The importance of salmon

Why protect the chinook and sockeye salmon? What's so great about them? In almost every ecosystem, if one species is driven to extinction another one fills in the gap, right? That may not be possible with the salmon. To understand why, we need to know a little about the life history of the fish.
Fisheries scientists estimate that at one time there were 14 million salmon returning every year. By the mid-1850s that number had dwindled to 6 million. Not 14 million, but not the mere 3 thousand that were returning by the time the salmon was listed. Salmon dig redds (nests) to lay their eggs, and die after spawning. When the eggs hatch (approximately 2-3 months after fertilization) the salmon fry live off yolk sacs attached to their bellies for about 2 weeks. When the sacs are used up the young chinook are called button-up fry and swim up to the surface of the water. For the next 18 months or so they feed off microbial insects. Eventually, something signals them to begin their migration downstream to the ocean, usually at the end of April. The young fry become what are called pre-smolts, are released from the hatchery, and begin the arduous journey downriver. Because they are not yet strong enough to swim long distances, they let the current carry them tail-first. Only about 10 percent will actually make it to the ocean. During their journey the salmon go through a process called smoltification; that is, their bodies get ready to make the transition from fresh water to salt water. I am no fish expert, so I am not fully equipped to describe all the changes in detail, but I do recall from vertebrate zoology that the fish go from excreting copious amounts of very dilute urine to small amounts of very concentrated urine in order to maintain ion balances in their bodies. Timing is crucial; if the fish change to soon they will die, and if they change too late they will die. The fish stay in the ocean for 1-3 years. The 1-ocean chinook are called jacks and are not considered full adult, but are fully capable of spawning. There is little scientific backing for it and it is not true of all areas in the continental United States, but conventional wisdom says that a good run of jacks represents 10 percent of the next year's run. Because the fish's body has gone through so many changes to adapt to ocean life, its digestive system essentially shuts down once it hits freshwater. Thus, they do not eat for the rest of their lives. Science suggests that salmon can taste chemical differences in water up .03 parts per million. (For an everyday equivalent, imagine you have a million cups of water and 1 cup of sugar. Mix it all together and you've got 1 ppm of sugar. Now, consider that the fish can taste much less than that. It's truly an amazing system!) The fish get to their natal streams, spawn, and die. Everything in the stream has evolved to capture nutrients from the decomposition of those dead fish. If you suddenly remove those nutrients from the stream, the plants that depended on those nutrients die and aren't there, they don't give off oxygen, and evewntually the whole system starts to collapse. A huge problem right now for those streams and lakes is the suden sterility.
Luckily, there are programs that are attempting to bring the chinook and sockeye salmon back. To save time and avoid confusion, let's just say that there are more than a few captive rearing programs going on in river corridors throughout Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Some of the fish are reared in captivity their entire lives, and some are released to make the journey to and from the ocean.
Besides all the scientific reasons to keep the salmon around, we should do it because they are just plain cool! I thought steelhead were big when we caught them, but then we got to chinook season. A 5-year old chinook can be as big as a small shark! All of a sudden we went from getting fish that were 70 centimeters long to fish that were 92 centimeters long or more! (Divide by 2.54 to get the length in feet). I had seen pictures of the male sockeye in full red and green spawning colors and thought they looked cartoonish, but then I saw a real male sockeye, and to my amazement they really do look just like that!
Some people may ask why we should save the salmon. Well, why not?