click on thumbnail for larger view

Salmon Kill: Klamath, California

2002 Fall Run

September 26, 2002

Last weekend (September 21-23) I went to visit family in Klamath, California.

The salmon had began their fall run, and the river was lined with Yurok fishermen and tourists. As we were wandering along the beach on Saturday, rumors of "someone dumping dead salmon" began to circulate. Within hours it became clear that in fact, the salmon were sick and dying in the river.

A combination of drought, drained marshlands, water diversions (from the Klamath and tributaries), and a recent stretch of warm weather caused the river temperature to rise to the point that the salmon can't survive. The water is thick with algae and the salmon are succumbing to gill-rot. They are suffocating by the thousands.

It appears the die-off began Friday. By Sunday the river had become a mass grave of dead and dying fish. We walked along a small stretch of river at Klamath Glen, about three miles up from the mouth. There were easily a thousand or more dead fish in that stretch alone. Some surviving fish were thrashing about the surface. Others were swimming listlessly along the banks. But most of the fish appeared to be doomed.

Carcasses ranging from half-pounders to 30+ pounds line the banks. The channel floor is white with their bellies. The air is filled with flies and the stench of rotting flesh. One fisherman said the carnage was even worse a few miles upriver, at Blue Creek.

No one can recall any such an event ever having happened before. Not even my 83 year old father-in-law, one of the last native speakers of the Yurok language, who was raised on the river.

Aside from providing the local economy with tourist dollars, salmon are a key spiritual and nutritional component of Indigenous culture along the lower Klamath "since time immemorial." It is difficult to over-emphasize the gravity of this event.

-- Erika Meyer
Portland, Oregon
09/26/02

click on thumbnail for larger view

All photos on this page were taken at Klamath Glen, about three miles up from the river mouth.