Sayonara, Gold Rey Dam. It's been nice knowing you, but you haven't been kind to us. Maybe you haven't been for decades, since you quit making electricity. Now you have a chance to redeem yourself by creating fifty jobs to end your reign of obstructionism. A real win-win situation.
I'm sure happy to see that last barrier to fish passage go on the Rogue River. Except the Lost Creek Dam higher up. But that one is very useful and nobody wants it out. But Gold Rey has just been beating up returning adult king salmon, coho, and steelhead, and making it taxing and risky for out-migrating juveniles.
The project is one of fifty chosen by the Obama Administration, out of a pool of 814 proposed marine related restoration projects. The vetting process was ferocious: "More than 200 technical reviewers from across NOAA worked in groups to review all the applications and the top 109 were chosen for panel review." Oregon's Congressional delegation is thrilled with the prospect as is at least one County Commissioner that got interviewed in the Medford Mail Tribune.
More jobs, more recreation, and more fish. The dam is above where gold mining was going on in the early days around here, so the sediment wouldn't have that problem either. Nevertheless, the County Parks and Recreation staffer cautions that there are some who don't want it to go; like a couple of people could hold up the whole thing and miss the window of opportunity?
The only public access is through the private property of the one guy who has a house on the impoundment. And he limits access to a certain few. I bicycle out there all the time and I only see a boat on the water once in a while. I have seen boats run down the river from a vantage point on top of the Lower Table Rock mountain and and seen them turn around at the impoundment. The drift boats don't even try. Those are the guys who will be flooding down the river with a free flowing Rogue. Along with kayakers, rafters, tubers and anything else that floats.
Every time I see an article about the dam coming out, the Parks and Rec guy is throwing a wet blanket on it. What is this guy's problem? Unless someone has been dumping heavy metals en mass in the river that none of us are aware of except him.
What else is new around here? I went bottom fishing a couple of days out of Brookings, in the Bannana Belt of the Southern Oregon coast. The bottom fishing was great, and after the first day, our fishing buddies on another boat shared their secret to success with us. Artificial bait from Berkley. Or was it the last couple of hours of the last day they shared some of their bait? The guide who took my son and other Veterans fishing out of Newport used belly bait, and they did real good.
It's a good fruit year by all indications in the Rogue Valley. My grape vine is going nuts, and so were the birds until I threw a net over it. The tweety birds in our bird house had just flown the coup and it appeared they invited all the neighbors for dinner, using my grapes as the main course. Talk about gratitude toward the landlord. We had a stuffed zucchini last nite for dinner, compliments of my garden.
The monsoons seem to be over, so the dishwashers at McDonalds can breath a sigh of relief that they won't get electrocuted again. We're going into the hot part of the year, where if you need to do roof work like I did yesterday, you need to get going on it at 6:00 am, not 11:00 am. Take my word for it. It was 100 degrees when I went out for parts, according to the car thermometer. Reminds me of working on the Kibbutz in Israel; the Kibbutzniks started work at 4:15 and knocked off at 11:00.
Oh, and the Hatchbox Bill that Senator Jason Atkinson introduced, and we in the CCA promoted, got through the process. Growing fingerlings in sunken plastic boxes was in wide use 15 years ago, but Fish and Wildlife pulled the plug on the program. Back by popular demand, ODFW is willing to experiment with them around the Rogue Valley. This would be a pilot project for the whole state. There are around 5,000 miles of former salmon habitat in Oregon that this program could be used in if successful.
ODFW isn't keen on the idea of every fifth grade class in the state just plopping one in their favorite creek to see what happens. That was the problem before, not much oversight, mixed results, and who knows what all happened in the woods out of sight of the Principal.
And the announcement is out now, that we are going to hold our first annual Rogue Valley Chapter, Coastal Conservation Association, banquet on September 25. It will be at the Red Lion Motel in Medford at 5:30 PM and the public is invited, encouraged, welcome, and urged to come and have a bunch of fun and support the fish. We have about 80 members here now in just over a year of existence and sure could use more help, even with just membership dues. However the organization has been around in other places for 37 years, restoring fish runs and having a blast in general.
Anything else of note? The economy here sucks. We're afraid to check if we are upside down on our mortgage. No jobs. I met a truck farmer in Rusch at his roadside vegetable garden and retail stand who knows his stuff. He started farming at nine years old behind two mules. He was looking for a hand-crank ice cream maker that he could use to make and sell good homemade ice cream with on the Fourth of July. I, for one, will be going up there to collect interest on the loan of a hand-cranker I found at an antique store for him and his son. Actually, I gave it to his son to work on the fundamentals of entrepreneurship with. I'll get my eight bucks back in fresh veggies from his dad, I'm promised.
Just fuggetabat looking for a job; there aren't any. This is where entrepreneurship shines and ushers in a whole new array of products and services adapted to the times. This farmer I mentioned is being swamped with offers from landowners to farm their land. I won't get into all the reasons why, but suffice to say that there are more jobs in this field (no pun intended) than available people to do the work. It may not seem like sexy work, but it's honest work and it pays. What's wrong with that? Besides, you develop a rapport for what you do after awhile, no matter what you feel about it going in.
In fact, you could feed certain crops, in a particular blend, to fish in tanks with closed systems, in a warehouse. A professor at the University of Mass. has been doing just that, and now is planning to produce 200 tons of fish a year. That's the best way to value-add a crop. Tilapia have been raised on potato skins in Idaho for a long time now. One farmer in the Willamette valley I talked to was trying to think of a way to raise fish or shrimp on his land about four years ago. This closed system approach is totally green agriculture and reduces the destruction of the marine flora and fauna complex.
With ocean acidification and no end in sight to trawling, our seafood supply is in serious trouble. Investors just don't know enough about the seafood realm to get them to jump in this pool at the moment. Factory trawlers seemed to be a good investment, but little did the investors know, (or care?) that the boats would be eating themselves out of house and home. Not so, filtered, closed system, aquaculture on land, using plant proteins in their food, instead of just other fish.
There is one other thing, and that is, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council just voted to issue IFQs to about 120 trawlers. Well, with Trident and Pacific Seafoods connected by marriage now, I suppose the 800 pound gorilla gets whatever he wants. After they voted to give themselves the fish, this Council of experts, (read that fish company lobbyists) will be holding the Coast Guard's feet to the fire to run the rest of us off the ocean. Just like they did in Alaska with the halibut charter guys.
Richard Gaines has been covering the 'catch share' issue at GloucesterTimes.com/fishing. The media over here has shied away from this giant give-away of public resources. It's like the Old West all over again: divvying up the resources among the club members just because they can. (The Inspector General's Office did call it a club in essence.) At this rate, Oregonians will never be able to keep the bigger rock fish, find plentiful halibut, stop the by-catch and waste of thousands of king salmon a year. Not to mention trawlers extinguish 30% of the species complex on the bottom: the food for everything.
These trawlers really can say with all honesty that they don't fish down the food chain as they have been accused of. They actually fish the whole food chain at once, with nets with a maw as big as a football field. The only thing that gets through the nets alive is the krill, the food for whales, salmon, etc, but they tried to get a fishery going on them too.
I'm sure happy to see that last barrier to fish passage go on the Rogue River. Except the Lost Creek Dam higher up. But that one is very useful and nobody wants it out. But Gold Rey has just been beating up returning adult king salmon, coho, and steelhead, and making it taxing and risky for out-migrating juveniles.
The project is one of fifty chosen by the Obama Administration, out of a pool of 814 proposed marine related restoration projects. The vetting process was ferocious: "More than 200 technical reviewers from across NOAA worked in groups to review all the applications and the top 109 were chosen for panel review." Oregon's Congressional delegation is thrilled with the prospect as is at least one County Commissioner that got interviewed in the Medford Mail Tribune.
More jobs, more recreation, and more fish. The dam is above where gold mining was going on in the early days around here, so the sediment wouldn't have that problem either. Nevertheless, the County Parks and Recreation staffer cautions that there are some who don't want it to go; like a couple of people could hold up the whole thing and miss the window of opportunity?
The only public access is through the private property of the one guy who has a house on the impoundment. And he limits access to a certain few. I bicycle out there all the time and I only see a boat on the water once in a while. I have seen boats run down the river from a vantage point on top of the Lower Table Rock mountain and and seen them turn around at the impoundment. The drift boats don't even try. Those are the guys who will be flooding down the river with a free flowing Rogue. Along with kayakers, rafters, tubers and anything else that floats.
Every time I see an article about the dam coming out, the Parks and Rec guy is throwing a wet blanket on it. What is this guy's problem? Unless someone has been dumping heavy metals en mass in the river that none of us are aware of except him.
What else is new around here? I went bottom fishing a couple of days out of Brookings, in the Bannana Belt of the Southern Oregon coast. The bottom fishing was great, and after the first day, our fishing buddies on another boat shared their secret to success with us. Artificial bait from Berkley. Or was it the last couple of hours of the last day they shared some of their bait? The guide who took my son and other Veterans fishing out of Newport used belly bait, and they did real good.
It's a good fruit year by all indications in the Rogue Valley. My grape vine is going nuts, and so were the birds until I threw a net over it. The tweety birds in our bird house had just flown the coup and it appeared they invited all the neighbors for dinner, using my grapes as the main course. Talk about gratitude toward the landlord. We had a stuffed zucchini last nite for dinner, compliments of my garden.
The monsoons seem to be over, so the dishwashers at McDonalds can breath a sigh of relief that they won't get electrocuted again. We're going into the hot part of the year, where if you need to do roof work like I did yesterday, you need to get going on it at 6:00 am, not 11:00 am. Take my word for it. It was 100 degrees when I went out for parts, according to the car thermometer. Reminds me of working on the Kibbutz in Israel; the Kibbutzniks started work at 4:15 and knocked off at 11:00.
Oh, and the Hatchbox Bill that Senator Jason Atkinson introduced, and we in the CCA promoted, got through the process. Growing fingerlings in sunken plastic boxes was in wide use 15 years ago, but Fish and Wildlife pulled the plug on the program. Back by popular demand, ODFW is willing to experiment with them around the Rogue Valley. This would be a pilot project for the whole state. There are around 5,000 miles of former salmon habitat in Oregon that this program could be used in if successful.
ODFW isn't keen on the idea of every fifth grade class in the state just plopping one in their favorite creek to see what happens. That was the problem before, not much oversight, mixed results, and who knows what all happened in the woods out of sight of the Principal.
And the announcement is out now, that we are going to hold our first annual Rogue Valley Chapter, Coastal Conservation Association, banquet on September 25. It will be at the Red Lion Motel in Medford at 5:30 PM and the public is invited, encouraged, welcome, and urged to come and have a bunch of fun and support the fish. We have about 80 members here now in just over a year of existence and sure could use more help, even with just membership dues. However the organization has been around in other places for 37 years, restoring fish runs and having a blast in general.
Anything else of note? The economy here sucks. We're afraid to check if we are upside down on our mortgage. No jobs. I met a truck farmer in Rusch at his roadside vegetable garden and retail stand who knows his stuff. He started farming at nine years old behind two mules. He was looking for a hand-crank ice cream maker that he could use to make and sell good homemade ice cream with on the Fourth of July. I, for one, will be going up there to collect interest on the loan of a hand-cranker I found at an antique store for him and his son. Actually, I gave it to his son to work on the fundamentals of entrepreneurship with. I'll get my eight bucks back in fresh veggies from his dad, I'm promised.
Just fuggetabat looking for a job; there aren't any. This is where entrepreneurship shines and ushers in a whole new array of products and services adapted to the times. This farmer I mentioned is being swamped with offers from landowners to farm their land. I won't get into all the reasons why, but suffice to say that there are more jobs in this field (no pun intended) than available people to do the work. It may not seem like sexy work, but it's honest work and it pays. What's wrong with that? Besides, you develop a rapport for what you do after awhile, no matter what you feel about it going in.
In fact, you could feed certain crops, in a particular blend, to fish in tanks with closed systems, in a warehouse. A professor at the University of Mass. has been doing just that, and now is planning to produce 200 tons of fish a year. That's the best way to value-add a crop. Tilapia have been raised on potato skins in Idaho for a long time now. One farmer in the Willamette valley I talked to was trying to think of a way to raise fish or shrimp on his land about four years ago. This closed system approach is totally green agriculture and reduces the destruction of the marine flora and fauna complex.
With ocean acidification and no end in sight to trawling, our seafood supply is in serious trouble. Investors just don't know enough about the seafood realm to get them to jump in this pool at the moment. Factory trawlers seemed to be a good investment, but little did the investors know, (or care?) that the boats would be eating themselves out of house and home. Not so, filtered, closed system, aquaculture on land, using plant proteins in their food, instead of just other fish.
There is one other thing, and that is, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council just voted to issue IFQs to about 120 trawlers. Well, with Trident and Pacific Seafoods connected by marriage now, I suppose the 800 pound gorilla gets whatever he wants. After they voted to give themselves the fish, this Council of experts, (read that fish company lobbyists) will be holding the Coast Guard's feet to the fire to run the rest of us off the ocean. Just like they did in Alaska with the halibut charter guys.
Richard Gaines has been covering the 'catch share' issue at GloucesterTimes.com/fishing. The media over here has shied away from this giant give-away of public resources. It's like the Old West all over again: divvying up the resources among the club members just because they can. (The Inspector General's Office did call it a club in essence.) At this rate, Oregonians will never be able to keep the bigger rock fish, find plentiful halibut, stop the by-catch and waste of thousands of king salmon a year. Not to mention trawlers extinguish 30% of the species complex on the bottom: the food for everything.
These trawlers really can say with all honesty that they don't fish down the food chain as they have been accused of. They actually fish the whole food chain at once, with nets with a maw as big as a football field. The only thing that gets through the nets alive is the krill, the food for whales, salmon, etc, but they tried to get a fishery going on them too.
posted by Alaskacafe at 10:45 PM
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