King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon

I read Mr. Montgomery's other book on dirt and so picked this gem up at the local library. I'm a sport fisherman in the PNW and so I care deeply about salmon and I recognize that as a fisherman I am part of the problem and as a homeowner I'm again part of the habitat degradation just by the mere fact I live here. So I am interested in ways that I can mitigate my impact and improve salmon runs. Well after reading this book I'm very depressed. It looks bad for the fish and it doesn't seem like the measures we are doing are anywhere near enough. On the book, it's a bit dry being a history of fish book, but that salmon are over a million years old was something I didn't know. That salmon used to be all through out Europe and that the Dutch are to blame for being greedy with the open ocean fishing while others tried to restore their runs. It's all being played out again here in the PNW. That salmon are like weeds and will repopulate a river given any chance at all gives me hope but we are so destroying their habitat with endless strip malls, levees, and housing on flood plains. Maybe after the floods of 2008/9 people will finally understand that the word "flood plain" is descriptive of what happens and won't build there. Anyway if you are a sport fisherman and want to argue about the treaties with the tribes, there is a good explanation of who granted who rights to fish, and where the fish went from that deal. And if you are a school teacher and want to set up some habitat, or hatchery there is some information there as well. My only quibble with the book is that there are allegations that escaped Atlantic salmon from fish pens are breeding and will take over the native streams is misfounded. Atlantic salmon were introduced over 4 times in the PNW by people who wanted this to happen and it was always a failure. For whatever reason Atlantic salmon fry don't mange to come back. But that's a small point and Mr. Montgomery is a geo-morphologist not a fishery biologist. Still it's very interesting reading.

I can only add to what the three previous reviewers have said in praise of this book. I make my living through irrigated agriculture, and so am intimately involved in the myriad of issues surrounding the survival of these incredible creatures. Dr. Montgomery's book is a good introduction to basic salmonid biology (a topic most of the public, including "activists" are shockingly ignorant of), is blessedly free from jargon and acronyms, and recounts the sad history of our interactions with this fish without didactic and self-righteous screaming.

Dr. Montgomery shows that if the toxic and human waste poured into the rivers of the industrial revolution did not poison Salmon, the incipient capitalist institution of commercial fishing would swallow most of them.. Montgomery quotes records from the holder of fishing rights on a specific part of the Thames river. The records of this particular holder shows he caught 66 salmon in 1801, 18 in 1812 and only 2 in 1821....by the 1960's, the annual salmon catch of England and Wales was a quarter of that a century earlier. He quotes an account of MP Robert Wallace about parliament blocking effective salmon protection laws at the behest of the commercial fishing industry, dam operators, etc. He quotes accounts from the early 19th century including from Henry David Thoreau about the severe depletion of salmon stocks in Northeast U.S. rivers caused by the disruption of salmon spawning beds by the transportion of boats and logs down the river, dams, factory poisons and so on. Salmon stocks continued to decline to near extinction in Eastern U.S. waters. The Danish government agreed to ban its fisherman from engaging in their highly destructive open ocean fishing off the coast of Greenland, where salmon from Britain, the U.S, and Canada often converge for their sojourns in the Ocean, in 1972. However Danes continued to fish heavily near the Greenland shore, and used vessels under other nation's flags to circumvent their salmon catch quota under the 1972 agreement. Montgomery shows how salmon have been sacrificed since the Great Depression in favor of the dams which have provided water and electricity in the Eastern Pacific Northwest from the Snake and Colombia Rivers. In 1937, U.S. fisheries commissioner Franklin Bell let it be known that he wasn't going to strain himself too much on behalf of the Salmon. "Aside from blind restriction" of commercial fishing, he explained, "the protection of individual runs menaced by virtual extinction must be left to chance." Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest thrived on salmon for subsistence, and to preserve the run, would commonly allow half of the run to pass through its nets. But with the coming of commercial fishing dominated by whites, Indian livelihood was wiped out. They could not compete in commercial fishing, lacking the wealth to purchase the sophisticated boats and nets increasingly becoming common. Indians became a racist scapegoat for the depletion of salmon stocks. He notes He notes though that state records that the entire Indian fishing catch from 1935 to 1950 was less than the total commercial catch during a typical year. Washington State had always claimed that on traditional Indian fishing grounds based on treaties made regarding Colombian basin rivers in the 1850's, Indians merely had the same rights as whites to exploit salmon. But in 1970, federal district court judge George Boldt ruled that the treaties actually reserved for Indians half of the annual salmon supply

Montgomery's book is centered on the notion that we are failing to learn from history when it comes to the Pacific salmon crisis. In England, eastern North America, and now the Pacific Northwest, human actions that inevitably destroy the "king of fish" have been repeated. Overfishing, blocking salmon from their spawning habitat, and causing the deterioration of habitat quality through pollution, land clearing, and simplification of the river are the culprits. Montgomery also tells why hatcheries are not the solution and never have been. He closes with a clear and, to me, indisputable analysis of what we must do to preserve and recover this most amazing of creatures. The book is quite accessible to a layperson; you don't need a scientific background, or even any knowledge of the problems facing Pacific salmon, in order to enjoy and learn from the book.