“A lot of fun”: Yakama Nation biologists partner with college students to pull lamprey from drying canal’s mud

The triangle’s short side is a 100-foot bridge across the canal with large storm drain-style bars beneath it to prevent debris from clogging orchards’ irrigation systems downstream. The next side is the canal’s east bank, and the final side is a roughly 500-foot-long Bureau of Reclamation screen running diagonally across the water to stop young salmon from making it farther into the canal.

Dave’y Lumley is a biologist with the project. Standing on the canal’s bank above the group of biologists and future biologists as they grabbed lamprey from the sediment, she explained why so many fish end up there.

“The dam is upstream and it’s pushing all this water here, but these screens prevent larger fish from going down (farther into the canal) and also debris,” she said. “The sediment that’s in the water column is slowing down and getting deposited right here.”

This environment — slow-moving water passing over sediment that’s rich in organic material — is perfect for larval lamprey.

And that would be great if young lamprey could make it back to the main stem of the Yakima River to then swim down the Columbia into the Pacific Ocean for the next stage of their lives.

But that isn’t the case. Instead, with the region’s irrigation season nearly over, the patch of perfect habitat was just a few days from becoming a pile of dirt on the side of U.S. Route 97. As Lumley explained the lamprey rescue process, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation workers drove a small excavator that would soon dig out this part of the canal.

From the brink

Lamprey are native to the Columbia River, although they predate it by a couple hundred million years. In fact, the nutrient-rich fish helped ecologically engineer the river, supporting species like salmon.

Restoration efforts for lamprey began in the 2000s after renewed fish passage counts at Bonneville Dam found their returns had collapsed.

Before the dams, lamprey biologists estimate returns numbered in the millions. In the past 25 years, returns have ranged from 6,200 to 63,000, counted in the day at Bonneville Dam. (Daytime counts often capture about one fourth of the total returns.)

The Yakama Nation’s restoration program began around 2008, joining programs from other native nations, including the Nez Perce, Warm Springs and Umatilla tribes, as well as the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission. Federal partners like Bonneville Power Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fund much of the efforts and work on their own projects like dam upgrades.

And, in the years since it started, the Yakama Nation’s effort has succeeded, with lamprey returns to the Yakima sub-basin increasing fivefold between the 2000s to the 2010s. Following that success and others in sub-programs like its lamprey hatchery, the program recently expanded some efforts into Southwest Washington, The Columbian reported earlier this month.

An essential stopgap

While rescue work like last week’s is a crucial component of restoration, it’s only a stopgap measure, according to the Pacific Lamprey Project’s lead, Ralph Lampman.

“This is not a long-term solution — to just keep getting the fish out. We need that kind of long-term solution that prevents fish from getting in and also getting through the screens,” he said.

Because lamprey restoration is a relatively new field, much of what biologists do to reach those long-term goals is improvised by the team through a process of trial and error.

A former salmon biologist himself, Lampman estimates that knowledge of lamprey and how to restore them is about where salmon restoration was in the 1950s or ’60s. Yet, the crew seem to get energy from developing new technologies and methods that’s only further bolstered by their knowledge of the fish’s importance to the region’s native nations and ecology.

Hands in the mud

But until both funding and political will to update old infrastructure materialize, rescue efforts must continue — a reality that doesn’t seem to faze the team. Walking from the bank into the sometimes shin-deep sediment, Lumley talked about the work they’d put in at the site since they got there the previous week.

“We’ve had a group here, at least one or two ‘shockers’ here, every day since then,” she said. “The bank holds a lot of fish because that’s where a lot of good sediment is. (As the water drops) fish will come out and slowly wiggle their way down, but if it dries up too much, then they get stranded and will dry up — or get picked up by predators.”

The “shockers,” also known as electrofishers, are a fish surveying tool comprised of a “Ghostbusters”-esque backpack that sends small electrical pulses into the water through two lacrosse stick-like probes. Those pulses tease young lamprey out from the sediment allowing researchers to catch them.

Off in the far corner of the triangle, Lampman guided two Heritage University environmental studies majors. One handled the electrofisher for the first time while the other spotted the fish and carried an Ikea laundry hamper to hold them.

“Over here on the bank — there’s two,” 23-year-old Heritage student Kyal Shoulderblade said. Lampman dove forward into the mud with 29-year-old Zachary Minthorn close behind with the hamper.

The day’s work was a mandatory lab for the Heritage students. But both said the lab was their favorite of the year so far.

“Here, I’m like, ‘Oh, man, we’re done already? We gotta leave? Alright.’ That’s how I feel about fisheries lab as a whole so far,” Minthorn said. “It’s just been the most hands on, most fun for me.”

Education for the future

That passion was visible in the students’ work. The focused trio — Shoulderblade on the “shockers,” Minthorn as spotter, and Lampman teaching and lunging — covered about one third of the triangle alone that day.

Both Minthorn and Shoulderblade are members of the Yakama Nation who grew up on the reservation. While he’s most interested in the forestry side of environmental studies, Minthorn said it’s important for enrolled members to learn about traditional foods like lamprey.

“I made a joke earlier where I said, ‘Just like my ancestors,’ but that’s really how I feel whenever I’m hunting or fishing or doing anything like this,” he said. “Being able to do something like this to bring that stuff back so that other people can get to experience lamprey or salmon, or anything like that, is really important to me.”

Shoulderblade echoed his classmate, adding that it’s all about “what we can do to help the environment and not just the species.”

Back above the canal, students crowded around a table covered with vials, lamprey models and other items.

“Here’s another one. These ones are eggs,” Lumley said, holding up a small vial. Next, she showed lamprey oil supplement pills Lampman bought in Japan, then a long thin vial with a lamprey “notochord,” its ancient equivalent of a backbone.

The partnership between the private, nonprofit Heritage University in Toppenish and the Yakama Nation’s restoration project has been underway for two years, but it isn’t the only partnership the Pacific Lamprey Project runs. It also works with a number of other schools including some high schools, Lampman said.

Recently, one of the students he’d worked with at a nearby high school reached back out to him, now a student at the University of Washington.

“She wanted to do a lamprey project,” he said. “It’s good to see some of these students pursuing fisheries and doing what we do — even doesn’t have to be lamprey, but fisheries in general.”