The Behavior And Ecology Of Pacific Salmon And Trout

Book Description

Few subjects have generated as much emotional dialogue around conflicting scientific and policy agendas as the protection and management of Pacific salmon resources. In this major new work, esteemed fisheries expert Thomas Quinn distills from the vast scientific literature the essential information on the behavior and ecology of Pacific salmon, including steelhead and cutthroat trout. Unlike other books that examine only selected life stages, habitats, or species, this book--richly illustrated with beautiful photographs and original drawings--thoroughly covers the complete life cycle, emphasizing common themes and differences among the various species of salmon.

Representing the range of species and geographic regions, Quinn includes examples from classic studies by pioneers of salmon biology and from the most current research to illustrate the important features of salmon life history and behavior and the complex physical, biological, and human factors that affect them.

The Behavior and Ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout introduces salmon and trout as a group, with a brief description of each species, and compares them to other fishes. The book then follows salmon on their amazing homeward migration from the open ocean, through the complex coastal waters, and upstream to the precise location where they were spawned years earlier. It explains the patterns of mate choice, the competition for nest sites, and the fate of the salmon after their death. It describes the lives of offspring during the months they spend incubating in gravel, growing in fresh water, and migrating out to sea to mature. Quinn emphasizes the importance of salmon to humans and to natural ecosystems and the need to integrate sound biology into conservation efforts.

This thorough, up-to-date survey should be on the shelf of anyone with a professional or personal interest in Pacific salmon and trout. Written in a technically accurate but engaging style, it will appeal to a wide range of readers, including students, anglers, biologists, conservationists, legislators, and armchair naturalists.

Customer Reviews:

Don't ask me, Just read the book..........2006-10-31

I am currently an Undergrad at the University of Washington and had the opportunity to study under Professor Quinn in Alaska for a number of weeks this summer. While the book may not be best suited to sit down and read cover to cover, it is a very valuable reference for academics looking into topics pertaining to pacific salmonids. I can say with certainty that Tom sees writing as a process that is never finished (the art of rewriting), and science is as well. It is unrealistic to try to find a book containing every relevant detail on such a hot and emerging topic as salmon, but this book comes as close as any in recent times.

Gorgeous and dense, yet strangely substance free.......2006-07-28

On the face of it, this text is positioned to become the definitive reference on the state of our understanding of Pacific salmon, a rich and complex topic with huge implications for environmental policy. It is sponsored by the American Fisheries Society, the semi-official academic organization that pays attention to these things. The author is a respected academic with deep understanding of the topic. And the book itself is beautiful. As a coffee table book it deserves four stars. The writing style is accessible, and the text covers many hundreds of current research studies.

So, what's the problem? Like Oakland, there is no there there. Instead of a guided tour through the state of our understanding of salmon, we get what amounts to an unstructured core memory dump. Studies are cited, summarized, and dropped for the next pretty bauble. There is little in the way of integration of the huge knowledge base that is out there. Quinn awkwardly fluctuates between an academic and vernacluar style (in his defense, accessible writing on complex academic topics is hard to do).

But Quinn's most bizarre transitions come when he mentions a a few seminal works on Pacific Northwest salmon extinction, simultaneously genuflecting in their general direction and edging away from their implications. Quinn's conscious avoidance of the issues at the heart of the controversy over salmon extinction is the most troubling part of the text, and the main reason I think this book is unworthy of the subject. There is a reason for this. His research center at the University of Washington is largely funded by the government agencies and electric utilites responsible for salmon extinction in the Columbia river basin. Understandably, it does not behoove Quinn to take a definitive stand on these issues. But it belittles him that he does not openly acknowledge what the issues are, and clearly present the evidence we have.

In approving Columbia River development in 1937, the US Fisheries Comissioner ignored a half-millenium of evidence that dams make salmon go extinct, saying that it was a complicated issue requiring more scientific study. Seventy years later, hundreds of salmon stocks on the Columbia and Snake rivers are extinct, and all are in jeopardy. Yet Quinn apparently believes that the solution is...more scientific study. Basic questions - how big do salmon get? How many did there used to be? What is the evidence that modifying or removing dams will or will not help salmon survive? - is either buried in the detritus of multiple studies, or entirely absent.

The big problem with public policy is that you always have to make critical choices with imperfect knowledge. Inaction in dynamic systems like climate and species ecologies is a choice, and repurposing science as a passive excuse for inaction often guarantees a bad outcome. In his unwillingness to engage controversy, Quinn has, unfortunately, avoided relevance.

Peter Morrison.......2005-09-11

This is a great resource for people that want to learn about the ecology and behaviour of salmon.

I wish it went a little more into the effects of dams and hatcheries on salmon ecology and behavior.

The Behavior and Ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout.......2005-08-30

This book is the best modern reference to the ecology of west coast salmon. Quinn makes good use of the advances of the last decade and shows good judgement in selecting topics to discuss. I'm a fisheries biologist writting a salmon book so I know the subject and the difficulty of writing in an engaging and informative manner. I recommend the book highly.
A caution: this book is not for beginners.

Upstream: Salmon and Society in the Pacific Northwest

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Upstream: Salmon and Society in the Pacific Northwest
Committee on Protection and Management of Pacific Northwest Anadromous Salmonids , and National Research Council
Manufacturer: National Academies Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0309053250

Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)

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Making Salmon Makes Us Human
Understates negative impact of logging
Swimming Against the Current
Swimming Against the Current
The definitive history of the Northwest salmon crisis

Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)
Joseph E. Taylor
Manufacturer: University of Washington Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0295981148

Book Description

Winner of the George Perkins Marsh Award, American Society for Environmental History

Customer Reviews:

Making Salmon Makes Us Human.......2003-01-03

There's your text books on salmon, and there's required reading.
Of the 300-odd salmon titles, Making Salmon is one of those you
must read. Like First Fish, First People, Making Salmon is about
the human side of the fishery, its evolution and confabulation
as a fought-over resource. Absolutely fascinating history, you
realize right away that nobody has an absolute moral high ground
in the salmon debate. Everything is allied against its survival,
and yet magically, miraculously, the salmon continue to return.
Like Mountain in the Clouds, put Making Salmon on your booklist.

Understates negative impact of logging.......2001-11-06

Mr. Taylor accurately identifies most of the causes of the salmon population crisis facing Washington state, Oregon, Alaska, and British Columbia. And he is dead on in his assessment of the impact of farm fisheries on salmon ecology.
The book grossly understates, however, the impact of logging on salmon habitat. Without canopy to cool streams, temperature-sensitive salmon simply cannot spawn successfully. And let's not overlook the role that clear-cutting plays in causing erosion, sedimentation, and flooding. It's true that salmon ecology can still suffer from genetic contamination by farm fish, point-source and non-point-source pollution, illegal overfishing on the high seas, legal overfishing in fresh water, damming, and overuse of water by irrigators and developers. But let's not downplay the egregious impact of logging.

Swimming Against the Current.......2000-05-11

Making Salmon is the definitive work on the problems facing the salmon fishery of the Pacific Northwest. For as long as man has lived he has exploited the salmon. Joseph Taylor takes the reader on a journey through time as he leads us step by step through the decline of these once great fish. There is plenty of culpability to go around. Foresters, developers, commercial fisherman, native Americans, even sport fishermen all come in for their share of blame. Although focusing on Oregon, Taylor's work is easily transferable anywhere salmon swim, from Alaska to California.

Extremely well documented (fully a third of the book is taken up with notes and other addenda) Making Salmon is occasionally dry but never dull. What is most dramatic about this story is the resiliency of the salmon. Time and time again they manage to survive despite our best efforts to save them!

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of dams, hatcheries, consumption or conservation, you will find merit in this work. Making Salmon is a must read for anyone interested in the rivers and fisheries of the Northwest.

Swimming Against the Current.......2000-03-30

As long as man has lived in the Pacific Northwest he has exploited the salmon. In this thorough history of the travails of the pacific salmon, Joseph Taylor does not hesitate to mince words or point the finger of blame, and there is plenty of blame to go around. Native Americans, commercial fishermen, loggers, farmers, sport fishermen, politicians, the states, the feds, the hatcheries, and others, all share the responsibility for the decline of these great fish.

Although focusing on Oregon, MAKING SALMON is easily transferable anywhere Pacific salmon exist, from California to Alaska. Extremely well documented, (fully a third of the book is taken up with notes and other addenda) MAKING SALMON takes the reader step by step through the last two centuries of development in the Northwest and what that has meant to the salmon fishery there. Taylor paints an excellent history of failure and simplistic answers to a complex problem. What comes through, as most intriguing, is the resiliency of the salmon. They somehow manage to survive despite our best efforts to save them. Resiliency should not be confused with immortality however.

Not always an easy read, MAKING SALMON nonetheless remains essential to anyone wishing to better understand the plight of the Pacific salmon or who is interested in the fine detail of what happens when man and nature collide.

The definitive history of the Northwest salmon crisis.......2000-02-06

Joseph Taylor's award-winning history of the Northwest salmon crisis is the best book to date on this important topic. No other study is as well researched or beautifully written as MAKING SALMON. Taylor, who teaches environmental and Western United States history at Iowa State University, traces the historical decline of salmon runs throughout the Pacific Northwest, focusing primarily on Oregon. His argument--that while many have claimed to speak for salmon, most have actually articulated their own needs instead--takes the current debate beyond the politics of blame. Understanding the complex social and environmental history of the "salmon crisis," he argues, is essential to thinking more clearly about the future of our region's fisheries. Most impressive is his critique of the role hatcheries have played in diminishing Northwest salmon runs. Science and technology, he concludes, have not always saved nature from human abuses. Abundant illustrations, detailed maps, and a rich bibliography round out the book. There are many titles that explore the decline of salmon in the Pacific Northwest. None address the issue as artfully and intelligently as MAKING SALMON. It is required reading for anyone who cares about the future of Northwest salmon or the people who depend upon them.

Messages from Frank's Landing: A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way

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great overview, photos, implications for the future
Page-Turning History with a Hint of Hope

Messages from Frank's Landing: A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way
Charles F. Wilkinson
Manufacturer: University of Washington Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0295980117

Book Description

In 1974 Federal Judge George H. Boldt issued one of the most sweeping rulings in the history of the Pacific Northwest, affirming the treaty rights of Northwest tribal fishermen and allocating to them 50 percent of the harvestable catch of salmon and steelhead. Among the Indians testifying in Judge Boldt's courtroom were Nisqually tribal leader Billy Frank, Jr., and his 95-year-old father, whose six acres along the Nisqually River, known as Frank's Landing, had been targeted for years by state game wardens in the so-called Fish Wars.

By the 1960s the Landing had become a focal point for the assertion of tribal treaty rights in the Northwest. It also lay at the moral center of the tribal sovereignty movement nationally. The confrontations at the Landing hit the news and caught the conscience of many. Like the schoolhouse steps at Little Rock, or the bridge at Selma, Frank's Landing came to signify a threshold for change, and Billy Frank, Jr., became a leading architect of consensus, a role he continues today as one of the most colorful and accomplished figures in the modern history of the Pacific Northwest.

In Messages from Frank's Landing, Charles Wilkinson explores the broad historical, legal, and social context of Indian fishing rights in the Pacific Northwest, providing a dramatic account of the people and issues involved. He draws on his own decades of experience as a lawyer working with Indian people, and focuses throughout on Billy Frank and the river flowing past Frank's Landing. In all aspects of Frank's life as an activist, from legal settlements negotiated over salmon habitats destroyed by hydroelectric plants, to successful negotiations with the U.S. Army for environmental protection of tribal lands, Wilkinson points up the significance of the traditional Indian world view -- the powerful and direct legacy of Frank's father, conveyed through generations of Indian people who have crafted a practical working philosophy and a way of life. Drawing on many hours spent talking and laughing with Billy Frank while canoeing the Nisqually watershed, Wilkinson conveys words of respect and responsibility for the earth we inhabit and for the diverse communities the world encompasses. These are the messages from Frank's Landing. Wilkinson brings welcome clarity to complex legal issues, deepening our insight into a turbulent period in the political and environmental history of the Northwest.

Customer Reviews:

great overview, photos, implications for the future.......2004-12-01

Messages from Frank's Landing is a unique examination of a turning point in Indian sovereignty in the Pacific Northwest. For nearly 12,000 years the Nisqually and Payullup Rivers have provided food, a way of life, and a spiritual force to the Indians of the Puget Sound region. Encroachments on their land and their fishing areas began in 1833 when the Hudson's Bay Company founded Fort Nisqually to enhance the fur trade. Their reservation was decreased significantly in 1854 through a perfidious treaty agreement, triggering the Leschi War, named for the Tribal leader who lost his life for the cause. During World War I, the U.S. government broke part of the treaty, and transferred a section of the reservation along the river to the army as part of Fort Lewis. Three years later, Billy Frank bought six acres along the river which became known as Frank's Landing.
In the 1930s, the salmon count fell victim to unregulated offshore commercial boats and to hydroelectric development. The end of World War II signaled a massive population increase, and many non-Indians took jobs as offshore commercial fisherman. This population boom proved disastrous as hydroelectric dams, timber harvests, road and highway development, and pesticides used in forestry and agriculture combined to endanger the rivers. By the 1960s, Indians without fishing permits were the victims of constant raids and sting operations. In this context, Frank's Landing became the focal point for the tribal assertion of treaty rights in the Northwest.
In 1962, the state mounted a major raid on Nisqually fisherman during the winter salmon run. The Nisqually's passive resistance was caught on film and ended up in front-page photographs. Frank's Landing gradually became to be recognized in the 1960s as a place to go and honor a noble cause. In 1970, the United States filed United States v. Washington, on behalf of the tribes in the Puget Sound and Olympic Peninsula areas that had been included in the 1854 treaties. On February 12, 1974, the Boldt Decision, as it came to be known, reaffirmed the treaties, and allocated 50% of all salmon harvested to the Indians. Indians made up less than one percent of the population, and had previously been taking only about five percent of the total salmon harvest. This was a drastic blow to the commercial and sport fisherman, and an extraordinary victory for the Indians. More significantly, the opinion recognized the tribes' sovereignty and ruled that tribal governments had the authority to regulate their members. Led by Billy Frank, Jr., the Tribe announced an ambitious program to restore the Tribe's fisheries, which had been devastated by years of pollution and misuse. To save the watershed, Frank, Jr. cooperated with two Washington state fish and wildlife agencies to find a way to operate the river for both salmon and power-production. Several projects over the next few years would ensure the livelihood of the salmon and their habitat for generations to come.
Billy Frank, Jr. has served as the chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission since 1977, which includes 19 Tribes, and a staff of fifty professional biologists, ecologists, computer modelers, policy analysts, and lawyers. Billy's sister, Maiselle Bridges, founded the Wa He Lut Indian School at Frank's Landing. The founding of this school, the refusal to relinquish the right to fish despite the state's exertions, the restoration of the Nisqually watershed, and the work of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission all reflect the struggle of Indian people to endure as peoples. This book is a testament to this struggle and to this endurance. The author relies on archival research, newspaper and media accounts, secondary sources, but most of all, personal interviews and experiences with Frank, Jr. and the Nisqually people. Activist Hank Adams provides vivid photographs which document the struggle as well as the beauty of the landscape. Wilkinson provides a thoughtful and well-written narrative, and concludes by examining the global implications found within this story. Frank, Jr. ends with an offering of hope for the future: "We're the advocates for the salmon, the animals, the birds, the water. Put out the story of our lives, and how we live with the land, and how they're our neighbors. And how you have to respect your neighbors and work with your neighbors. So what you do is, you do what you can in your lifetime. Then that'll go on to another lifetime (104)."

Page-Turning History with a Hint of Hope.......2000-10-04

As a member of a Pacific Northwest tribe and fishing family, I found this book to be resourceful, interesting, eye-opening, and yet hopeful. It summarized rather clearly many important points of the "fish wars," tribal treaties, government-to-government relations and tribal sovereignty, family and tribal traditions, timber and dam effects on river/fish sustainability, and much more. It is clear that the author put a tremendous amount of time and energy into the research and ideas behind this book. And it is not just a "history rewritten" book or an attempt by one cultural group to get their two cents in on the events of 30 to 150 years passed. It's about an Indian world view, and how saving the salmon and the rivers they run through is part of the Indian way.

Another aspect that I liked about this book was the lack of white bashing, and also the tremendous respect for the law of the land. This book provides many examples of the patience required to work through the American judicial system, and how the positive results of that patience can be cultural, environmental, and social... things that are impossible to measure in terms of dollars.

A hint of hope is intertwined through the chapters as various governments and cultures -- people with sometimes conflicting goals and values -- are able to successfully work together as "good neighbors."

Customer Reviews:

By scientists for scientists.......2007-06-16

This is a reply to the first review: this book is not meant for bed-time reading, it's a book by some of the premier salmon researchers of the 1970s and 1980s, written as a compilation of their knowledge of the various salmon species, and, as a summary "of much of the available biological information on the life histories of the seven Pacific salmon species," it's not for the casual reader, despite what the back cover says (Preface, x).
As for the comment that it doesn't "express a view about the declining salmon populations," it shouldn't. It's a book about the LIFE HISTORIES of salmon, not about salmon conservation or anything else. Also, each chapter is by a different scientist, rendering a conservationist agenda impractical. Finally, it was written before 1991, when neither the aquaculture nor the depletion of today were present in their present magnitude. That said, I think it is an excellent book--it has everything I've ever wanted or needed or might want to know about salmon (though some information might be a bit dated). My only wish is that the contributing authors had organized their chapters to make it more easy to find information about particular geographical areas.
The back cover states that it is an excellent resource for "students and teachers of biology or fisheries science, people in the fishing and aquaculture industry, and interested laypersons..." but interested parties might want to check the table of contents before purchasing this book. A more general and readable book worth perusal is "The Behavior and Ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout," written by T. Quinn, another salmon scientist (2005).

Excellent Book on Salmon.......2002-01-03

I recently received this book, after waiting to get it for about 2 months. It is the most informative book about salmon ever, with information on everything salmon. It has few color pictures, but has some very interesting statistics in black and white. Though it does not express a view about the declining salmon populations, I'm sure you can find the reasons in the book. It had a lot of facts, but believe me, it would take a lifetime to read through the whole book.
Why 4 stars and not 5? It was relatively boring. Unlike other books I've read about salmon, this one was developed like a textbook. I recommend it to someone who wants to know everything they can about salmon, not someone looking for some bed-reading.

Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species

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Save the salmon
Powerful
Wonderful Read Out Loud Quotes
Learning from Life, Nurturing Place
Salmon splash in your heart.

Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species
Freeman House
Manufacturer: Beacon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0807085480

Amazon.com

Freeman House lives in an out-of-the-way place. Tucked away where Highway 101 diverts inland from the Northern California coastline to avoid the 4,000-foot peaks of the King Range is a damp, verdant landscape of rolling hills, towering forests, and isolated pockets of humanity. The Mattole River drains much of the area, greeting the Pacific at the Lost Coast. For thousands of years, the river formed the connective tissue of human settlement--first for the native tribes, and later for Euro-American pioneers. Each year, salmon swam up the river to their natal spawning beds, marking the passage of time and providing sustenance for the people along the banks. Then, in the early 1970s, the salmon stopped returning. House found himself banding with other like-minded citizens in an effort to bring the once-prolific runs back. Their organization fought for curbs on logging in the watershed and more restrictions for the way timber can be harvested (buffer zones along streams, for example). They planted vegetation on the banks to provide shade and added structure to the river for protection.

Totem Salmon is House's memoir of river stewardship. It's also a blueprint for grassroots environmental action. And finally, it is a well-crafted and lyrical piece of writing that treats a regional problem with personal perspective and candor. --Langdon Cook

Book Description

Part lyrical true-life adventure, part social and philosophical manifesto, TOTEM SALMON tells of a watershed community that worked for two decades to save one of the last purely native stocks of salmon in California.

Customer Reviews:

Save the salmon.......2000-12-25

Excellent book. Interesting read. Inspiring call to action.

Powerful.......2000-12-04

Briefly...as an environmentalist from both the non-profit, agency and barefoot,dreadlocked worlds I really appreciated this book. The author brings out the complexity and poetry of the technical, natural and spiritual mosaic involved in watershed work in the northwest (and eveywhere for that matter). For anyone who has ever (or even never) been through similar experiences that the author describes, it brings shivers up the spine with the descriptive imagery and his obvious intimacy with the Mattole. I highly recommend this book.

Wonderful Read Out Loud Quotes.......2000-06-20

I read a lot, but I almost never pin my husband down to read him sections of a book. When I was reading Totem Salmon, I couldn't help it. I kept saying, "Listen to this one." I owned a home in the Mattole River Watershed in the late 70's and early 80's. I was amazed at how well Freeman House captures the essence of the area and the people without caricaturing either. Over and over he writes a few sentences which really "get it right" in explaining the landscape, the weather or the people of the area. This is not an easy "how-to" book on bringing back the salmon, but it brings out why it is worth the effort for as long as it takes.

Learning from Life, Nurturing Place.......1999-12-18

The book is a first-person account telling the story of a group of people who have dedicated themselves to rehabbing a river, a watershed, and saving some special strains of wild Pacific salmon stock. They decided to use salmon-hatchery technology (and other procedures) as a way to learn from the native salmon, rather than to introduce non-native species to their river. Freeman House is a truly impressive thinker and writer. His engaging intelligence is not just wide and deep, like a rockclimber his awareness gets into some unfamiliar and little-explored crevices of life - nature and human nature. House and his cohorts are questers who may ultimately discover something as important as did William Harvey or Sir Albert Howard. I'm tempted to call the book a riveting read, but the experience is warmer than that metaphor implies. It's hopeful. A strangely wise book.

Salmon splash in your heart........1999-10-03

From "Totem Salmon - Life Lessons from Another Species" by Freeman House -

"My straining senses slow down the sound so that each of its parts can be heard separately. A hiss, barely perceptible, as the fish muscles itself right out of its living medium; silence like a dozen monks pausing too long between the strophes of a chant as the creature arcs through the dangerous air; a crash as of a basketball going through a plate glass window as he or she returns to the velvet embrace of the water; and then a thousand tiny bells struck once only as the shards of water fall and the surface of the stream regains its viscous integrity."

"I flick on my headlamp and the whole backwater pool seems to leap toward me. The silver streak that crosses the enclosure in an instant is a flash of lightning within my skull, one which heals the wound that has separated me from this moment -- from any moment. The encounter is so perfectly complex, timeless, and reciprocal that it takes on an objective reality of its own. I am able to walk around it as if it were a block of carved stone. If my feelings could be reduced to a chemical formula, the experience would be a clear solution made up of equal parts of dumb wonder and clean exhilaration, colored through with a sense of abiding dread. I could write a book about it."

And here it is.

The Mattole River, where this story takes place, flows from the northwestern tip of California's Mendocino County, first a dozen miles northeast and then about sixty miles northwest through remote rural Humboldt County to its mouth at Petrolia. What keeps the river from reaching the Pacific Ocean any sooner is the King Range rising precipitously from the "Lost Coast", a stretch of beach frequented only by hikers and the occasional small plane.

Getting to the Mattole from the freeway is at least an hour's drive on winding country roads. This area, like much of Humboldt County, was logged in the fifties and sixties, and in the late sixties and seventies a substantial portion of it was sold to urban refugees, "reinhabitants". Over the next three decades, quite a few of them committed to the task of restoring the watershed to health. Two of these were David Simpson and Freeman House who together conceived and founded the Mattole Watershed Salmon Support Group. "Totem Salmon" tells the story of this work.

Salmon are an indicator species. Their health, as a population, closely tracks the health of the watershed to which they return. If you want to know how well a river valley is doing in the Pacific Northwest, look at the salmon runs, if there are any left. The principal enemy of the salmon is silt, produced by erosion usually from badly built roads and culverts, and from logging. Salmon need clean gravel in the streambed for eggs to survive and hatch. Well forested valleys with little erosion provide the best stream habitat for hatching and rearing salmon.

In 1950, before logging, it is recalled by the older Mattole valley residents, that, when they were running, "you could walk across the river on the backs of the salmon". In 1980, before restoration work began, the runs were down to perhaps 200 fish. More, those fish were the last wild salmon run in the state.

Looking back after reading the book, one could see the first phrase, "I am alone...", as a key to the work. Rooted in an explicit sense of self, spiraling out through sensory subtleties of immediate nature, to the larger cultural complexities, Mr. House melds what are usually seen as distinct worlds into a coherent portrait of a personal and multi-species reality. Like the salmon traversing the several worlds of ocean, river, air and creek, the personal, philosophical, cultural, historical, administrative, ecological, and cosmic threads are finely woven into a narrative yielding a shimmering presence of spirit and nature.

The book is a deeply enjoyable memoir of a long personal relationship with salmon. Along the way we see the history of the Euro-American relationship with this species, and that of the Native-American people who were here managing these watersheds long before. We learn of the state and federal administrative context of salmon management and the history of our, first, ignorance, and then, study of the anadromous species and their rivers. In clear and moving images, and with affection and humor, we see the people on the Mattole River who have joined hands for eighteen years to rescue this last wild run of salmon from extinction. Lastly we see the hopeful results and the tenuous circumstances of their work.

We might expect it to be a text for salmon restoration, and while the specifics are there they are widely scattered throughout the book. More attention is given to the wider question of how we got here, and how we can get through this to a more wholesome, rooted, and appreciative life in our particular place. If it is a text -- and Mr. House would say it is not -- it is a meta-instructional one, showing a way to become a people who will do the right thing for the watershed and thus for the salmon. The personal explorations in the book demonstrate by example the message beneath the text: by immersing ourselves in the reality of our local valley we can rescue both the health of our watersheds and our sense of ourselves. In the end, we see that they are the same journey; the salmon reflect to us our understanding of self and place.

Book Description

In a pathbreaking analysis, Sara Singleton explores the development of schemes for the management of fisheries in the northwestern United States in which native American tribes, and state, federal, and local governments cooperate to manage limited fishing resources. In the policy dispute over the apportionment of scarce resources, some argue that only government control or private ownership will prevent the destruction of limited common resources. The author shows how cooperation among interested parties can produce a workable system for self-management of common resources. Through the detailed study of the management of fisheries in the Northwest the author tests theories explaining the basis of collective action and social cooperation, an area of rich theoretical speculation in political science, law, economics and sociology. At the same time, her findings have important implications for policy makers who are interested in efficient and effective schemes of resource control that avoid the problems caused by regulation by remote government officials or private control.

This book will appeal to policy makers concerned with the management of natural resources as well as to economists, political scientists, and sociologists concerned with collective action problems.

Sara Singleton is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Tulane University.

Salmon Nation: People, Fish, and Our Common Home

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Salmon Nation: People, Fish, and Our Common Home
Elizabeth Woody , Jim Lichatowich , Richard Manning , Freean House , and Seth Zuckerman
Manufacturer: Ecotrust
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0967636418

Book Description

Along the Pacific coast of North America, the fates of people and salmon have been intertwined since the end of the last Ice Age. Salmon Nation leads readers deep into the watersheds of the West Coast in the company of six knowledgeable guides to better understand the most celebrated fish of western North America. Thoughtful essays by Native American writer Elizabeth Woody, fisheries biologist Jim Lichatowich, journalist Richard Manning, former commercial fisherman Freeman House, and environmental writer Seth Zuckerman trace the relationship between people and salmon from the abundance that sustained Northwest Coast cultures to the troubled world of salmon today, and depict a future of rivers restored and fishing livelihoods revived-a future still within our reach. Geographer Dorie Roth's full-color maps of the state of Pacific salmon today offer a powerful "big-picture" perspective that lends a new urgency to efforts to heal the breach between people and salmon.

Book Description

As salmonids have been reared for more than a century in many countries, one might expect that principles are well established and provide a solid foundation for salmonid aquaculture. Indeed, some of the methods used today in salmonid rearing are nearly identical to those employed one hundred years ago. Areas of salmonid research today include nutrition, smolt and stress physiology, genetics and biotechnology.

The purpose of this book is to provide a useful synthesis of the biology and culture of salmonid fishes. The important practices in salmonid culture as well as the theory behind them is described. This volume will be of interest to students, researchers, fisheries biologists and managers as well as practising aquaculturists.

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