Antonia Prinster: Silent Ceremonies
This is a story about hatcheries and the celebration of salmon.
There’s a hammer on a table outside, a metal hook hanging inside, tables where the collecting occurs, and a window that leads to nothing. A female Chinook salmon is given a number. She’s bludgeoned to death with the hammer, hung on the hook, slashed open; eggs spew out of her abdomen and gush into a plastic bucket. Guts pulled out, kidneys inspected for disease. Her eggs are put into a numbered baggie. Saturated with drugs, she’s thrown out the window to be taken to a landfill, buried beneath mountains of trash. After cutting, squeezing, and hammering, the eggs are fertilized. Formalin is used to disinfect the popping boba-like spheres. The fertilized eggs are trucked up a paved hill to the incubation facility, hundreds of shelves lay at the ready, home for the millions of future salmon. The scene is reminiscent of a kitchen: messy, wasted ingredients and a hodge-podge mix of utensils lie around. The scent of something delicious hangs in the air.
This reality binds our feet to the concrete below and our eyes to the concrete across the river. Chief Joseph Dam stands tall and squat, plugging the entirety of the Columbia River, supplemented in eagerness by the Chief Joseph Hatchery, the object of our groups’ collective curiosity. The late summer sun reflects off the slow moving reservoir. Pelicans sit silent and ready at the chute-mouth that spits hatchery-reared smolt into the Columbia. Once released, they make a journey to the ocean; many, most, do not survive. Hatchery-reared salmon die far more in number than the dwindling wild salmon populations. They swim to shadows, preyed upon by watching birds and seals.
Salmon have survived and evolved for millions of years, creating incredible biodiversity. Raised in confinement and spoon-fed, hatchery-reared salmon are seen by some as genetically inferior. Released hatchery salmon are an unwelcome introduction of poorer genes into the wild gene pool, muddling the waters, out-competing wild salmon for food.
On top of this, salmon survive within a system that is extremely expensive. The federal government has pumped more than $2.2 billion into salmon hatcheries over the last 20 years. Despite this, hatcheries along the Columbia and tributaries are failing to fulfill their promise. The federal government signed treaties with the tribes over a century ago, promising to preserve their access to salmon; their way of life. They are failing. Less and less salmon, wild or hatchery, are caught each year.
Chief Joseph Fish Hatchery is 545 miles from the mouth of the Columbia River; it sits above the last water to hold spawning salmon before nothingness. Owned and operated by the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, the hatchery began production in 2013. The hatchery releases young salmon into the Columbia in order to replenish the waters below the concrete blockade of Chief Joseph dam.
Large groups of corralled salmon bump up against one another in concrete ditches beneath nets hanging slack. Holes riddle the nets, allowing birds to squeeze in and scoop up small salmon. The hatchery manager explains to us how they need to replace the nets soon, or else they’ll lose more fish. Someone in the group asks why salmon hatcheries are worth it, the manager replies with a hint of resignation, “I’m going to try to be simplistic here. It’s worth it because salmon tastes good.” Salmon does taste good. To orcas, osprey, otters and bears. They are a keystone species for many animals. Including humans. For the Columbia Plateau tribes, salmon are life.
Colville and Nez Perce tribal members describe that before dams, the Columbia was a free-flowing river cradling millions of salmon returning to the place of their birth by unknown forces, salmon backs glistening in the heavy sunlight. One could venture across this river, over rapids and falls and rocks, solely on the shoulders of those plentiful and strong salmon. The First Salmon ceremony of the Columbia Plateau tribes honors the pivotal role that salmon and water play in the health and culture of their people. The winding rivers cutting through hills of yellow grass and basalt sustained the tribes with salmon for millenia. A factory of wealth; spears and nets hang in hands from above wooden platforms, thrusted into the frothy water below.
Non-native people have devastated salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest for over a century. Rivers and creeks dredged, logged, overfished, dammed. Today, hatcheries are becoming unable to produce meaningful numbers of salmon because so few return up the Columbia from the ocean. Blocked by dams, salmon trudge up fish passageways, unguided and confused. Waterfalls of white froth cascade over and through, a highway of wheat prevails.
We watch as the wind pushes white caps across a great expanse of reflected sky. A river turned lake, barges chug across, sink through locks and trudge slowly across the tumultuous, un-moving water. Wheat moves across this expanse. Salmon hit their heads against structures that tower above, aimlessly wandering throughout pools of warming water. The hatchery system was built to slow down the ever-continuous decline of salmon since the beginning of the 20th century. Hatcheries give salmon to a world without. A temporary lifeline, a stop gap, pumping borrowed blood weakly into the veins of the river, back into the heart of the tribes, until the real problem is recognized, addressed, and fixed. Empty rivers and plates, solemn, silent, ceremonies of extinction and death ensue.
In the rays of the rising sun, an unnaturally still and wide river holds a wealth of hatchery-reared salmon. Full of ocean nutrients and depleted at the end of their journey, these salmon are ready to die. A boat rests on this same river. A Chinook salmon wanders the vastness of the reservoir. Perhaps a hatchery salmon, perhaps not. Despite this, she’s caught, thanked, and hauled up to the surface of the boat. Killed along with many others and put into a cooler, saved for a purpose. Her body is cut into pieces, long and thin, planted onto dogwood skewers, sizzled on a barbecue rack, flames tickling her flesh. Hands flip a rack full of salmon, deer and elk smolder nearby above fires moving with grace. In this kitchen, upon white paper plates and tule mats rest pink salmon, surrounded by moving colors and voices, bells and songs, solemn then festive. Her body nourishes and strengthens the hearts, minds, and bodies of the creatures who give thanks to her, water flowing over it all.