Dams in the American West have long been a symbol of power and control, the taming of the rivers was the taming of the West. But these days many of the old dams of the Pacific Northwest are being seen as nuisances, and more importantly, killers of salmon. Thus the movement to tear some of the dams down. The latest to fall, the Savage Rapids Dam on Oregon’s Rogue River.

For years, the water stored by the Savage Rapids Dam has nurtured the green bean fields and grazing pastures of southern Oregon, turning them into a lush region of bounty.

But there has been a price – the death of thousands of fish, which slammed themselves into the concrete wall of the dam in a futile effort to head upstream.

That picture now resembles a faded sepia-tone photograph. Many of the big farms have turned into 10-acre hobby ranches. The salmon are in danger of disappearing. And even the federal Bureau of Reclamation, the agency that harnessed rivers and irrigated the West, began saying a few years ago it would be better to just tear down the aging dam once and for all.

So they did.

On Friday, a platoon of bulldozers and earthmovers tore away at the last of the temporary earthen berms holding water behind the dam. The Rogue River rushed free, flowing through its historic channel for the first time since 1921.

For this one, fly fishermen tamed with environmentalists to pursue the deal that brought the dam down and that will, it’s hoped, turn the Rogue River once again into one of the best salmon fishing rivers in the West.

The U.S Fish & Wildlife Service has agreed to re-consider its decision, made during the Bush Administration, to not list the Arctic grayling, a Montana sport fish, on the endangered species list. And guess who was responsible for that decision? None other than our old friend Julie MacDonald.

The grayling was first recognized as a candidate for protection in 1982. In 2004, this status was reaffirmed, and the grayling was recognized as being a priority for protection because of imminent threats of a high magnitude. Despite this recognition, the Bush administration sharply reversed course in 2007 and denied the grayling protection. Rather than concluding grayling were not endangered, the administration instead decided that extinction of the Montana population would be insignificant. The decision was one of many influenced by former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Parks Julie MacDonald, who resigned after an investigation by the Interior Department’s inspector general found she had bullied agency scientists to change their conclusions and improperly released internal documents to industry lobbyists and attorneys.

So the Bushies decided that the extinction of the arctic grayling would be insignificant, and then MacDonald cheated in order to help make it happen. Fortunately, Montana fly fishermen disagreed and they teamed up with the Center for Biological Diversity to bring the lawsuit that resulted in this week’s decision. That’s splendid example of outdoors interests and environmentalists finding a common purpose, and working together to make it happen.

if it’s starting to seem that the Obama Administration is spending a lot of time re-examining Bush Administration decisions regarding endangered species, that’s exactly right.

In response to litigation, the Obama government has agreed to reconsider dozens of decisions by the Bush administration denying species protection or limiting the amount of protected habitat. The Center for Biological Diversity has sued to overturn Bush administration decisions covering 52 species, of which the administration has so far agreed to reconsider decisions over 25, including the grayling, Mexican garter snake and Gunnison sage grouse, northern spotted owl, California red-legged frog, California tiger salamander, arroyo toad, and others.

The common thinking is that the Bush Administration was acting to aid developers and corporate profits, but maybe there’s a simpler more direct explanation. It could be that they just didn’t like animals.

The plight of salmon in the Pacific Northwest and along the coast is well known, what hasn’t been quite as evident is what, if anything can be done about it. Restoring an historic salmon breeding ground certainly couldn’t hurt, and a possible agreement reached today regarding dams on Oregon’s Klamath River would be a big step in that direction.

Dams along the Klamath River that are blocking salmon could be removed by 2020, in an agreement announced Wednesday.

The 28 parties that have been negotiating the fate of the four Klamath River Dams released the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement. In coming weeks Klamath Basin Tribes, counties, conservation groups, fishing groups, and farming and ranching organizations will consider the pros and cons of the agreement and decide whether or not to support it.

That means there are still a large number of people who have to agree to pay for and do this, but the importance of salmon to the economies of the area would make you think that this is a move that pretty much everyone will support.

“Once we decided to stop fighting and start talking, we realized the opportunities provided by collaboration and coalition building,” said Jeff Mitchell, council member for the Klamath Tribes of Oregon. “We haven’t seen salmon in our country for 90 years; this agreement represents our best chance of finally bringing the salmon home to the Upper Basin.”

The fishermen I know are always looking for some clues to fish behavior that will give them an advantage in pursuing their favorite catch, so with that thought in mind here’s an interesting article on fish’s ability to detect other fish underwater.

For some time scientists have known that fish can detect tiny pressure changes underwater using tiny hair-like mast cells, but researchers have discovered that other cells, recessed in a series of pores, are sensitive to quick changes in pressure and can detect the swirls cast off by other fish. The incoming slight pressure gradations are combined to determine features of the source of the swirls.

J. Leo van Hemmen and his colleagues at the Technical University of Munich and at the Institute of Zoology in Berlin are the first to work out how fish sense the swirling wakes of other fish by measuring the tiny electrical signals triggered in the mast cells, signals that last typically for only a thousandth of a second. The fish-detection scheme works for both predators and their prey.

“Works for both predators and their prey.” Sounds to me like there’s a new-fangled fishing lure somewhere in those words.

What do bigeye tuna and loggerhead turtles have in common? Overfishing in the ocean is threatening each of them.

AUSTRALIA and 24 other Pacific nations will have to cut bigeye tuna fishing by up to 54 per cent to protect the species after a finding that the region had recorded its largest tuna fishing catch in history.

A meeting of the scientific committee of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission that concluded yesterday also found that conservation measures were not halting overfishing of tuna.

The western and central Pacific Ocean includes waters from Japan south to New Zealand and accounts for 54 per cent of all tuna eaten globally.

Scientists found that last year’s bigeye catch rose 6 per cent from the level in 2007, the second-largest rise in history. Researchers have attributed the jump to an 18 per cent increase in the price of bigeye tuna meat caused by global demand.

Bigeye tuna is listed as a vulnerable species on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources species red list and is mainly exported to Japan for sushi and sashimi.

Populations of loggerhead sea turtles on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts are at risk for extinction, according to a report this week by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Pacific loggerheads, which nest in Japan and migrate to Hawaii and the waters off California — and occasionally as far north as Oregon and Washington — are being decimated by coastal fisheries off Japan, Mexico and by longline fisheries in the deep seas.

One study estimates that 30,000 loggerheads were caught throughout the Pacific in 2000.

In the past, the world’s loggerhead population was lumped together and were considered threatened — but not endangered.

But the fisheries service report followed nine loggerhead populations distributed across the globe. Experts with the Loggerhead Biological Review Team studied each population and assessed its status.

Of the nine populations, only two — one in the Southwest Indian Ocean and the other in the South Atlantic Ocean — were not in immediate risk of extinction. The others, including populations in the North and South Pacific Ocean, were at risk of extinction.

Freshwater fishermen long ago recognized the need for limits and rules governing fishing that serve to sustain the populations of popular fish. There are regulations for ocean fishing, too, but enforcing them on the ocean is a much more difficult task. The limits will only work when fishermen themselves recognize the need and restrict their catches. If that doesn’t happen, tuna and turtles won’t be the only ocean species whose populations are threatened. That’s a pretty high price to pay so that people can eat sushi.

There are few things more mouth-watering than the smell of freshly-caught and cooked fish. Before you dig into the next big catch, though, you might want to consider this:

Scientists have detected mercury contamination in every one of hundreds of fish sampled from 291 freshwater streams, according to a U.S. government study released on Wednesday.

More than a quarter of those fish contained concentrations of mercury exceeding levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency for the protection of people who eat average amounts of fish, the U.S. Geological Survey report said.

More than two-thirds exceeded the EPA-set level of concern for fish-eating mammals.

The first thought that comes to mind is why are there two different standards, I always thought that people were also fish-eating mammals.

Bad snark aside, the next question that could be raised is where does all that mercury come from? The truth is we know where, it’s our old friend and polluter, the coal-burning energy plant.

The main source of atmospheric mercury, according to the EPA, is coal-fired power plants.

Time for anglers to take a stand against coal?

As far as I know, there is no real equivalent for this among American anglers.

She was, in her own way, one of the great celebrities of her age, a creature of such grace and physical perfection that admirers would come from hundreds of miles away just to catch a glimpse of her. Elusive, mysterious, no one ever knew when they would see her next, or how much she would weigh.

Now she is dead, and — just as with Diana, Princess of Wales, and Marilyn Monroe — a mythology has already started to build up around her passing. How did she die? Was she a victim of her own admirers? And just how old was she, Benson, the giant carp?

We do know that Benson was big, in every sense. She was, at 64lb 2oz (29kg), the biggest common carp in Britain, although mirror carp do come larger. She was also very popular: in 2005 readers of Angler’s Mail voted her Britain’s Favourite Carp.

Anglers would come from all over the country to her home lake in Cambridgeshire to catch her, weigh her, take her photograph and put her back again. Once a fishing party flew over from Germany just to try their luck. During her all-too-short life — she was said to be about 25, although carp can easily live twice as long — she was caught more than 60 times.

A fish that people knew by name and which was repeatedly caught and released over sixty times? Now that’s having a personal relationship with the object of your pursuit.

All the sadder then, that not only is Benson dead, there are some who suspect foul play.

But in their keenness to land the queen of the people’s carps, did some anglers go too far? Mr Bridgefoot said that a quantity of nuts — which can be used as bait, but can be fatal if not processed properly before use — was found on the banks of the old gravel pit that was home to Benson. “This looks like the work of some irresponsible anglers,” he said. “Large quantities of nuts have been found on the bank and in the margins; empty bags have also been found in the skips. It seems her demise was caused by the introduction of foods that are harmful to fish.”

The king salmon in Alaska are declining in numbers, and no one’s sure exactly why.

King salmon populations have been mysteriously declining and have resulted once more in emergency fishing closures. Federal and state fisheries biologists have observed that feeble numbers of fish returned to spawn to Alaska’s rivers this summer, further devastating local village economies.

According to biologists, Pacific Ocean current shifts have probably caused the shortage. Other possible causes are lower food availability, varying river conditions and predator-prey relationships, the Associated Press reports.

But people residing along the Yukon River blame the pollock fishery, the largest in the US. About 1 million tonnes of pollock are caught annually in the eastern Bering Sea, with a wholesale value of almost USD 1 billion.

When king salmon appear in the rivers to spawn they are already mature, having spent most of their livelihood in the Bering Sea. But they do not make it back if they become stuck in the massive pollock trawl nets, at which point most of the salmon die before being tossed back into the water.

It’s going to be very easy for people to blame rival fishermen for the salmon’s problems. If the real cause isn’t found and dealt with soon, this is the kind of situation that could get out of hand.

Since the start of Thinking Outside, pretty much all the news regarding fishing in the oceans has been bad. Over-fishing, poaching, and other factors seemed to be pointing to a major problem with the ocean’s supply of fish and seafood, from bluefin tuna to Chesapeake Bay oysters.

So it’s good to see an article pop up with the prognosis that since the crisis point two years ago, things have actually gotten a little better. Fishing pressure has eased off in some areas, enough to allow fish populations to recover.

There are times when it doesn’t seem possible, but we can change our behavior, we can find better ways to use resources. The world’s fisheries are still in danger, but at least there’s reason to believe we’re no longer pushing them all the way to collapsing, at least not right away.

Over fishing the oceans isn’t a problem that’s only related to tuna, it’s a world-wide crisis affecting pretty much every commercially fished species in the ocean. If a species isn’t over-fished yet, at the rate things are going, it soon will be.

That’s why more research is strongly needed on how to manage marine ecosystems, and a new study from the University of British Columbia suggests that where limits are placed on fishing matters at least as much as how severe those limits are.

A reduction of just five percent in fisheries catch could result in overfishing protection for one-third of British Columbia coastal ecosystems, finds new research from the University of British Columbia that has global importance for the protection of fish populations.

The study proposes modest catch reductions in areas where fisheries take place, rather than the current system of marine protected areas which only safeguard several commercially significant species, such as rockfish, shrimp, crab, or sea cucumber.

Using British Columbia’s coastal waters as a test case, the study affirms that small cuts in fishing – if they happen in the right places – could result in very large unfished areas.

The research paper can be found online at PLoS One.

Fish smarter.