The 1990s crash of the Columbia River smelt population is nothing new, according to Wahkiakum County historian Irene Martin.?
The river’s smelt runs have been a yo-yo on a string since the 1800s, she writes in an article published in the December issue of the Cowlitz Historical Quarterly.
?”Both prehistoric and historic evidence indicates that eulachon run sizes have fluctuated dramatically over the years,” she writes.?
In an interview, Martin said she pointed out the historical fluctuations to federal fisheries biologists in a detailed report when they were considering listing smelt on the Endangered Species Act, but the fish made it on the list anyway.?
“I spent time talking to them,” she said. “The end result is it just didn’t change their minds about a listing. In essence, what they did is overreach.”?
Martin has a deep base of knowledge in both local history and fish.
She’s the author of several books, including a history of Wahkiakum County and of Columbia River gillnetters.
Martin’s husband, Kent, is a commercial fisherman and the two are active in fishery politics.?
Martin’s article starts with prehistorical accounts.
A Chinook tribal story tells of how Indians faced starvation one winter because of the absence of smelt.?
Historical documents indicate a period of smelt abundance into the 1830s, followed by times of scarcity in the 1850s.
Canadian explorer Alexander Anderson wrote that smelt disappeared from the Columbia around 1837 and were absent most of time until 1876.?
John Keast Lord, a veterinarian and naturalist who visited the area from 1858 to 1862, surmised that paddle wheels on steamers were the reason for the demise of smelt.?
“Present-day science hasn’t provided much in the way of explanation either,” Martin writes.?
But, paddle wheelers or not, the smelt returned in the 1860s.?
Kelso pioneer Peter Crawford noted that smelt reappeared in 1865.
Indians told him the fish “had absented themselves for seventeen years during which period no Indian had seen a school,” Crawford wrote.
Observations by Edwin Huntington and William McCorkle, other early Kelso pioneers, confirmed the reappearance of smelt.?
In the late 1800s, records show that smelt returned most years, but not always to the same place.
Sometimes they’d swim up the Cowlitz; others years they’d favor the Lewis or the Sandy rivers.?
Martin points out that the fluctuations in the smelt run in the 1800s can’t be blamed on dams, pollution or overfishing.
“It seems reasonable to assume that natural events caused this significant disappearance of the Columbia River eulachon during this period,” she writes.
Indeed, Mount St. Helens was active several times in the 1840s and 1850s, not to mention its major eruption in 1980.?
However, Martin believes that changes in ocean conditions affect smelt more than volcanic eruptions do.
(This is borne out by biologists, who point out that smelt declined in recent years in more rivers than the Cowlitz and Columbia.)?
Martin examines the recent history of smelt, too.
They were listed under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2010 — but in 2013 and 2014, big runs entered the Columbia and its tributaries again.?
“Now we’ve had gargantuan runs coming back,” she said. “What a surprise.”?
“You can’t say if they’re on a downswing or if they’re in danger of extinction,” she said. “It could be a natural part of their cycle. Probably (the National Marine Fisheries Service) jumped too soon. I would have left it for a couple more years.”?
Regardless of whether they’re ESA-listed, something in smelt’s favor is their “ability to bounce back from adversity,” Martin writes.?
She calls for more research on a species that biologists acknowledge has been studied little until recent years.
Martin said studying the effect of ocean currents will be more useful than trying to estimate the smelt run size based on larval samples, the focus of current research in rivers.??
