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Humans typically adopt
a command-and-control approach

to environmental problem
solving.

"Here's the problem.
We can engineer a way around
it."

Technology is great in so many
realms
of human experience.

But when you try to apply

manipulation and control of
ecosystems
through technology,

you're often successful early
on, but then problems creep in
later on.

One of the things that
our modern society has done

is to industrialize
all the living things around us.

We have factories for living
things.

And that includes fish.

Humans believe everything is for
us, so if there are animals in
the world,

surely they are for us
and surely we should just do

anything we want with them or to
them, and isn't that great?

Well, I don't quite see it that
way.

Fish are wild animal
populations.

They're not made to, or evolved
to, or really capable of

being used at the rate
that people use them.

The old myth of the
Garden of Eden

is a place where everything was
granted
and everything was beautiful.

And then, because of human
hubris,

we were doomed to a life of
toil.

We are certainly casting
ourselves out of the garden

and dooming ourselves
to a life of toil

through our hubris.

This is a king salmon,
but we refer to them as chinook
salmon,

which is their more formal name.

The bath here which has carbon
dioxide,

it anesthetizes the fish
and knocks them out.

The guys are pulling the fish
out

if they're ripe
and they're chinook salmon.

And we spawn the fish by
inserting
a needle into their body cavity

which forces air in
and pushes all the eggs out.

And then, after the fish
have spawned here,

they go over to the other side
of the table there,

and we're biologically sampling
the fish.

Would you like to touch one?

Feels kind of slimy.

Coleman National Fish Hatchery
is a mitigation hatchery.

We're here because of Shasta Dam
being built in 1942.

So the purpose of
Coleman National Fish Hatchery

is to mitigate for the loss of
habitat
due to Shasta Dam.

The creation of the dam
prevented about 180 miles
of river access

for the salmon,
so here at Coleman National Fish
Hatchery,

we raise fall chinook salmon,
late fall chinook salmon and
steelhead.

Our production goal here is 12
million,
so we release 12 million,

and we're trying to get
a one-percent return.

We would like 120,000 fish
return.

Ninety thousand of that will be
caught
in the ocean

and in river sport fishery,

20,000 back to the hatchery,
and then 10,000 back to Battle
Creek.

Why do we need hatcheries?

Well, I think, you know,
population's going up,

water's, you know, a concern,

and so if you still would like
to see salmon,

I think you're going to need to
have hatcheries, unfortunately.

It would be nice to think
that there would be enough water

and environment
to support salmon populations,

but without hatcheries,
I don't think that would be a
reality.

This is the Baker River
Dam, 265 feet high,

which stops millions of
salmon
from returning to their
spawning grounds

above the dam without
help,

so the United States Bureau
of Fisheries
has stepped in and saved the
day

by providing a free ride
upstream.

It's the only way the salmon
can be saved

from dashing themselves to
pieces against the
stonework far below.

Humans have always
thought themselves

as superior to nature, you know.

It's got us into a lot of
trouble.

When the Euromericans came,

they believed the natural world
was a big warehouse

storing commodities that they
were
obliged to make use of, to take.

They asked Spencer Baird,
the U.S. Fish Commissioner,

what could they do to
ensure that the salmon runs
would go on forever?

Baird told them, "You're not
going to be able
to protect the habitat

through regulations because
they'd be unenforceable.

You're not going to be able
to protect them from dams,

because progress is going to
demand that dams be built."

And so he said, "What you need
to do is take up artificial
propagation."

The people that originally were
the fish-and-wildlife scientists
weren't.

They were agriculturists.

And since the 1800s,
our fish-and-wildlife agencies

have been dominated
by an agricultural mentality.

Just like a farm, you raise
them, you put them out, you
harvest them.

That's the basis for
fish-and-wildlife
management in the U.S.

for ages and ages.

The fact is salmon must spend
part of their life out in the
wild.

And it wasn't until, in the
seventies, that we really
started evaluating

what are we doing when we
release hatchery fish into a
stream?

The use of hatcheries was a
promise that you could have
salmon

and you could also have the
benefits
of developing the river.

Put that next to the fact

that 40% of the salmon are
extinct
in their historic range

and the rest are protected
by the Endangered Species Act,

you would have to say that that
story

didn't protect the things
that we value, the salmon.

We've been relying
on those same runs of fish,

those wild fish,
since the beginning of time.

When your health is their
health, right,
you're married in that way,

and I think that union
creates the sacredness.

To have that relationship
with a single species is real
special.

You think about the Sioux people
and the buffalo back in the day

before everything was colonized.

But that relationship,
unfortunately, was severed.

If we let these runs go,
then they are gone,

and I do not think that we,
as people who are on this planet
now,

should be OK with allowing
salmon to go extinct on our
watch.

The average person,
when they see a salmon,

they see a salmon,
they see a finished product.

And it's perhaps at the end
of their fishing line,

perhaps in a restaurant on their
plate,

but they don't see
the complexity of things

that went into
making that salmon.

Salmon, I think,
have the most complicated,

you could also say wondrous
life histories of, I guess, any
fish.

They start life by hatching
from eggs in a stream.

And then they go out to the
ocean.

When they come back,
they're much, much bigger.

You're distilling
the richness of the ocean

and enlivening it.

And then that enlivened
distillation
of the ocean propels itself

upstream against gravity.

Sometimes they go well over
a thousand miles inland,

where, after laying eggs and
creating the potential for a new
generation,

they die.

And their carcasses feed
dozens of kinds of animals,

get dragged deep into the woods.

The life cycle of the salmon is
actually
the transformation of the ocean

into living beings that come
ashore

and become the biggest trees
in the world.

Wild salmon represent something
that is really important

to us as human beings.

You have Native American
cultures here

that have evolved with the fish
for 11,000 years.

You have, you know,
families like mine

that fish for salmon
and eat salmon

and think about salmon.

And then I think because this is
the age of human impact,

that where there are wild
salmon,

I think it represents our faith
in Mother Nature

that we allowed that to happen.

I was born to fish.

All of my earliest memories
revolve around fish in some way
or another.

As a young adult,
I built my whole calendar year

around the Skykomish spring
fishery
for wild steelhead.

And that really became my
obsession.

I thought of hatcheries as
something that actually kind of
helped us as fishermen,

that there would be more fish in
the river

and we were allowed to kill
the hatchery fish, so that meant
a meal.

I don't think I ever had one
second where I thought about
conservation at all.

I thought about getting enough
money for gas and pizza

so that I could fish all the
time.

What I didn't realize was that
we were
really at the tail end

of a long decline of wild fish.

In late 2000, they announced
that the 2001 season would not
happen,

that the state was going to
close down that spring
catch-and-release fishery

because there were so few
wild steelhead fish

that even a low-impact fishing
season could wipe out the last
of them.

It was really like a gut punch.

I mean, I had built this whole
life around this fishery and now
it's gone.

So that was, in a lot of ways,
a wakeup call.

I started doing some research,
started reading,

started talking to people.

Talked to biologists,
talked to fish managers,

talked to other fishermen,
and I learned about the four
H's:

hydro, harvest, habitat, and
hatcheries.

This was sort of kind of the
impacts on salmon and steelhead
people talked about.

And so I used that as a
guideline and I started thinking
about the Skykomish,

and, you know, well, the habitat
hadn't really changed over those
ten years,

it was pretty good.

There is no hydro, there's no
dams.

The harvest, as far as I could
tell, had remained relatively
constant,

and yet we had
this plummeting number of fish.

And so the one constant that I
found

is that a hatchery had been
operating

for the entire duration of the
decline of wild steelhead.

I think that was what started
kind of my focus on learning
more

about the role that hatcheries
play in the decline of...

not just fishing opportunities
but of wild fish populations,
period.

When the dams came down
on the Elwha,

it was the largest river
restoration in history.

We spent more than $320 million
to recover wild salmon.

But instead of letting them
recolonize the river naturally,

the way they've evolved to do
for millions of years,

we spent $17 million
to build a brand-new hatchery.

So now we're operating not just
one but two hatcheries

on a river that was restored
for the benefit of wild salmon.

And we missed this huge
opportunity
to allow the river to return

to being truly wild.

Coho 92-88. No mark, no tag.

Coho 70-63. No mark, no tag.

This is a team of interns and
staff.

They're collecting our long-term
data on salmon use

of the Elwha nearshore.

We then take these data,
compare them over the decade

that we've been
recording the information,

and look at the evolution
of the Elwha nearshore

as the dam removal progresses.

As wild fish now recruit
into this nearshore area,

we see these large numbers
of hatchery fish.

Our concern is that the hatchery
species may be challenging the
wild species

that are trying to recover.

They are vulnerable
to these hatchery fish,

either through predation
or physical displacement

or competition for resources.

The risk is that we're actually
stunting the river's ability to
restore,

because these fish that
literally
are the backbone can't restore

because they're being pressured
by these continued hatchery
releases.

I do think that humans by nature
have an engineering aspect.

They like things to be orderly,
they like things to be
predictable.

So that's what hatcheries give
people.

The flip side of that is wild,
and wilding your watershed.

Chinook 152-146.

Wilding does have great
uncertainty to it.
That's how wild works.

Wild is scary, but it's
a really important place in
people's soul.

Did you guys see how we walked
when we were walking up here

and we were walking along the...
the trees,

so we could look back
into these two redds here,

where we know fish spawn.

The males are the easiest to
see, usually.

So if there's males on there,

more than likely there's going
to be a female in there.

And then we'll sit there and
concentrate 'cause the females
are really hard to see.

They're like transparent half
the time.

She's moving up.

She's straight between us.

You can see the tail.

Yep. Moving up.

She's digging.

Yeah, she's digging right there.

It's going to be pretty deep.

Typically, what we see in a
female is about 4,500 eggs.

Then we'll do the males now.

We'll keep them separate,
keep the milt separate from the
eggs.

Then after we're done, we check
them for a coded wire tag.

This is the part that has the
coded wire tag embedded in the
head.

And that would have information
on the fish.

I know some people are going to
view this as being brutal and
barbaric,

but this is what it takes to
collect our group stock at the
Elwha facility.

It's a tool; we're a tool
to help recover the stock.

When we miss a female,

we feel like we have failed
the fish itself,

because we know that those eggs
aren't going to survive as well

as it would at the hatchery.

We brought the eggs in
from the cooler.

Lay the buckets on the floor and
then

divide the female
for how many males we have.

Put the milt in there. Mix it.
Let it sit for 30 seconds.

Mix them again, and then let
them
sit for another 30 seconds.

Then we weigh down 13 pounds
into a bucket.

Let it drain all the ovarian
fluid and milt.

Put them in iodoform for an hour

and then we'll lay them down
till they eye.

That's effectively artificial
spawning at a hatchery.

There's been a lot of effort
over the last several decades

cataloging all of the genetic
variation
in populations of salmon

and their cousins, trout.

Salmon have developed
an incredible amount of
diversity

that allows them to be
particularly successful

in the stream in which
they were born.

A huge river system
will have huge salmon.

Some of them used to run
up to 100 pounds

in the biggest rivers
that had the most challenging
falls

that they had to jump over.

And then little coastal streams,
they had mostly smaller ones,

even though it was the same
species,

but they were genetically
totally different.

Even in one river, where you
have one species of a certain
size,

you may have the fall run
and the spring run of that
species,

and those fish are completely
different.

They don't interact or
interbreed at all.

We've been stocking salmon
since the time of Darwin.

When we first discovered
how to take eggs and take milt

and combine them, hatch fish,
put them back into fresh water,

we literally knew nothing
of evolutionary ecology.

We would have
been flying blind.

We now know that taking wild
fish

and exposing them
to a hatchery environment,

breeding them, hatching them,
rearing them,

for any amount of time, really,
changes the genetic makeup.

Fish are very complex critters

that have evolved in Mother
Nature over thousands of years,

and there's things
that happen in hatcheries

that don't put them
through those pressures

that they face out in Mother
Nature that makes them so
they're a fit fish.

What happens is you create
a genetically inferior fish

at the hatchery
through all the domestication,

and then those fish go spawn
with fish in the wild,

and that actually can degrade
the genetics of the fish in the
wild,

so they're not as fit either.

What we do with fish hatcheries

is the same thing as growing a
chicken.

Economically it makes more sense
to put a bazillion chickens in
one place,

and that produces
a really inferior chicken.

You know, if nature can produce
X number of fish in a river,

let's dump more young fish in
there.

And it's absolutely wrong.

It's not increasing
our number of wild fish.

It's eventually going
to extirpate all fish.

Life diversifies in order to
survive.

And humans do the opposite:

we simplify, in order to make
things easier for ourselves.

And by imposing simplification

on a world that has taken
millions of years to so
wondrously diversify

is a violent act on life itself.

Well, the fish toss is, is that
we take the fish that return to
the hatchery,

so these are all the fish
that were raised in the
hatchery.

We have this tote of fish,

and I think there's probably
a couple hundred fish in each
tote,

and they get frozen to a solid
block
and we just drop them down

and break them up and refreeze
them so they don't stick
together no more

and prep them for all the school
groups.

There you go.

Can you guys say good morning
to Sheila and Emily?

Good morning.

We talked about the five reasons
why we're doing this a little
bit ago.

Does anybody remember those?
Yeah.

The trees.

The trees.
What about the trees?

The trees need the nutrients.

The nutrients, right?

We partner
with the Nisqually Indian tribe,

who provides the carcasses
from their hatchery program,

which used to be considered
a waste product.

They're actually full
of marine-derived nutrients,

because when they leave the
river system,
they're about yea big.

When they come back, they're
just carrying
so much goodness from the ocean.

So we teach this concept to the
students.

The chinook and steelhead
in this watershed are threatened
species,

so we inspire them to take
action
by getting these carcasses

back into the upper watershed,
which is actually very nutrient
poor.

-Can I get something?
-This one's cool.

What about this?
Is that a big one or little one?

I'll just get this one.

OK, let me get the tail.
It's been severed, OK?

Salmon, I think they are
very important for the
ecosystem.

Many animals eat them.

Well, 138 vertebrae animals
eat the salmon, specifically.

I like the salmon-tossing idea,
I think it's a good help.

But, at the same time,
I don't think it's the best
idea.

The ecosystem runs a specific
way for a specific reason.

We can try and help them
by reducing pollution,

but I don't think that we should
directly interact with the
salmon wildlife

and all that wildlife

and let them run by themselves
and make their own adaptations.

The conversation is,
are there any wild salmon left?

Show me a wild salmon,

show me, you know, an abundant
number coming back of wild
salmon,

and we just don't see it here
in the Nisqually.

As much as I'd rather have wild
salmon, our hatchery salmon are
important

to us continuing our culture
and our traditions.

You know, for us, this is our
church.

You know, this is our medicine
here, being on this river,

and I think people have
a hard time understanding that,

because this is what our
ancestors did
since the beginning of time.

You know, they fished, they
hunted, they gathered.

They protected what we have,
and that's how we lived,

and now we're in 2018,
our salmon are depleting.

These are the raceways
I was telling you about.

Three hundred thousand in each
one.

Yeah, ten.

So that's a lot of fish.

He's going right now,
pulling all the dead ones out.

We're managers
as Native American people.

That's what we do when we
manage, but we also have to
adapt to the times.

People have a tendency
to get enamored with what they
wish was

instead of what is.

There's a certain segment
of the people of this area

that want to blame hatchery fish
for the decline of wild fish.

The biggest problem is too many
people.

And salmon and humans
don't coexist real well.

We're going to build our houses
along the rivers you need,

we're going to build our towns
in the estuaries you need,

we're going to log the forests
you need.

We're going to take our drinking
water out of the river you need.

We made that deal a long time
ago.

We made the
compromise already,

and by saying
that you don't need hatcheries

to provide some
sort of fishable abundance,

you're saying you're going back
on that deal.

There's a lot of runs
in the northwest right now

that if it wasn't for hatchery
fish, they'd be extinct,

because their progeny are
hatchery fish.

Where those fish have blinked
out, they use hatchery fish to
bring them back.

I would like to see us make
hatchery fish as much like wild
fish as possible.

I'd like to see us make them do
as little harm to wild fish as
possible,

and I'd like to replace habitat,
replace culverts,

do everything you can to reduce
the human footprint on salmon
habitat

and make sure that hatchery
and wild fish both are here
forever.

It kind of offends me when
people say that I don't care
about their habitat

or I don't care about conserving
them.

Hunters and fishermen and
sportsmen

have always been at the front
of conservation and habitat
reforms.

If there's a problem, we notice
it

and we like to address it,
not just whine about it.

The reason that I'm involved in
conservation efforts, when I was
younger,

is because I was hoping
I'd see a result.

But as I get older, I'm starting
to think that's less and less
likely

because again we don't seem
to, as a society,

be willing to address the real
issues.

Nature's gone.

You're viewing this through
some Disneyland idea

that we can still do all this
bad stuff
and recover salmon.

Nope.

The southern resident
killer whale population

that I've been studying for 42
years began a serious decline
around 1995.

There was almost a hundred
whales.

But we're down to 74 right now.

Salmon and orcas are just
predator-prey.
They're like that.

If you have a decline in the
food, you have a decline in the
whales.

Most of those fish right now
are hatchery produced

and they're getting smaller
and smaller every year.

They averaged 22 pounds, and now
they're averaging 8 and 10
pounds.

The wild runs are being
exterminated
by the hatchery production.

And the whales will follow
the wild fish to extinction.

The icon of the northwest is
starving.

A mother orca whose calf died
after birth

is still carrying her baby 17
days later.

Researchers say that they're now
concerned for the mother's
health.

We had this whale coming in.

Had a brand-new baby;
one of our colleagues saw it,

took a picture of her,

and by the time our boat got
there 30 minutes later, she was
dead.

And the mother started
pushing the dead calf around.

OK, toward her, toward her.
Go ahead.

And baby in mouth. Yes.

There it was.

Yeah. See if she does it again.

Yeah.

Well, she pushed
this dead baby for 17 days.

You know, it was a tour of grief
that went on and on and on.

We want to welcome you

to our last task force meeting
for this year.

Governor Inslee
convened this task force

to save the southern resident
killer whales.

The easy fix that our own
Washington State Department of
Fish and Wildlife says,

"Oh, well, we'll just increase
hatchery production by 50
million fish."

Well, wait a minute.

Why don't you look at what's
happened with hatchery
production

and see that it's not working?

And you want to do more
of what doesn't work?

Nobody wanted to hear "stop
fishing."
That was almost untouchable.

It wasn't about whale
or fish requirements.

It was all about commerce.

Everybody wants to save the
whales.

Nobody wants to change
our own way of life.

It's a very difficult choice
for our society

to look at what we're doing,

what we have done over the years
in terms of fisheries
management,

and change the paradigm.

I didn't realize until about
a month had passed

how depressed I was.

I'm seeing all this before my
very eyes and documenting it.

And that's the part that
is troubling to me, is that,
uh...

I'm going to be in charge of
keeping track

of the extinction of these
animals.

But if it's a lesson to our
society, that, hey, we've got to
change,

maybe that's what I have to do.

We're going to die
of a loneliness of spirit,

with all the creatures gone.

Every year, Idaho Power
partners with other biologists

to raise and release 6.8 million
chinook and steelhead.

The next generation of fish
needs next generation ideas.

Our innovative approach
maintains abundant fish
populations,

giving anglers a chance to land
brag-worthy steelhead.

Fish on.

Hatcheries are pawns
in a game of political power.

The whole thing is about money.

Fishing is a huge industry

and every state is competing
with each other for those
dollars.

It's not about conserving our
resources, it's perverting our
resources

on a short-term bet
to get tourist dollars in.

In fact, federal dollars to
support fish-and-wildlife
agencies

is based on how many license
sales there are in each of those
states.

The internal finances is that it
provides power and wealth

to the agencies themselves.

To build a new hatchery,
it's millions and millions of
dollars

of high extensive automated
piping and flow systems,

so you have lots of temperature
control on lots of different
fish-rearing stations

so that you can raise different
species up to different sizes

and maximize production.

We've got the water costs,
electrical costs,

building maintenance costs

and just the feeding costs for
the fish,

so we're looking
at plus-or-minus $20 million

in assorted costs throughout a
year.

It's a major business and
there's portions of that
business

that 20-plus employees
are doing year round.

Hatcheries are a perfect example
of political pork.

They spread the hatcheries
around their state.

They're in almost every county
of the state.

They target them on key members
of the state senate

and the state legislature.

As a result, they buy the
support of that local person.

These hatcheries are
a subsidy to commercial
fishermen,

recreational fishermen,
and it's being paid for

by all the taxpayers.

I think one of the main reasons
why it's important

that people understand what's
going on

is just purely the waste
of their money that's happening.

In Washington state alone,
there are 174 hatcheries

producing more than
190 million salmon every year.

On the west coast, over 90%
of the "wild-caught salmon"

you find in markets
actually came from hatcheries.

Between California, Oregon,
Washington and Idaho,

citizens pay for the release
of almost 280 million fish per
year.

Last year, between the United
States, Canada, Russia, Korea,
and Japan,

five billion salmon were
released into the North Pacific.

When I wrote my first book,

the Bonneville Power
Administration

was spending about $140 million
or $150 million

on their program.

Since 1982, they've spent 15
billion.

The General Accounting Office

did a survey and they showed
that hatcheries consumed 40% of
that.

The big question is,

who pays for the raising of the
fish and who gets the benefits?

Fish that go out of the Columbia
River circle around Alaska,

some fish even as far as Russia.

Their survival rate goes down
to .001 or so.

Some of those fish, we figure,
cost over a thousand dollars.

The Entiat Hatchery on the upper
Columbia was producing spring
chinook salmon

that were costing
$68,031 per harvested fish.

State and federal agencies plant
more than a hundred million
rainbow trout

in waters across the United
States every year.

In some of our most protected
wilderness areas,

places high in the mountains

where you're not even allowed
to ride a mountain bike

or pick a wildflower...

taxpayers spend money every year
to drop millions of non-native
fish

by airplane or helicopter, just
so visitors have something to
catch.

Billions of dollars
of citizen public money is spent

to support something
that clearly does not work.

We're on a path to where
there eventually will be no
fish,

and we will have spent billions
of dollars to get to that point.

The ironic thing is
that fish know how to do all
this.

They know how to live in those
environments, they know how to
reproduce.

So if we allow fish
to get back to being fish

and doing what they do
in those environments,

in pulling back some of
our infrastructure, restoring
streams,

we reap the benefits free of
charge.

The concept in the earliest days
of settlement in the west

was that there was a God-given
right to take from it what we
could.

Times change, needs change.

Understanding of our place
in the universe changes.

And the world's becoming
a smaller and more crowded
place.

But this understanding
that we have to take care of the
land,

that it's not infinite, it won't
continue to produce and provide
for us

unless we look at it
and manage it responsibly,

that is a relatively
new concept.

Managing our water resources
is important in our agricultural
pursuits,

but also this water has
tremendous
values to this fishery.

And this fishery is one of the
great fisheries in the world,

and our local economy is based
on that.

So for us to succeed, we need
our community and our river
systems

to be as healthy as possible.

Going back a ways,
this is really the place in
Montana

where the concept
of a wild fishery started.

There were hatchery-raised fish
that were put in here

based on the idea that
the more fish we had in the
river,

the more fish would be
caught by fishermen,

the better our economy would be.

Then lo and behold, they
discovered something very
surprising.

We were doing estimates
now on the Madison,

and we were seeing a lot
of young brown trout in the
lower river,

but the next year they would be
gone.

One of the first things
I kept seeing is

we stocked the best waters.

The waters that had
the best fisheries

were the ones where we
were putting catchables.

I proposed a study.

Leave Norris alone, don't stock
it.

We'll take Varney, not stock it,

and take O'Dell Creek,
which has never been stocked.

Let's stock it and see what
happens.

The first year that we didn't
stock Varney, the upper river,

the population of brown trout
doubled.

And, of course,
when we stocked O'Dell Creek,

the population halved.

We didn't know we were doing
damage.

We figured, well, there's two
out there and we put two more
in,

we've got four fish now
and that's better than two fish.

Well, that's not the math that
works in reality.

Once that information became
available through the
Madison-O'Dell studies,

that maybe our dollars
were being lousily spent,

in fact, we were destroying
what we were trying to protect,

well, they said any waters that
had self-sustaining trout
populations

could not be stocked, period.

And it came policy.

Shortly after that program was
initiated,

you saw the population of this
river just skyrocket with wild
fish.

We started our fly shop in 1979,
a few years after the hatchery
program

was dissolved on the Madison
River.

And we were fortunate to catch
that wave of a wild trout
fishery.

We saw an increase in the number
of anglers that came to Montana,

came to the Yellowstone area,
and specifically southwest
Montana,

to experience those wild
fisheries.

And that's what really kicked in
the fly-fishing businesses at
that time.

People are more attuned
to a healthy river

because they see what's happened
here.

They see the whole cascade
of everything that benefits

because of a wild trout fishery,
including a local economy.

The one thing that came out of
this to me

is the change in behavior of the
humans

when they saw that they weren't
going to be given fish,

that they become more vigilant.

And habitat becomes more
important

when they realize
that's how they get their fish.

As most of you already know,

we had a major eruption
occurring at 8:32 approximately
this morning

on Mount St. Helens.

It does appear that the
northwest flank of the mountain
seems to be gone.

When Mount St. Helens erupted in
1981,

there was a massive explosion
that tore off about 1/3 of the
top of the mountain.

Most of that effluent went down
the Toutle River Basin.

Look at this, it doesn't even
look like
the same country.

I can't believe I used
to camp up in this area.

This doesn't look like
anyplace I've ever been before.

The consequences
at the river were startling.

The upper canyon of Toutle
was totally de-vegetated.

There were chasms of volcanic
effluent.

Anything living in the stream
was virtually destroyed.

It brought back a sense of
hopelessness.

At that point,
there was the feeling that
evolution

and recolonization of rivers
may take tens of thousands of
years.

As a result, that meant that no
more hatchery fish were put into
it.

What became evident
in the Toutle River system

is that the steelhead in
particular came back above what
they were

prior to the eruption five years
later.

By seven years later,
they more than doubled.

So those first years at the
Toutle River were a prime
example

of what wild fish can actually
do

in the most absolute adverse
conditions,

if they are not constrained by
having to intermix with hatchery
populations.

Unfortunately, as the Toutle
River began to show that it can
produce fish,

back we went
to the hatchery programs again.

Hatchery numbers went up,
wild fish went down.

Same old story.

Loss of faith in nature is the
problem.

Nature knows how to make fish
work.

The best thing that we
as human beings can do

and that the salmon and
steelhead ask of us...

"Just get out of our way."

Salmon famously have to fight
their way upstream to spawn,

but thanks to hydroelectric
dams, that's become increasingly
difficult.

But don't worry, because as we
found out recently, America is
on it.

I'm Ben Tracy in Washington
state,

where we're going to introduce
you

to a pretty sweet piece of
technology known as the salmon
cannon.

In your darkest moments of
despair,

when you see a world torn apart
by war,

I want you to remember
that video and think,

"We can do great things."

We can do great things!

Humans believe we can do
anything and everything all the
time,

and that "can do" spirit has
gotten us far and made a lot of
changes in the world,

certainly made a lot of us
able to continue living

at gigantic population
densities.

But it has its limits, and we
don't understand anything about
those limits.

An example of a good myth is
Icarus.

Icarus was a tinkerer
and he wanted to free himself

from the bounds of Earth and
gravity, he wanted to fly.

So he made wings, he made wings
of wax.

And he flew.

Because he didn't sense any
limits, he flew too close to the
sun.

The sun melted his wings
and he came crashing down to
earth.

So the greater truth in that is,

beware of hubris.

Exercise some humility.

And be careful when you're
tinkering.

I'm 55 years old now.

I've been living with
my salmon fishing all my life.

I've tried to follow my heart.

I mean, I'm not rich in money.

But I've had 6,000 days on
salmon rivers
all around the world,

which makes me rich in a
different way.

The salmon fishing in Norway is
central to all the small towns

that are located on the river,
and in the old days,

the salmon used to be the thing
that was feeding the people.

It's special, special to Norway.

Now it's also special in the
other way because the second
biggest industry

is this fish-farming thing that
is now...

it's threatening to kill
what's the original fish.

We were so stupid,
I was so stupid,

because when they started
fish farming, I thought,

"Hey, this is the solution to
everything."

We farm the fish and they don't
have to kill our wild fish,

they don't have to kill the fish
I want to fish for,

and the stocks will go up
and all will be fantastic.

In very short time,
we learned that the sea lice

were killing the wild smolt
living in the river.

Fewer fish were coming up.

You know, they say that
one of these farms out here,

they produce as much shit
than the whole town of Oslo,

and they just leave it in the
fjord.

When it's polluted enough,
you move to another location

and you can pollute another
place.

Then there are more fish
escaping from Norwegian fish
farms

than all the Norwegian
wild salmon rivers produce.

And they mix with the wild
stock.

And they destroy
the unique DNA of the fish.

Alta's got the biggest
Atlantic salmon in the world.

There are more 50-pounders
caught here
than anywhere else.

There's quite a big difference
on the river that I see today.

The DNA on the Alta salmon
is not like it was before.

I see no difference between a
fish farm
and a hatchery fish.

Because of gene pollution.

You get escapees from these fish
farms, sometimes millions of
fish escape.

And then they breed with wild
fish, dumbing down the genes.

We're reversing natural
selection.

We're devolving these fish.

I really always wanted
to see... see one of these
farms.

We got into our wetsuits...

then we jumped into the sea.

And we sneaked up to one of
these farms.

I knew I was going to see a lot
of fish.

But I didn't think it was going
to be that bad.

It was so full of sick fish.

They had fungus.
They looked like S's.

There were wounds big as my
hand.

Nobody should eat this.

You show this to the moms
that want to feed their kids
with this.

They will never buy one of these
fish.

It was like, if you should walk
into a farm

where you have cows that would
have big wounds bleeding

and lying down, barely
breathing.

Who would eat that?

No one, but these things are
happening under the surface, you
know?

Nobody knows about this.

The thing is, we lost one thing
here and we lost respect for the
ecosystem.

We're the guys that should
protect the rivers,

protect them from all kinds of
farms and hatcheries and all
this.

My responsibility is not to feed
the people in the world, OK?

If I have a responsibility,

it is to say when I see things
are wrong with what I like

and what I love,
and that's the rivers and
salmon.

Solution is there.

And that is to get these
into the closed tanks.

If it will double the price of
the salmon, it's worth it.

What's the price of an
ecosystem?
What's its worth?

Skagit 911. What is your
emergency?

My husband and I are on our
boat in Eagle Harbor,

and the middle fish pen
is breaking apart.

It's huge, and the whole
thing is buckling.

There's a forklift that looks
like it's about ready to go in
the water.

Looks pretty dramatic to
me.

Well, what just happened was
that there was a catastrophic
failure.

One of the net pens off of
Cypress Island
completely imploded.

The fish that escaped
are Atlantic salmon.

They're not Pacific salmon.

We're talking 305,000 exotic
species

are now polluting Puget Sound.

These fish are going to be
entering into our rivers,

competing with our wild fish
in the spawning grounds,

competing with them for food,

bringing diseases and parasites
and viruses to these wild fish,

and it's a disaster.

When I heard that
300,000 Atlantic salmon escaped

into the ocean environment,
I immediately kind of dropped
everything

and knew that this was something
that I needed to go and
document,

because I knew that no one else
was getting the underwater side
of things.

Diver in!

I didn't expect to see the level
of destruction that I saw.

Uh, the pens were totally split
open and completely destroyed.

There were holes all through
them that the Atlantic salmon
had escaped from.

Then there was a few fish left,

gasping, caught in the nets.

But other than that, the fish
were gone into the marine
environment

and clearly unaccounted for.

Galactic Ice, Galactic
Ice, Galactic Ice.

We ask that you remove your
diver from the water
immediately.

This is classified as
trespassing.

We suggest you please
halt these operations.

Cypress Fish Farm, over and
out.

It was an extremely charged
scene.

It seems like it's a big secret
what's going on under there,

and the last thing
that these companies want

is people to go under and
actually see what's going on,

because then these stories
that they're telling the public,

it's so easy to poke holes in
them when you get footage

of what's actually going on on
the farms.

The concept
of an emergency response plan

is, it's a bit humorous.

It's basically, "Tell the
commercial fishers and the
recreational fishers

to go out and fish because now
we have more fish for you."

It's like telling the people
when the Exxon Valdez spilled...

"Free oil! Go collect it!"

Every single day,
our public trust is being
undermined

by the pollution that these pens
are putting into our sound,

the viruses and parasites,
pharmaceuticals
that are going into our waters.

The industrial model is to make
as much money as you can

as quickly as you can,
regardless of the environmental
consequences.

What we're seeing today, what
we've seen over the last couple
of days,

are those environmental
consequences
coming home.

It turns out that Washington is
the only west coast state

that allows open-water net pen
salmon farms.

To me, it's really an outrage
that this is even allowed.

You know, I think anybody who's
concerned with the state of the
environment

and our planet thinks about the
future, and especially if you
have children.

You start to feel like, OK,
what's the world going to be
like for them?

It feels really important
to me that they participate

in protecting their own future.

We're so busy these days
that to be unified on these
things,

whether it's fighting to make
sure that there are salmon in
the future

or going out to catch fish,
those become really precious
times

for a dad who's watching his
kids grow up really fast.

We thought we'd go out there
with a few boats

and wave some signs around
and protest it.

But it turned out that people
from all walks of life

that use the sound or enjoy
living near a healthy sound,

were also outraged.

The Suquamish tribe was there to
protest.

There were commercial fishermen
there. There was a whole fleet
of kayaks.

There was a lot of sport fishing
boats.

I mean, there was even a guy
on a Jet Ski carrying a sign
around.

We spent the few days ahead of
time making some signs to carry

and laughed about sort of what
we would say and what the
slogans were.

But underlying it all,
I think the kids feel like

they're able to participate
in the things they care about.

I think we made our point
because now here we are months
later,

and there's actually three
pieces of legislation that are
pending

affecting net pens.

Wild salmon are threatened
by these sorts of facilities.

The day-in-day-out impacts
to our magical, majestic Salish
Sea

cannot go unchecked.

It is unconscionable that when
we are spending tens and tens

of millions of dollars to
protect and recover wild salmon,

we would allow an invasive
species to be introduced to our
ecosystem.

Mr. President, there are 35 yea,
12 nay, 2 excused.

Having received a constitutional
majority, second substitute
Senate bill 6086

is declared passed; the title of
the bill will be the title of
the act.

The Yurok belief is that we have
been here since the beginning of
time.

At one point, this Earth was a
lonely rock in the universe
floating by itself

and it began to get sad
and its tears became the ocean

and it finally came to be
what we have today.

The Wah-gay, the spirit people,
started creating this world.

And one of the things they had
done was made a relationship

between us and the salmon.

And the salmon were put here
so they could sustain us

and that we would always have
a food source

and that way we'd always live
and we would always be
prosperous.

We also have a story of,
if we don't take care of this
world

and there are no more salmon,

then there will be no more need
for Yurok people.

The 2002 fish kill was really
like the canary in the coal
mine.

It was a low-water year,
but ag got their water.

If you divert that much water
and flows get so low on the
planet,

you will have some kind of major
fish disease outbreak.

That's exactly what happened.

Seventy thousand adult salmon
died, all within the Klamath
River.

The dead fish were lining the
banks, you know, three, four
layers deep.

And it smelled like death.

In a wild river, nothing like
that happens, right?

That is not a natural thing.

The future,
if it goes unchanged,

it is going to be the
destruction
of salmon species

on the west coast of the United
States.

The tribe voted not to have
a commercial salmon season this
year

because of the low projected
numbers.

And the subsistence amount was
the lowest I think I've ever
seen.

Tribal members used to live
almost solely
on returning fish runs,

and now this year we get
less than one fish per person?

How can you possibly look at
that

and not realize that there is
a gigantic problem here?

These reductions of the salmon
runs, the big picture is,

is they're affecting our health.

We know those omega oils,
those omega 3s and 6s in salmon

are very heart healthy.

That's why we have a lot of
elders that live to ripe old
ages.

But the point is, is that,
what's going to happen down the
road?

What's going to happen to our
people?

When your society,
when your culture, when your
belief

is connected directly to
the world around you,

when you're raised with the
sense that you are a part of
everything

in your surroundings
and your natural environment,

it does something
to your community's psychology

and mindset when you start to
see

that world crumble and break.

As the decline of the salmon
runs come back,

you can see a direct correlation
with the decline of us as a
people.

It's just a disruption
of the whole sort of cycle of
the tribe

and what we do as a people...

because that fishing isn't
there.

And I think when that happens,
then all of us feel pain.

You know, it's like we grieve
for that.

A lot of times when you're
grieving or when you're hurting
over something,

you turn to drug and alcohol.

And so we're seeing spikes
in drug and alcohol rates.

There's an opioid crisis
on the reservation right now.

There's a suicide crisis
on the reservation right now.

All of these things are
connected,

in part because
when you take away the river,

you take away the fishery,
you take away that core
component

of who we are as a people
and then it kind of falls apart,

and people start getting in
trouble.

That's where we are now,
and that's why you have

all those other sort of issues
arising in our community.

Go, boy!

The traditional game of sticks,

it's actually one of the few
pieces of Yurok culture that
never went away.

You have a stick and you have a
tossle.

Take the tossle and make it go
through the goal,

and you do that any way you can.

Today we play of no hitting
with the stick,

no stabbing, no eye gouging
and no choking.

Other than that, everything is
game
and everything is fair to play.

If you can take it, you can give
it out a little bit, you get to
play.

It teaches those lessons in
life,

that it's important to Yurok to
be tough,
to be respectful,

and to fight regardless
of what the size difference is.

I think it lends a lot to why,
when we get into conflicts,

or when we get into fights like
the dam,

we don't care who the biggest,
richest man in the world who
owns it,

because we'll play up
every day of the week.

We don't care.

Hey, hey, ho, ho,
Klamath Dam's about to go!

Hey, hey, ho, ho,
Klamath Dam's about to go!

Un-dam the Klamath!
Bring the salmon home!

Un-dam the Klamath!
Bring the salmon home!

We all kind of came back
together and decided

that this was one we were going
to fight.

The FERC license for the dams
expired.

There was this opportunity
to pursue dam removal.

And so that's where the fight
went.

Federal, state and local
lawmakers

has come up with a way to do
what Congress could not:

get the water and the fish
in the Klamath River flowing
freely again.

We're starting to get it right

after so many years of getting
it wrong.

This is the crown jewel
of salmon country.

This is it right here.

The people want it to be wild.

They want it to be what it was
before the dams,

before colonization, before
agriculture.

The work that the tribe is doing
is to redirect the energy

to a place where we're focusing
on that comprehensive
restoration

to get the wild runs back,

as opposed to agreeing to some
kind of short-lived political
compromise,

like the hatchery ideas,
that really just put Band-Aids

on, you know, gaping wounds.

The approach is, we're here
forever,

and we want those wild salmon
to be here forever,

and that's what we're planning
for and that's what we're
working on.

Having a wild river,

having the wild salmon,
it puts the community back
together

and it gives them purpose

and it allows us to fulfill
that initial promise

that we made to the Creator,
right, about taking care of this
river

and living in a balance with us.

And when you do that as a
people, you feel good.

That's like the ultimate
self-determination,

that's the ultimate sovereignty,
is to be able to live in a way

that is consistent with your own
cultural values.

And that's what we're fighting
for.

You could say
that everything we learn,

we learn from the stories
that we are given.

You could also then say
that all the problems we have

are symptoms of stories that
were wrong,

stories we told ourselves
and stories we passed on,

where we misunderstood things
deeply.

If hatcheries were successful
and were addressing the
situation,

we wouldn't be having
this discussion today.

The underlying causes of the
problems are still there,

and after all these years,

we're still having to put fish
out there every year to keep
them going.

Perhaps it's time to pull back
and question,

is this the right path forward?

How far do we go
to manufacture wildness

before we realize
what we're really doing

and think about alternative
approaches, like protecting and
restoring wild things?

There's no right way to do
the wrong thing.

The right thing is to work on
our rivers that we've destroyed

and turned into sewers
and dammed up and fix that,

so that we have wild fish.

This little issue is just a
reflection of what we're doing
to the whole planet.

It's more than just
our relationship with fish.

It's how we're trying to control
nature rather than work with
nature.

A life without wild nature,
a life without these great
iconic species,

is an impoverished life.

If we lose all wild species,
we're going to lose ourselves.