain way to optimize operations, to use it to use their water rights to take water out of the river, and operate their facilities. And so, so there is that conflict or tension there when the river after the storms that we just saw the river acts as a river, and it will go where it will, its natural historical alignment. And then of course, you see the modern, the modern effort to to, to kind of manipulate river alignment for human use. You now see a conflict or these these entities, these counties, these dam owners, facility owners, whoever they are, they would like the river back to where it was before the storm. So, so that's kind of a challenge we often see ourselves working through in these coastal watersheds.

Mickey Morgan 6:19
I can take a lot of things out of this anecdote, persistence, resilience, being guided by the way lands and waters are determined to return to

CT Workshop Speaker 1 6:36
I think we need to think about flexibility on all different kinds of levels on how we interact with our world as humans. And I think we ought to take a page from the steelhead book on persistence, and learning how to make do with what little we have left, that we've left for them, and figure out how we can do better neighbors and make better habitats and better watersheds more easily available and accessible.

Mickey Morgan 7:08
Dan shared an example of this in Chinook salmon before the BART weir fish ladder was completed. What else do nonhumans show us about ecological justice and climate restoration?

Dan Logan 7:16
But even before the hole was completed and opened, there was high streamflow from a big season rainstorm in that area. And the water got out of the stream. So that exacerbated with flooding. But there are a whole bunch examine that went through the fish ladder even before it was finished. So even before it was functioning and opening open, we did have ships that went up there.

Mickey Morgan 7:54
Salmon and steelhead and even the rivers and streams they return to are persistent, despite all that is moving against them with things like pollution and climate change. They are active and consistent and practicing their ancestral knowledges by returning to natal streams whenever they're able. On a practical level, they tell us about the health of our waterways, and how our watersheds and therefore our communities are connected. If you have any questions or want to add to this conversation, email salmon neighbors@gmail.com.