Preceding the rings of Saturn, there is an organism who calls the ocean and river a home. A slimy squiggling body, two feet in length with a face of circular teeth. To the Nimiipuu in the Southeastern Columbia River plateau: hé·su. Asúm in upper Columbia Sahaptin, Ksuyas in the lower. Indigenous people refer to them in English as eels. Today, I will speak to them as Pacific lamprey.
My face is almost drowned in cold water, my diaphragm is shocked and it takes a minute for it to relax and breathe through the snorkel. I’m fully submerged in the Methow River that flows through the valley. My eyes scan the bottom of the almost fifteen foot deep pool and catch on white fish, trout, chinook. Many fish spiral around each other, but I'm pursuing a creature buried deeper in the eddy.
Kristen Kirkby, the ecologist with me on the river, has told me about an individual slightly less attractive than the pink flesh of a tributary bound chinook. She tells of lamprey living in the freshwater tributaries of the Methow like an old prophecy. To Columbia Basin ecology, lamprey are essential. Throughout their reproductive journey back to their birth waters, they bring ocean nutrients into the basin, feed wildlife, and improve water quality. In larvae stages they feed on organic matter in the sediment, cleaning the substrate for salmon roe to thrive. Kristen said I could comb the sands for lamprey larvae that filter feed in at the head of the pool.
The swirling waters push me to the edge of a smaller input stream, with fine sediment along the shallow bottom. The waves gently rock me as rays of sun filter through the scalloped surface and land on the pale yellow sand. I thread my fingers into the bed and grab a handful, letting the current drift grains away until there are just a few. My eyes strain to see a minuscule movement in between my fingers. I'm looking for Pacific Lamprey larvae.
Six dams lay between the small pool I am floating in and the ocean. Six disruptions of flow with lakes backing them, six almost stagnant pools of warming water and six hundred foot tall waterfalls. A series of diversions have never disrupted the Columbia River system like in this, even when the Columbia carved away the Horse Heaven Hills.
Lamprey live in the ocean as parasites. Their circular diphyodont sucker mouths latch onto the backs of larger fish and marine mammals, feeding off of their flesh. Pacific Lamprey do not often kill their host, and, as an anadromous species, they complete their life cycle by swimming back upriver to spawn. Right here, among the hundreds of miles of habitat in the Methow river.
Again and again, I search the river bed. Scoop and filter. The larvae are tiny, the sun is bright and I must not be looking hard enough. I squint my eyes till they start to ache, my toes have gone numb in the fall snowmelt river.
Lamprey as a species have survived multiple mass extinction events. Their round, toothed suckers, and long slippery bodies are ecologically older than trees. Lamprey have survived, evolved, persisted for nearly 450 million years, and yet 90-degree angles of concrete, an oversight on the part of dam engineers in the Columbia Basin, makes it almost impossible for them to complete their journey home and reproduce. A bottleneck for both lamprey and salmon species on their way to a vast expanse of spawning grounds in Idaho and Oregon.
Since the beginning of the transformation of the Columbia river basin to farming and hydropower, salmon have been an ecological focus. Hatcheries implemented to mitigate ocean fishery harvests are the sole savior of the post-dam basin. Habitat reconstruction of streams for salmon. These efforts have been beneficial to lamprey as well. Salmon started the wave of ecological river habitat restoration, and lamprey latched onto their backs to survive in their watershed.
Pacific Lamprey larvae are one of the scarcest members of the Methow River ecosystem. Once abundant in the valley, they are now considered critically imperiled. If this system existed in its natural state, the small wiggly babies would be abundant. Again and again I search the river bed. No luck.
On the banks of the Chewuch river, a tributary of the Methow, I spoke with Cyndy Miller on the property of a land back project- called x̌ʷnámx̌ʷnam. Cyndy is a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. Her ancestors cared for this land 150 years ago, fishing in the Chewuch and collecting tule reeds in the meadows.
I ask about her experience with lamprey in the valley. She beams with excitement as she shows me pictures of a Pacific Lamprey release she took part in last week. Buckets of eels raised in tribal hatcheries are released by the reservation.
“My brothers would catch lamprey when I was younger, but this is my first time seeing them.”
Cyndy is in her late 60s. The tribes have been disconnected from their homelands for so long that this is Cyndy’s first interaction with the ancient gray eels. Lamprey have historically been a part of First Food feasts, making them an important cultural resource. Indigenous tribes across the Columbia Basin are working to bring lamprey back to their original home. Reintroduction is slow, but all progress counts. When referencing the reconnection Cyndy experiences with her culture, she says;
“It just feels good.”
As for me, I dream of the time this river system is restored and I can find little squirming eels burrowed in the sand. Until then, I will keep looking.