The Science of Salmon Recovery in the Columbia River Basin

History and Origin of Salmon Decline

To see how important these two influences have been on the science of salmon recovery, it is instructive to examine the original historical response to declining fish runs. Responses of the original groups that contributed to the first salmon decline, how they defined the issues and problems, and their decisions concerning what role fishery scientists should play in providing solutions, all strongly influenced how the science of salmon recovery has been practiced during the 20th century.

Many researchers have estimated that Columbia River salmon runs were at their highest levels known to non-Indians during the early to mid-1800s. At that time, 10 to 16 million Pacific salmon migrated up the Columbia River System each year to spawn (Cone 1995, Netboy 1958). But the glory days of salmon did not last very long. Massive development and growth in the Northwest soon brought thousands of settlers, and many were entrepreneurs searching to cash in on the huge bounty of the Pacific Northwest. There were gold and silver to mine, forests to cut down, beaver to trap, and fish to catch. The first salmon cannery on the Columbia river was built by entrepreneurs, R.D. Hume and Andrew Hapgood, at Eagle Cliff, Washington in 1866 (Cone and Ridlington 1996).

Hume and Hapgood moved first from New England, where over-fishing had already decimated the Atlantic salmon population, and then from California, where declining salmon numbers in the Sacramento river forced them to search for a more profitable salmon source (Cone and Ridlington 1996). The Columbia River was a very profitable location for the canning operation of Hapgood, Hume and Company. During the years 1866-1876, they built and operated more than 20 canneries near Portland and Astoria. But they were not the only businessmen interested in the profits that salmon canneries had to offer. By 1883, 55 canneries were operating in the region (Netboy 1958), and the average pack of salmon (1 case = 48 one-pound cans) rose from 100,000 cases/year during the late 1860s to an average of over 600,000 cases/year (Netboy 1958). As Robert Cone reported, "the canning industry there, in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, was probably the earliest example on the West Coast of capitalism on an industrial scale" (Cone 1995).

However, the boom did not last. Although fishing technology became more efficient (fish traps and fish wheels), and canneries switched from canning only premium chinook salmon to "less desirable coho, chum, sockeye and steelhead trout" (Cone 1995), the average annual pack of salmon declined sharply over the next 20 years to below 300,000 cases/year (Cone 1995). During the 1870s and 1880s the newly formed U.S. Commission on Fish and Fisheries struggled to come to a clear consensus of the extent of the problem of salmon decline and what should be done about it. An 1894 report by the Commissioner, Marshall McDonald, argued that:

the number of salmon now reaching the headwaters of streams in the Columbia River Basin is insignificant in comparison with the number which some years ago annually visited and spawned in these waters… [and that] we must look to the great commercial fisheries prosecuted in the lower river for an explanation of this decrease…(quoted in Cone and Ridlington 1996).

But other reports issued by agents working for the Commission during this period suggested that the problem of fish decline was not serious, as expressed by W.A. Wilcox in a paper to the Commission:

The vast volume of fresh water coming down the Columbia will make it almost impossible ever to pollute it sufficiently to drive away the salmon, and it is hardly possible that civilization will ever crowd its banks to an extent that will endanger the salmon industry, so I suppose it safe to say that Columbia-river salmon will always continue to be a choice dish in all parts of the world (quoted in Cone and Ridlington 1996).

By the mid-1870s, fisherman and cannery operators like Hume clearly recognized the decline in salmon and were searching for solutions. Notably, however, deliberately reducing harvest and cannery operations were not among them. Instead, Hume looked towards artificially producing more fish and discussed this idea in an 1893 paper entitled "Salmon of the Pacific Coast":

More than twenty years ago I suggested to the packers of the Columbia River that as other streams, which were formerly abundantly supplied, had at that time become practically exhausted, something should be done toward stocking the river..(quoted in Cone and Ridlington 1996).