What do salmon say when they get to Bonneville?
Dam.
Bonneville dam gulps down 750,000 gallons of water each second, spans the Columbia river, and holds a fish counting station in both Washington state and Oregon. A fish counting station is exactly what it sounds like: a room with an underwater view, just like an aquarium, where one employee counts fish in real time while the other works from data recorded overnight. What are they counting? Salmon, of all types, even though the terrifying stacks of electric blue lamprey eels are what fascinate as their quarter-sized mouths suction against the glass. With the natural route home blocked by Bonneville, salmon must circumnavigate the dam using ‘fish ladders,’ a series of 60 steps designed to allow their movement upstream. The entire aquatic journey was described to us as the “natural process of migration” — seemingly an odd thing to say about a man-made structure that’s utilized the river for hydroelectric power since the 1930s.
What do a water bottle, chunk of concrete, pinwheel, a magnet, copper coil, and a light switch all have in common? They represent the dam’s inner workings as explained by Leo, our bespectacled tour guide. He stands tall in his thick-soled black work boots and park ranger uniform, good-natured and at ease in front of his audience. With each hand gesture, the five or six silver keys carabined to his belt loop jingle and falter only once — when he gets distracted by a little girl in all purple holding a doll who wants to listen in. Leo waggles his fingers as he counts off the six different types of salmon at Bonneville and impresses everyone when he subtly turns the screen behind him on, mid-sentence, to perfectly land the inevitable “dam” joke with a colorful visual aid.
Good luck trying to guess Leo’s nationality — he is a German-born U.S. and Austrian citizen, born to an Austrian father and Brazilian mother, who moved to Southern California in 1995. He plans to move from wet Washington state (where his house is powered cleanly and cheaply by Bonneville’s hydroelectricity) back to arid SoCal soon, with his girlfriend by his side. At 31, he’s spent four years in the Marines and enough time in the Army Corp of Engineers to realize he needs a change of pace, something like carpentry where he can use his hands. We sit on a bench facing the fish ladder observatory windows as salmon swim lazily by, and he shares an honest opinion regarding scarce resources: “if you can’t conserve, you shouldn’t have it.” Tough luck for 2016’s IFP since Leo won’t be there, but drought-ridden California could definitely stand to gain more dam people just like him.
