{"id":16084,"date":"2015-07-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/features\/defenders-forgotten-fish"},"modified":"2018-11-19T12:57:06","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T20:57:06","slug":"defenders-forgotten-fish","status":"publish","type":"custom_features","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/features\/defenders-forgotten-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Defenders of the Forgotten Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a cirrus-streaked May afternoon in southern Washington, a gaggle of middle-schoolers stares at the eel-like creature writhing in Emily Washines\u2019s gloved right hand, skepticism etched on their faces: you want us to touch <\/em>that thing?<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to blame them: lampreys rank somewhere between cobras and crocodiles on the charisma spectrum. The fish\u2019s slimy, boneless body culminates in a tooth-studded \u201coral disc,\u201d which it can use to suction to larger fish and slurp its host\u2019s bodily fluids. Supersize a leech to the length of a baseball bat, give it three fangs surrounded by rows of smaller teeth, and\u2014voila<\/em>\u2014you\u2019ve created a Pacific lamprey.<\/p>\n

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A student from Mt. Adams Middle School conquers his squeamishness to help Emily Washines release a lamprey into Washington\u2019s Toppenish Creek. Photo by Ben Goldfarb<\/p><\/div>\n

But while lampreys may not win any piscine beauty pageants, they\u2019re crucial members of Pacific Northwest ecosystems. Larval lampreys are filter feeders, capable of improving water quality as they inhale nutrients. Meanwhile, the oily, lipid-rich adults\u2014\u201cthe bacon cheeseburgers of the stream,\u201d as one biologist puts it\u2014provide sustenance to everything from bears to mink. From plankton to plants, sturgeons to sea lions, if it flies, swims, or crawls in the Northwest, it\u2019s probably closely linked to Entosphenus tridentatus<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The lamprey\u2019s ecological importance, however, has not earned it much respect from Homo sapiens<\/em>. Human industry and infrastructure have pushed Pacific lampreys into steep decline, yet only recently did we notice their disappearance from creeks like Toppenish. The Northwest is salmon country, and lampreys\u2014secretive, homely, without angling appeal\u2014were long its forgotten fish.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the lamprey\u2019s plight has at last attracted public concern. In the Columbia River Basin, the vast watershed that drains seven American states and one Canadian province, lampreys are the target of a multi-million-dollar recovery effort, spearheaded by the Yakama, Umatilla, Nez Perce, and other native tribes for whom the lamprey is a cultural and culinary touchstone. If lampreys return from the brink, it will be the tribes who brought them back.<\/p>\n

Washines, who runs outreach for the Yakama Nation\u2019s fisheries program, has come to Toppenish Creek to take one small step toward resuscitating the species. With the students looking on, she slips her lamprey into the creek\u2019s tea-colored flow. The fish swiftly latches itself to a rock. This is a pregnant female, ready to drop 40,000 eggs\u2014each barely larger than a period on your screen\u2014into the gravel of an upstream pool. Another dozen lampreys cling to the bucket balanced on Washines\u2019s thigh, waiting to re-enter their element.<\/p>\n

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Biologist Ralph Lampman releases a Pacific lamprey into the North Umpqua River. Photo by Jeremy Monroe\/Freshwaters Illustrated-USFWS<\/p><\/div>\n

Along the bank, a lanky boy, grinning uncertainly, finally steps forward to wrestle a lamprey from the bucket and deposit it into the creek. Ralph Lampman, the biologist overseeing the proceedings, applauds. The Pacific lamprey\u2019s charm may be lost on most people, but it has a devotee in this slim, soft-spoken scientist, who once asked his wife if he could change his last name to Lampreyman. She\u2019d threatened divorce.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re doing everything we can,\u201d Lampman tells me later. \u201cBut these are some big issues that we\u2019re dealing with. It\u2019s hard to fix everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Lampreys have been around for some 450 million years\u2014longer than dinosaurs, longer than trees\u2014and they look their age. Though they superficially resemble eels, their ancient anatomy is far stranger: their sucker mouth evolved before animals started to develop jaws; their skeleton is made of cartilage, like a shark\u2019s; and they have but one nostril, smack in the middle of their heads. Lampreys lack pectoral and pelvic fins, the paired appendages that jut out from the side of nearly all other fish and from which sprang our own arms and legs; instead, their fins run down the center of their backs. \u201cThey make you feel like you\u2019ve stepped into a time machine,\u201d Lampman says fondly.<\/p>\n

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Illustration by Mark Garrison<\/p><\/div>\n

Like salmon, Pacific lampreys are anadromous: they\u2019re born in fresh water, pass their adult lives in the ocean, and migrate back upriver to spawn. (While most salmon complete their life cycle in around five years, lampreys require up to 11 years to finish the round trip.) Historically, thousands of lampreys followed the Snake River, a 1,700-kilometer tributary of the Columbia, as far inland as Idaho; along the way, uncountable legions diverged into tributaries like the Willamette, the Yakima, and the Grand Ronde. Writer Timothy Egan described the Northwest as \u201canywhere a salmon can get to.\u201d He could have said the same of lampreys.<\/p>\n

But a half-billion years of success doesn\u2019t guarantee survival in the Anthropocene. Between 1937 and 1975, the federal government built eight massive, fish-impeding hydroelectric dams on the lower Columbia and Snake. Salmon and steelhead runs plummeted, and 13 stocks were eventually placed on the endangered species list. The listings launched myriad recovery projects, from fish passage structures to habitat restoration to hatchery construction. These days, the government spends over US $500-million<\/a> on salmon recovery in the Columbia Basin each year.<\/p>\n

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Dams along the Columbia River and its tributaries contributed to the decline of Pacific lampreys. Illustration by Mark Garrison<\/p><\/div>\n

By contrast, folks didn\u2019t much care about the odd, prehistoric fish that shared the watershed with salmonids. Pacific lampreys were never as loathed as their Atlantic cousins, sea lampreys, which invaded the Great Lakes in the 20th century and are today sterilized, trapped, and poisoned. But Northwesterners didn\u2019t cherish their lampreys, either. When lampreys stuck themselves to dam viewing windows, fish counters zapped them with electrodes so that they wouldn\u2019t obstruct salmon. Farmers complained that lampreys clogged irrigation screens, and Oregon poisoned lampreys<\/a> and other so-called \u201ctrash fish\u201d into the 1980s.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, salmon-friendly infrastructure offered little help to lampreys. Compared to salmon, lampreys are mediocre swimmers, ill suited to navigating the right angles and fast flows they encounter in fish ladders. They often have to rest, latching onto surfaces with their mouths (the word \u201clamprey\u201d descends from the Latin lampreda<\/em>, or \u201cstone-licker\u201d). Though salmon survival rates at the dams climbed to over 90 percent, only about 50 percent of lampreys made it through. Even when lampreys reached spawning grounds, their offspring perished. Poor land use practices deprived their filter-feeding larvae, called ammocoetes, of river-bottom sediment in which to bury themselves; in other places, irrigation diversions left larvae high and dry. \u201cIf the ammocoetes can\u2019t burrow into the substrate, it doesn\u2019t matter if the adults can get up to spawn,\u201d says Jeff Jolley, a fisheries biologist with the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS).<\/p>\n