Oshun O’Rourke waded into the dark green water, splashing toward a net that her colleagues gently closed around a cluster of finger-length fish.
The Klamath River is wide and still here, making its final turn north to the coast as it winds through the Yurok reservation in Humboldt County. About 150 baby chinook salmon, on their long journey to the Pacific, were resting in cool waters that poured down from the forest.
O’Rourke’s colleagues hoisted the net into a mesh-sided bin in the shallows to sort through their catch, in search of young chinook to test for a parasite that can rot fish from the inside.
Two years ago, during a deepening drought, most salmon captured for testing during peak migration were infected with the lethal parasite. One tribal leader called it “an absolute worst-case scenario” for the Yurok, who rely on salmon for their food, culture and economy.
O’Rourke and fisheries biologist Leanne Knutson laid out 20 small dead fish on paper towels, then wrapped them in plastic to send to a lab that will check for the parasite. The rest were released back into the river, where they will swim for days to reach the ocean.
A few years from now, when these fish return as adults ready to spawn, it will be to a Klamath remade.
“These ones will return either as three or four-year-olds,” O’Rourke said, standing barefoot on the riverbank flecked with fool’s gold and crossed by an otter’s footprints. “And the dams will be gone.”
For more than a hundred years, dams have stilled the Klamath’s flows, jeopardizing the salmon and other fish, and creating ideal conditions for the parasite to spread.
But now these vestiges of an early 20th-century approach to water and power are being dismantled: The world’s largest dam removal project is now underway on the Klamath River.
By the end of 2024, four aging hydroelectric dams spanning the California-Oregon state line will be gone. One hundred thousand cubic yards of concrete, 1.3…
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