'The Fish Condominium'
This post was going to be about local food production and consumption. We have been hearing almost every day how the big corporations, with the help of the FDA, are compromising our health through genetically modified foods, deceitful labeling, dead food, and junk science. But that's a big subject and needs tackling a bit at a time. Which bit I should elaborate on first is still a mystery to me. So in the meantime, here's something you can really sink your teeth into - a simple way to increase the supply of healthy food. Namely, more salmon.
Go to this web site and watch this couple minute video. You'll be glad you did. In this day of bad news on top of lousy news, it's really uplifting to see someone with such a simple, commonsense solution to a real thorny problem. The problem being, how to rebuild the salmon runs back up to where the whole ecosystem is running on all cylinders. And that takes good runs, not just measley runs that some would have us believe is just all that can be expected.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Game talked the Rogue Advisory Committee into voting to accept a puny expectation of 50,000 fall run kings, when they really wanted to vote to accept an expectation of 100,000 kings. And privately, one state biologist said the Rogue could be supporting runs of 300,000 kings. I think he was talking about spring and fall runs.
But you gotta wonder how many fish the Rogue sustained in the past when Hume built his salmon cannery at the mouth of the Rogue at Gold Beach. They did have the ability in those days to stretch a seine clear across the river by the cannery and pull the fish over to shore. On a much smaller river in Alaska in the same time frame, late 1800s, just one such set yielded 100,000 fish. And when the gold dredge was placed in the Rogue, it is said that 'the river ran red for a year.' You're talking some serious churning up of salmon and steelhead there. Eventually some riders rode their horses to Salem and got a stop to the slaughter. I suspect that a dredge in there now would be hard pressed to get one king salmon.
Remember that when Captain Cook tried to sail into the Amur River in Siberia for the first time, they "were stopped by a shoal of salmon." And when they first started fishing cod in Eastern Canada(which was several hundred years before Columbus) you might not be able to row to shore for the density of the schools of cod.
But if you buy into settling for farm raised salmon, which the FDA wants to allow to be genetically modified and not even marked as such, then maybe this simple device for improving our food supply won't interest you. I know the video will ring true with your charitable side though, so enjoy.
This post was going to be about local food production and consumption. We have been hearing almost every day how the big corporations, with the help of the FDA, are compromising our health through genetically modified foods, deceitful labeling, dead food, and junk science. But that's a big subject and needs tackling a bit at a time. Which bit I should elaborate on first is still a mystery to me. So in the meantime, here's something you can really sink your teeth into - a simple way to increase the supply of healthy food. Namely, more salmon.
Go to this web site and watch this couple minute video. You'll be glad you did. In this day of bad news on top of lousy news, it's really uplifting to see someone with such a simple, commonsense solution to a real thorny problem. The problem being, how to rebuild the salmon runs back up to where the whole ecosystem is running on all cylinders. And that takes good runs, not just measley runs that some would have us believe is just all that can be expected.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Game talked the Rogue Advisory Committee into voting to accept a puny expectation of 50,000 fall run kings, when they really wanted to vote to accept an expectation of 100,000 kings. And privately, one state biologist said the Rogue could be supporting runs of 300,000 kings. I think he was talking about spring and fall runs.
But you gotta wonder how many fish the Rogue sustained in the past when Hume built his salmon cannery at the mouth of the Rogue at Gold Beach. They did have the ability in those days to stretch a seine clear across the river by the cannery and pull the fish over to shore. On a much smaller river in Alaska in the same time frame, late 1800s, just one such set yielded 100,000 fish. And when the gold dredge was placed in the Rogue, it is said that 'the river ran red for a year.' You're talking some serious churning up of salmon and steelhead there. Eventually some riders rode their horses to Salem and got a stop to the slaughter. I suspect that a dredge in there now would be hard pressed to get one king salmon.
Remember that when Captain Cook tried to sail into the Amur River in Siberia for the first time, they "were stopped by a shoal of salmon." And when they first started fishing cod in Eastern Canada(which was several hundred years before Columbus) you might not be able to row to shore for the density of the schools of cod.
But if you buy into settling for farm raised salmon, which the FDA wants to allow to be genetically modified and not even marked as such, then maybe this simple device for improving our food supply won't interest you. I know the video will ring true with your charitable side though, so enjoy.
posted by Alaskacafe at 6:36 PM
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