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Lower Klamath fish kill a mystery
More than a thousand salmon and steelhead have turned up dead near the mouth of the Klamath River, but fish biologists have yet to track down the cause of the die-off.
By Ryan Harper
Klamath Falls Herald and News
September 24, 2002
More than a thousand salmon and steelhead have turned up dead near the
mouth of the Klamath River, but fish biologists have yet to track down the
cause of the die-off.
Newspaper reports and at least one biologist with the Yurok Tribe have
pointed to Klamath Reclamation Project operations as a significant
contributor to the deaths, but other experts said that such a conclusion is
not supported by the available information.
Disease, warm water and poor water quality have been named as possible
factors, but scientists are still waiting for the results of water quality
and mortality tests that should determine the precise causes. 
According to Sara Borok, an assistant fisheries biologist with the
California Department of Fish and Game office in Arcata, the die-off was
first reported Thursday by anglers.
An interagency team including biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, the California Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. Forest
Service, and local tribes checked into the report on Friday.
About 1,500 adult salmon were found dead, concentrated mostly around Blue
Creek, which enters the river about 16 miles from its mouth.
“We’re talking about a lot of fish dying,” Borok said.
Actual numbers of dead fish will likely be much higher, but biologists have
not yet determined a reliable estimate.
Dave Hillemeier, a fisheries biologist with the Yurok Tribe, said that
signs of disease were evident among the dead fish, but he also said the
diseases usually aren’t lethal unless combined with other factors such as
poor water quality and warm water.
“The fish don’t suffer from them unless they’re stressed,” he said.
Water quality test results aren’t yet available, but Borok said that
temperatures on Friday averaged about 72 degrees and were higher than
normal for this time of year.
But Borok also said there are still a lot of live fish in the river, which
makes it difficult for scientists to guess at specific causes before seeing
the test results.
“We need to see what those results are,” she said. “With this many live
fish in the river it’s hard to say.”
The initial report of the event printed in the Eureka Times-Standard on
Sunday, and another report printed today in the Oregonian connected the
fish deaths with Klamath Project operations and resulting low flows through
the Iron Gate Dam. But many biologists and fish managers contacted by the
Herald and News were hesitant to make that claim.
Jim Lecky, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said that
there are too many tributaries joining the river in the 190-mile stretch
between Iron Gate Dam and the river’s mouth to lay the blame on Klamath
Project operations.
“That reach of the river is far downstream,” he said. “They’re just one of
several factors.”
As of Monday afternoon, water was flowing through Iron Gate Dam at the rate
of about 760 cubit feet per second, while flows at the mouth of the river
were running about 2,140 cfs.
Lecky also said releasing extra water from Iron Gate would not likely
prevent temperature-related fish deaths. He said even if Iron Gate flows
were increased by 500 cfs, the extra water would have to travel too far in
the warm river to have much of an effect at the river’s mouth.
“If it’s temperature-related, it probably wouldn’t mitigate it that much,”
he said.
Bob McAllister, a coastal watershed biologist with the California
Department of Fish and Game, said water temperatures in reservoirs upstream
of Iron Gate are too high to expect increased flows to improve the situation.
“It would just be adding hot water,” he said.
He also said lower flows through Iron Gate and fish deaths could be
related, but since the deaths occurred near the mouth of the river the
relationship is hard to define.
“We don’t know if it would have happened anyway,” he said.
Randy Brown and George Guillen, both with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife in
Arcata, were close to the action. Guillen, the fisheries program leader,
helped coordinate the Friday survey and is compiling the data gathered, and
Brown is the acting project leader in the same office.
In a joint interview Monday they said that blaming Klamath Project
operations for the deaths is impossible given the information available at
this time.
“At this point we don’t have the information that would support that,”
Brown said. “Right now we’re just trying to find out what’s going on.”
They said drawing such a conclusion, given the complexity and length of the
river system, would take at least several months, and even considering the
possibility is far in the future.
“That’s really not what we’re interested in at this point,” Brown said.
Hillemeier, the only biologist to connect the fish die-off to Klamath
Project operations, has long advocated higher flows at Iron Gate Dam.
He said lower flows are “entirely inadequate” to sustain the fisheries that
the lower river tribes and commercial and sport fishermen depend on.
“It’s a pretty bleak picture for the tribe,” he said.
No Upper Klamath Lake fish kills seen this year
No fish kills have been reported on Upper Klamath Lake this year, even
though water levels in the lake are at their lowest point in the past eight
years.
The elevation of Upper Klamath Lake's surface this week is around 4,138
feet above sea level.
"It's been awhile since we've been down at this level," said Mark Buettner,
a fisheries biologist with the Bureau of Reclamation office in Klamath
Falls. He said the lake and the endangered sucker fish in it have been
closely watched, and the fish seem to be doing well despite the low levels.
That monitoring has shown some water quality problems in the lake at
different times this year, but they have not resulted in fish kills.
He said fish kills usually occur in August, when temperatures are highest.
Now that the hot, dangerous month has passed fish kills are not likely to
occur.
"It's less and less likely that we'll see problems this year," he said.
Fish kills in 1995, '96 and '97 all occurred at higher lake levels than
those measured this year, and no fish kills occurred in 1992 or '94, when
lake levels were lower.
Buettner said weather and climate seem to have a major effect on kills, and
the smoke filling the skies this August may have helped by blocking out the
sun and keeping water temperatures down.
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