Die-off could affect Klamath River for years

Fish biologists and sportfishermen speculate about the impact the Klamath River fish kill will have in years to come.

The smell stuns before you even see them: blind and bloated salmon, rotting in the sun.

"What we have here is thousands of dead fish, everywhere. A lot of them lining the banks . . . eyes popping out, guts coming out. It smells pretty bad," Mike Belchick said. The Yurok Tribe biologist stood ankle-deep in death Thursday, on the banks of the Klamath River, northeast of Eureka, Calif.

"There are fish floating past every eddy, scores of dead fish with moss on them," he said. "It makes me want to cry."

As senior fisheries biologist for the tribe, Belchick spent the day in the middle of one of the largest fish kills in recent Western history. Tens of thousands of adult salmon struggling up the Klamath to spawn are dying and rotting, from near the river's Northern California mouth to its junction with the Trinity River, dozens of miles upstream in Humboldt County. Local fishers say a few dead juvenile salmon, steelhead and suckerfish have joined the slow parade of decaying bodies.

While biologists are still studying what created this crisis, Belchick and others think humans and nature joined forces to unwittingly cause this wildlife disaster. After last year's Klamath Basin drought and fractious water struggle, the government reserved water for irrigation by limiting the spill over upstream dams. The result: a slower and, in spots, much warmer river than average for late September.

A handsomely large generation of salmon, chinook and some endangered coho started upriver last week. The weather turned warm. The fish turned lazy in the warm, slow-moving water -- the opposite of what encourages the frantic swim "home" to spawn. As fish piled up, a disease that occurs naturally in salmon rapidly spread. The disease, warm water and crowding fed off one another in a vicious cycle.

As each handful of fish died, the water grew dirtier and more contagious for newcomers crowding in. Biologists, environmentalists and local fishermen estimate that 10,000 to more than 30,000 fish have died -- more than 100 of them the federally protected coho.

"I've been talking to Yurok, who have been here for hundreds of generations, and there's no precedent for this in myth or history," Belchick said.

Thursday evening, gulls and cranes stood on bloating 20-pound fish while eating the intestines spilling from the next salmon. Their feast left the riverbank a patchwork of silver scales, red blood and bright orange flesh.

Most Septembers, tents and fishing poles would crowd the river's edges, said Dave Severns, a semiretired logger from Klamath, Calif. But few fishers waded past the carcasses and scavengers to hunt for live fish Thursday.

"They say the fish are all right. But who would want to eat the fish out of that river?" asked Severns, whose gill net held a steelhead he refused to cook.

Severns said his family has lived above the river for generations. He asked his aunts about the die-off, "and they've seen nothing like this."

With so many fish dying, the crisis could affect the Klamath River for years to come, said Mike Aughney, who runs a Web site devoted to California fishing, usafishing.com.

"Nobody knows how much of the run we're going to lose," he said. "It's going to hurt two years from now, three years from now, four years from now. This is going to have an effect through 2006."

Aughney said he saw the start of the kill last week, when he went to fish the Klamath, one of his favorite rivers.

"I saw a few hundred fish dead and wondered what was going on," he said. "By Friday, I knew what was going on. I knew it was the gill rot."

The dead salmon looked fish-market perfect, Aughney said, until he peeked under their gill plates.

"The gills are inflamed, bright red, and they've got a white fungusy slime on them," he said.

It's not unusual for some salmon to be infected with the disease, Belchick said. Usually, most fish fight it off. But this year's conditions turned the nuisance into an epidemic.

It's like the flu for people, Belchick said; it's a common disease most people fight off. But if you pack people in a dirty ghetto, in the middle of a blizzard, the death toll will skyrocket.

Belchick said he thinks the combination of a large salmon run and low water flows is the problem. Past poor-water years, such as the drought year 1994, didn't have large runs, he said. And even in last year's drought, the Iron Gate Dam upstream spilled nearly twice the water it is now spilling. He doubts that pollution is poisoning the fish, or else other species would be dying in higher numbers.

Owen Chew isn't so sure. He has counted the carcasses of many adult salmon but said he has also seen dead juvenile salmon and sucker fish.

"Because they had this war upriver with water, and the farmers, we're wondering what they put in the river," he said. "The fish, they get disoriented. They swim up. They swim down. They swim in circles."

The crisis makes Chew especially sad because glorious fish are dying, he said. Chew's father runs Little Ray's Tackle Box in Klamath Glen, Calif., which puts photos of newly caught fish on its wall. Usually, they post the "20-pound club," he said. But this year they had to increase it to the "30-pound club." This year's members range up to 61 pounds, he said.

Chew said the dying fish are bleeding business from local fishing guides, campgrounds and tackle shops, including Little Ray's. This week would normally be one of the shop's busiest. Instead, people are ending fishing trips days early and heading home.

"But to hell with the business. We're worried about the river, because we love this place," he said. At the river's mouth, "there's a sign there that says 'A fisherman's paradise. Shangri-La.' And it still could be."

Fisherman and guide Walt Lara Jr., a member of the Yurok Tribal Council, said the kill has created a financial and environmental crisis, so the government must help people and fish.

"All of our conservation efforts are futile" if help doesn't arrive soon, said Lara, blue jeans wet from fishing for salmon he is afraid to eat. "This is a disaster, and we need to treat it like that."

Federal officials plan to spill more water as soon as today. But it will take three days for the spilled water to flow downstream to where salmon are still gathering, struggling to survive below floating rafts of dead fish.

Meanwhile, more salmon are arriving every day, including silver salmon, which are just starting to head up the Klamath to spawn.

"There's way too many fish. And they're still coming in. They're coming in like flies on flypaper," Chew said. "This place is going to look like an elephants' burial ground."