Picking up speed (and not slowing down!)

(Yaquina Bay Bridge, on the morning of the 27th of June, 2012)

Hello fellow readers!

I write to you as my first week in Newport has come to an end, and a new week begins. A long, but fulfilling week it has been.

The last I wrote to you, I had finished my second day with ODFW. Since, I had three more long days of work. More of the same for the most part, which was good. I am slowly but surely getting the hang of the regular role that I will play for the summer.

On Wednesday, I went up to the Siletz Falls fish trap to help Evan with some minor repairs and maintenance.   The repair work we did involved: Tightening the cable handrails that were slightly loosened during the very high surge of water we had back in the winter, adjusting the cable car cable, fixing some of the cover plating that covers part of the fish ladder near the trap (the plating covers the top portion, which helps keep unwanted visitors out, both human and otherwise), and attempting to use a ladder to adjust the cable to the hydraulic lift. I say "attempted" because we couldn't find a safe footing to raise a 24' extension ladder up to the adjustment nut. Alas, another time for that fix.

While we were up there, I was able to take advantage of some of the beautiful weather we had and take a few photos. Unfortunately I am still scared out of my mind to take the uber expensive smart phone over the cable car, but as soon as I can afford a waterproof camera I will take more photos of the trap itself and some of the fish I get to handle.

Here are a few pics I took!

Heading up the gorge road of the Siletz basin, with the river flowing southwest in the bottom center of the photo. 

A photo of the hydraulic lift structure, with the Ford Super Duty parked underneath for scale. It's a pretty decently sized structure.

This is a photo of the other side of the hydraulic lift structure. A gas-powered generator is inside, which is what gives the lift power. You can see where the cables come in and out at the top of the photo.

A crappy photo showing where the cables coming down from the lift. These cables lift the container that we use to transport hatchery fish for recycling up and down from the trap. It's quite a ride for the recycled fish!

This is the walkway down to the cable car. That's right... no trespassing! ODFW employees only! ;) For real, though. We ran into the Lincoln County Forest Patrol deputy, and he said that last weekend he caught a couple of young adults up at the trap, and one was trying to cross the cable down to the trap hand-over-hand (the cable car we use is locked with several locks to prevent unwanted visitors). A very poor, uneducated decision, considering the drop is about 50 feet to a swift, cold river with a bunch of large boulders. If the fall didn't kill them, there's no way they'd be able to escape the impending whitewater that leads to several steep waterfalls. The kid is lucky he got away with just a warning. He didn't have any fishing poles and didn't seem to intend to take any fish, so the officer didn't feel the need to go any further.

A somewhat complete picture of the Siletz Falls trap. Yeah, this is my office, folks. You can see the cables from the previous picture in the upper right of the picture, and the walkway to the bottom left that leads down to the cable car. Across the river, you can see posts with hand cables for secure walking down to the trap. The little headgate on the opposite side of the river just above the whitewater is actually the head of the trap, and the trap/fish ladder wraps behind the huge portion of concrete / the large boulders to the right of the picture.

Scale is definitely something to behold in this upper portion of the Siletz River. It's simply a beautiful place, and I'm glad I get the opportunity to work in such a beautiful setting.

Think fish can navigate through this boulder field, and jump this intense series of waterfalls? False. That is part of the reason why the fish ladder still exists today - it provides simple and easy passage for wild run steelhead and salmon to get past this nightmare, to access the several miles of upriver spawning habitat that they otherwise wouldn't be able to utilize.

This is an up-close and personal picture of the two-man cable car that we use to jet ourselves across the river so we can access the trap. The cable car is operated on a cable much like the hydraulic lift, but we use the force of gravity and our muscles to propel us across instead of a gas engine. It's a fun little ride we get to take every day we work at the trap.

Another picture of the cable car, showing a bit of the gravity involved that helps propel us across.

A bit of a better shot of the other side leading down to the trap.

As soon as I can, I'll put up pictures of the actual trap and what goes on inside when we do a recycle run. Stay tuned for that!

That afternoon, the tide seemed to be just right for the bay, so I went out for a bit of stroll out the south jetty. The bay and ocean outside was the calmest I have ever seen the Oregon ocean. Of course, I dragged the fishing rod along to see if I could get any rockfish to play. 

After a few hours, and a long walk out nearly to the end of the jetty, I found a few! Here is a beautiful black rockfish, or sea bass. I am told they make great fish tacos, but I let this one go to be caught another day.

The pelican-crap rocks: How you know you're in the right fishing area. Less than 50 yards from the jetty's end.

A blue rockfish, with the sun nearly setting. A great end to the day.

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On Thursday morning, I got to spend the first half of the morning on Mill Creek in the Yaquina River basin. A bit of background, first. Mill Creek is a tributary that gets returns of wild steelhead, coho, chinook, and chum salmon (closed to all fishing). Essentially, the creek meanders up less than a mile from tidewater until it gets to a splitting point. One way leads up the very long and elaborate fish ladder to the adult fish trap, and the other way leads about 75 yards upstream to three large culverts that sit at an angle, sending water downstream from the reservoir. The culverts pretty much prevent all fish passage, as they are way too long and don't provide the fish a place to rest on the way up. So the fish essentially all get diverted into the fish ladder, which means that for this particular stretch of creek, the biologists estimate that they get 100% of the returning fish to the adult trap. This is very important for the management of wild coastal Coho salmon who were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1998. With the potential of such a high capture rate, biologists in the mid-coast district can tell what the relative population abundance is for the creek every year - and since the creek is very typical of most spawning creeks in the basin - it is a great "thermometer", so to speak, of how the native runs of coho are doing on the coast.

The reason why I got to visit Mill Creek on Thursday was for the purpose of visiting the incline-plane juvenile fish trap that is currently running on the creek. I'll use a few photos to illustrate:

Essentially, this trap is cleverly placed at a portion of the creek right below the fish ladder that will allow for capture of juvenile coho smolts, as well as other salmonid fry, like Chinook fry and trout fry. The trap is placed at a part of the stream that is on an inclined-plane, and is narrowed using material that helps to funnel the flow into a chute, which helps the trap be more effective by essentially concentrating the flow and forcing the fish into the trap. This trap is monitored by the Life Cycle Monitoring crew (LCM), a crew that looks at the life cycles of salmon from both the juvenile stage and the adult stage, depending on the time of year (early spring for juveniles, fall for the adults).

Hope, one of the EBA's (Experimental Biological Aide, pictured above), is one of the LCM crew members that runs, maintains, and monitors the trap on a weekly basis while it's up and running. They put the traps in during early spring and essentially run them until fish stop showing up in the trap. They essentially hike in the trap, piece by piece, and assemble it on site. When the sampling season is over, they break the trap down and haul it out to allow for adult fish passage. They have to make periodic visits everyday to make sure the trap is running flawlessly, and to collect the fish that it captures as well.

A photo of the work station. You can see the buckets in the water are held up by a metal framing, and the buckets have rectangular holes with mesh covering the holes up to allow for water to cycle through when fish are being held.

Quite the catch today! A good mixture of smolts and fry.

When the fish are captured (using a small net and herding them around in the holding compartment), they are placed into a bucket with a Tricane mesylate/water solution, otherwise known as the anesthetic MS-222. We use a diluted solution that slows the fish's heart rate down and allows the fish to respire with ease while Hope does the biological work that she needs to do. This usually includes a fork length (snout to fork in the tail) measurement in millimeters, species identification, and a genetic sample (a sliver of the caudal fin is taken using a knife, which I'm told can grow back in as little as a week during the juvenile growth process). 

Night night, fishies! They look a LOT worse off then they really are.

A good mixture of some of the fish we got that day from the trap.

Two very good size Coho smolts. You can identify these guys by the forked tail, and the eye that is quite large. You are looking at a pair of federally protected, ESA-listed Coho teenagers! Rowdy little guys.

Now the fun part: can you name what species* of parr these are?

After the fish are all sampled, then they are released at different portions of the creek depending on what species they are. If they are Coho or steelhead, they are dropped above the trap, to get an idea of what fish are staying in the area above the trap and which ones are moving downstream to begin their journey to the ocean. Hope uses a special release contraption that allows her to separate the fish apart (keeping the smolts away from the fry, to prevent the bigger brothers picking on the little guys), and the release is set to a timer. This gives the fish plenty of time to recover, and typically they are released at sundown to allow them to maximize the cover of darkness to find ample hiding. Most Coho will remain in Mill Creek for at least a month or two more before heading out to the big blue.

All other fish are released downstream. 

Looks like a great workout to me!

The moss lining the fish ladder is home to other creatures. These guys would literally ball up in mating groups all up and down this fish ladder. It was a crazy sight to see!

After spending the morning with Hope checking out Mill Creek, I was then asked to do the oh-so-difficult job of driving a Toyota Prius up and down the coast, north and south of Newport, to put up flyers for the family fishing event that we are having on the 8th. I started my way up the coast, going first to Depoe Bay and stopping at every viable place I could find that would take a flyer and hopefully would attract newcomers to the sport of fishing. After getting told off by a Depoe Bay Chamber of Commerce office admin for being the cause behind getting the Depoe Bay Fireworks Show cancelled this year because of fireworks being a "bird harassment hazard" (it was actually the US Fish and Wildlife Service, not ODFW, as I would learn later from Derek), I left Depoe and eventually found my way back to Newport, where I ended the day. 

On Friday I returned to the Siletz fish trap and got to run it with another ODFW volunteer, and Derek (the assistant district fish biologist). We had a good push of fish, so we recycled some downstream, and made it back to the office in time for lunch. I spent the second half of the day putting up the remaining flyers for the fishing event, driving south to Waldport and making my way back up.

A photo of the Alsea Bay bridge, going through the town of Waldport on the right.

That's all I have for today folks, but more to come later in the week! I have the holiday off, and I think some steelhead fishing on the river I've recently fell in love with is in order. 


Coming up, I am going out to another type of juvenile fish trap tomorrow (called a rotary-screw trap), and later in the week I am assisting with the Family Fishing day out at the Siletz Tribe Illahee Fish Hatchery for kids age 2-17. If you have kids, or grandkids, who want to get into the sport of fishing, bring 'em out! You can hang out with me for the day, and all gear will be provided. Should be a great day.

Next week, I have my first round of estuary seining for juvenile Chinook, where we will be seining the Siletz, Yaquina, Alsea, and Siuslaw bays in 4 days! 


Thank you for being patient and waiting for my next post, and stay tuned for more next week. Until then, tight lines, and safe travels! 

Talk to you soon. ~Teddy


*Juvenile fish answers (from top to bottom): Trout parr (dark Parr (side) marks), Coho parr (irregular Parr marks), and Chinook parr (very faint Parr marks). The Chinook fry is a rarity for this time of the year, but was a exquisite fine nonetheless. There were also steelhead fry in the mix as well.