Oregon Story; Fishing

Funding for production of the Oregon story was made possible through a generous grant from the United States Department of Agriculture rural development. You you. You. You. Dirty hard dangerous occupation. Once you do it and find you like it. You can never get out of your blood it's addictive. These are kind of the modern day cowboys you know that they're out there risking their life and they don't get a six shooter pull out and they get a 20 foot wave down down and the. Same. Result.

If. You do the same thing that rumor that they did 100 years ago you put an ad out and you pull it back in and once in it is. My thing it goes all the way back to the beginning of time really. Glad. You did it's most basic level commercial fishing is Oregon's most ancient natural resource industry. Many fishermen describe themselves as the last of the hunter. And indeed while farmers grow crops for food. And ranchers raise domestic animals for meat dairy products fish are still pursuing a ray of wild creatures in their natural habitat. All the while exposing themselves to volatile sometimes violent weather. See. They use the same basic gear developed by their predecessors centuries ago. The net. Book. And.

I can guarantee you that we're not getting rich at any of these fisheries. The bigger boats do better you know. It's just the way it is. Commercial fishing at the close of the 20th century is largely a capital intensive corporate sized industry. Small affordable wooden fishing boats struggled to compete with million dollar steel hold leviathans driven by powerful diesel engines. And guided by space age electronic gear costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. For all its technological advances capital investments and expansions into an ever widening a ray of ocean fisheries Oregon's fishing industry accounts for an ever shrinking percentage of the overall Oregon economy over the last 100 years. Today commercial fishing can take credit for only about 1 percent of the state's economy. But for the isolated communities along Oregon's rugged coastline commercial fishing can account for 25 percent or

more of the local economy. Whenever we have a outstanding year in sales it's a direct reflection of something that's happening during the commercial fishing industry. Once the dominant fishery in Oregon the salmon fishery now contributes a mere 1 percent to commercial fishing PST total production in Oregon. And yet it was in commercial fishing infancy at the turn of the century and for just a few golden years. But the salmon fishery of the lower Columbia nurtured Oregon's pioneer economy has its third largest industry tourist craned their necks as they follow the freeze that traces the history of Astoria as it spirals around the Astoria column. The images memorialized the arrivals of American sea captain Robert Gray the discoverer of the Columbia River and the overland expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark scant attention is paid to salmon fishing rather than the

noted as a characteristic of Indian culture. It was furs not fish that drew Captain Gray to the northwest today. Lewis and Clark came to discover whatever wealth lay in this new territory and how to exploit it. But the river salmon were a mere footnote in their report to President Thomas Jefferson. The French innovation of canning to preserve food in 1810 which set the stage for the transformation of Astoria from an isolated trading post into the center of the world's salmon industry. In 1865 four Scottish American brothers from Maine arrived at the lower Columbia to establish a salmon cannery. The brothers Hughes their first cannery on California's Sacramento River failed the year before due to already depleted salmon runs. And so they saw the Colombians saw this whole river of tremendous runs of salmon came

up and opened a cantering in 1866 and here is the industrial revolution and what was the fast food for the industrial revolution with canned salmon the result of which is that we move from a fishery that always been predicated on local consumption to a fishery that is now hooked into a limitless consumption. And. Suddenly we have a problem with there being no limits to rational fish. In 1866 that Humes packed and sold 4000 cases of salmon for $64000 a sizable fortune in those days. It took just two gill net boat to catch the quarter million pounds of salmon for that first pack. More canneries followed and by the 1880s Columbia River Canneries provided half of all canned salmon consumed worldwide. The U.S. Census of 1880. Reflected the dominance of the canned salmon industry on the

economy of Astoria and clutch of county. Of the county 7000 residents. Nearly one third were Chinese. Recruited as cheap reliable labor for the salmon canneries. Almost one fifth of class of counties residents in June of 1880 were fishermen mostly transients. Who came up from the Sacramento river to fish the four month salmon season from April through July. Most were single living in local boarding houses. Nearly all were immigrants. Half from Sweden Finland Norway. Their legacy is still visible on the streets of Astoria though their descendants are less in evidence on the Columbia River. Today most of Astoria boats sit idle. OK you know the starter Don risk Wiccan Abby eye hand or are among the last to enjoy a full time fishing life on the Columbia. When they started.

Anybody could get Indigo netting on the Columbia. You could rent a boat for. Bumblebee for 40 dollars a season. Lisa. That's how I started. But I started when I was 12 for making set nets. My granddad built me a boat and then I went boat pulling it with the other fisherman to learn the river one but today neither man would recommend your netting to a young man starting out. I tell him you're too late. I the kids are mother of Robert I want to head the. Yule netting is regarded as little more than an anachronism by most Northwesterners. It is a painful realization bitter and sad for me I don't know. It didn't have to be that way and it's a sad feeling when you actually fish yourself for 30 40 years on the river here to see it go down the tube like it's been going.

It's a rainy March morning and Frank Terra Baki and Bob are the only two gill netters plying the murky waters of Young's Bay just off the Columbia River near Astoria. The main stamp is now usually close to gill netters to protect threatened runs of up river wild salmon. Instead of fishing for themselves on this day they're test fishing for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Perversely what these gill netters don't catch is in a sense more important than what they do catch trying to. Make sure we don't. Catch any. Wild fish here. A pair of bright fish. Would have to. Prove to everybody that we can fish in here maybe a little earlier. And. Not hurt anything so. Everybody is. The town calls me up how many do you get. How many do you get so everybody's. Interested in

it. Jim Hill and his staff race should look fry in these pans in Young's bay until they reach the small stage when they're ready to go out to sea to feed and grow into adult salmon. The theory is that they will imprint on Young's Bay and return here as adults where they can be safely caught away from the mixed stocks of the Columbia. What fishery managers call a terminal fishery the terminal fisheries are providing the backbone. Of. The commercial fishing industry. And in this area Astoria it was built on that industry. So back when we started when we were supplementing the main stem Colombia. It was just doing that well now because of the switch from the mains down to Columbia problems. We are. It's the other way around. The main stem is supplementing what we're providing in the terminal fisheries.

Paul Hiroshi from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is overseeing the test fish. His job is to both safeguard threatened salmon and help sustain Astoria salmon fishery. The net can't tell the difference between a snake or a fish versus a fish destined for the different river or a Wind River. It's this you cannot make that distinction. That's why now we are into looking at areas such as you know on the bay. To. Keep this fishery going. And to utilize hatchery fish rather than releasing fish in hatcheries. We'd rather release them in places like young bay where they can be harvested. And not interfere with. Wild populations. Meanwhile other sectors of what remains of Astoria salmon industry find ways to cope. With. Knowing quite a lot isn't waiting for projects like the Young's Bay

pilot project to provide fishing. In order to survive in the fishing business quite a lot has had to evolve right along with it. He and his sons operate a small scale specially cannery just across Young's Bay in Warrington. Reminiscing about getting started fishing on the Columbia brings tears to his eyes today. I made a good 20 what will it look like now that I made it when I was in high school and that I didn't have an Indian board in it then and no thinking about an already established fisherman vouch for quite a lot. At one of the canneries he took me down the manager of your new fish. I'm gonna let. Anyway it did

yeah. Go on Monday to the end you know I wanted to fit in. This actually become a hit were the game. But that was nearly 50 years ago. The large canneries that once dominated the Astoria waterfront are all gone. They're piling standing in mute tribute to their passing the surviving buildings converted to restaurant space. Yeah I just never believed that Barbee would be gone I thought they'd be back in a tick to 70 fantastic. Even in the 80s I never dreamt that they would be around your any more. Than. That. Right before my eyes. But the decline of the lower Columbia salmon fishery was well underway before KOA was

even born. As the turn of the 19th century approached the golden years of the lower Columbia salmon fishery were already receding. 39 canneries now competed for salmon and the markets in which to sell them. By nine thousand eight hundred twenty six hundred deal netters competed to supply salmon to a mere 24 canneries. But not just against each other. Other fishing methods enter the fray and fisherman Drew battle lines according to gear. They. Very early in the 80s 70s in the 1980s begin to realize that there are not enough same to go around and they begin to try and figure out how to hold on to their portion of the allocation while limited in the right. And so the gill netters they formed a union plumber a fisherman's protectin Union and there was actually a war that almost came to be between Washington Oregon and 1896 during the strike. That year and the militias of the two

states were brought out. It was quite a time of conflict. One particularly bitter fight was between gill netters and Trackman. Traps were huge set nets that guided salmon a direct tangle or pins where they could be harvested. As the cannery needed them. At their peak there were almost 400 traps in the river. Matters appealed to the U.S. Corps of Engineers to ban traps because they posed a threat to navigation. Some gill netters took it upon themselves to destroy traps and murder their operators. Cantor sought to cut their labor costs through the use of course drawn Sainz in the shallows at the mouth of the Columbia and up river in the faster waters near the Dells fisheries. 90 to seine operation swept the sandy shoals at the mouth of the Columbia with their huge horse drawn ness. Horse and operated at low tide

when powerful draft horses worked by relatively few crewmembers could wade through the water and pull in the half mile next layout by men in small boats. The catches could be enormous as much as 30 tons in one record haul. Meanwhile up river as many as seventy six fish wheels endlessly scooped salmon from the rapids of the Cascades and falls. Canners owned and operated fish we're. Requiring only one man to operate fish wheels concentrated capital in Cantor's pockets. For a brief period per se ners from Puget Sound entered the Columbia to compete directly with matters for fishing areas. The additional gear further diluted earnings. And fishers knew it. They all use concerns over diminish salmon runs to eliminate their competitors.

And you see gill netters beginning to construct stories that place the blame primarily on fish real owners or Cena or trap owners or per se ners or eventually trollers and everybody else is doing the same thing. And the ultimate goal here is simply to try winnow out rivals. In the name of conserving salmon. Gill netters convinced the Oregon Washington legislature to outlaw her singing on the Columbia in one thousand twenty two. Fish wheels were driven off the river in 1034 by a Washington state ballot initiative petition. And by nine hundred forty nine gill netters persuaded enough Oregon voters to pass an initiative banning same. But the salmon fishery continued to decline. And gill netters themselves would later fall victim to the ballot box. Just downstream from Cascade locks the banks of the Columbia are dotted with fishing scaffold. Most have been damaged by spring flooding.

But on one of the more sturdily built scaffolds Jesse Sampson tends a hoop net in the hopes the should look will blunder into it. Sampson supplements his income catching and selling fish. But with salmon runs as scant as they've been in recent years he comes down to the water mainly out of a sense of tradition. I think it's. Pretty slim pickens. Me man. Just. One of things you're not going to make a lot of money and I'm going to eat more as him then. And you make it. This way you know and you know they say we can subsist on this and this is our native right. I come from you know to 14 bend the explanation. And. I come from around Dells. And the fission is. In my blood so. When the fish are here I have to be here to. Just.

Upriver these young men from the Warm Springs confederated tribes are following tribal customs. Thousands of years old. Spring runs of salmon have become so scarce that the tribes are limited to catching only enough salmon for ceremonial purposes. I grew up here and I grew up also on a reservation and my father did ceremony kind of passing it on and keeping it going. And I have a brother that's here with me now it's turning on also. The spring Chinook or the salmon most revered by the tribes. They are the first to return to the upper river fishing grounds aside that the cycle of life containing both the salmon and the tribe continues unbroken. That's going back to thinking to create again for you know giving us food.

And we you know say a little prayer and to the fist now and explaining why you know why why we have to take him. The Chinook will be eaten not merely for food but to sustain the vestiges of an Indian culture once defied by fishing for salmon. Here at Cascade locks the salmon are brought in to be transported back to the Warm Springs reservation. 15 even. As a Warm Springs Fish and Wildlife officer. It is Stanley stem to Seuss's job to make a detailed accounting of the catch. 13. Each fish must be weighed and measured and the data recorded. The fish will be frozen and made available to tribe members for use in religious ceremonies. Stimme to stew says philosophic about the limits placed

on what for thousands of years was his people's traditional and seemingly limitless source of food on counter do with their good abundance of salmon and I used to go fishing just to ride in the winter. Chris would come every part of the year. We didn't have rules or regulations on the bike or do nowadays because as the years come by the fish was going down and then we had to set rules you know to seasons for Christian women. Just don't. Be a murder but we have to believe murder ruled and. Go away to seasons to do a Christian attend Warner to have your workplace where they extend. In the centuries before contact with whites. The tribes at the Columbia fish the river salmon runs just as intensively as the white commercial fisherman of the 19th and

early 20th century. But without overfishing the numbers themselves don't explain a lot because. While the Indians are catching and consuming a tremendous amount of sand by anybody's estimates. They're not doing a whole lot of other things. They're not mine they're not are getting they're not logging they're not building large cities. They're not building dams. All those things also contribute to the problem is partly explains why. The intensive fishery itself doesn't begin to exhaust the explanations for why salmon go away. The Western mining boom hit Oregon in the 1850s. Hydraulic mining used pressurized streams of water to more quickly expose valuable or deposit who's. In the process of damaging salmon runs all over Oregon Washington and Idaho. The influx of minors created a larger market for farmers. And an impetus to tap the waters of Northwest rivers and streams for irrigation. Further compromising salmon run. Timber cutters

huge close to riparian areas to more easily float logs to mill log jams impeded salmon passing. In the mid 1800s 11 western streams had log jams of between a hundred and fifteen hundred feet in length. Bloggers used hundreds of Splash dams on Columbia tributaries and coastal Springs to flush logs downstream. The violent release of the backed up water scoured out screen destroying salmon habitat. And so as settlers transformed the northwest to suit their purposes. Salmon and salmon fishers faced a vastly altered world in the second half of the 19th century. The clear unimpeded screens gave way to rivers that were dirtier warmer and more often obstructed. But the decline of salmon runs would be blamed chiefly on commercial fishers themselves who serve this highly visible scapegoat taking the focus off inland enterprise.

We are a trist real society and a tricycle culture that values farming far more than fishing fishing in many people's minds away from the rivers. Was always a temporary passing phase of the economy and eventually we would all become Jeffersonian farmers. And. The result was that there wasn't a whole value lot of value placed on fishing by large sectors of society. So why not make fishers. Bear the brunt of sustaining the rents. Why not make fishers bear the brunt of declining Hartness. It's not in most people's interests to save the fisheries. Those interests were galvanized in the early 20th century as the growing Inland Empire recognized the Columbia's potential and elaborate plans were made to tame the Columbia and harness its power under the yoke of concrete dam. On the river bank and be given credit for the salmon get

over there you know and leave it but it here ramrod the bonnet and it. Was built around the brain just cattle ever made by man. And they find a new easier today. Going. The law in place at the time mandated that any disruption of the salmon had to be compensated either with hatcheries or fish ladders some kind of compensation if you disturb the salmon run.

So the people at the time were hardly callous. They knew they had to do something. The problem was they really didn't know an awful lot about salmon biology and what they did know tended to be ignored in the name of development. The salmon still had its own float in the Rose Festival parade but so too did hydroelectric power. The Amal so many Northwest interests looked to a newly domesticated Colombia to speed their growth. Fishers began to turn away from the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. Salmon Fishers were among the first to head over the bar to escape fishing restrictions in 1056 after numerous attempts. Sports fisherman convinced voters that Gil netter should be banned from all coastal rivers to preserve the salmon for the supposedly nobler practice of fishing with a rod and reel.

That doesn't get rid of the commercial fishes they still need to do the sizzle for their livelihood. So what they begin to do is adopt trolling as a strategy for continuing their livelihoods. Instead of using gill nets in rivers fishers towed multiple lures or baited hooks through the ocean from stainless steel lines attached the outriggers bars. Out of reach of fishing restrictions. Trolling fleets grew rapidly between one thousand fifty in one thousand seventy eight. Why instead of reducing the salmon harvest. Modern conservationists had merely displaced it to the ocean and increased fishing expenses. But eventually the trollers too had to contend with fewer fish and more restrictions. Kevin bastion came to Oregon in 1074 to work as a landscaper. He couldn't have known then it would lead to a profession that would take him far from even the sight of land. I met my first fisherman down at a my first job in Oregon.

Was landscaping and he convinced me I should try fishing and I went out with him in the film are in. From that point on I was hooked after accruing for other fisherman and leasing a boat for a few years. Best Ian bought his own boat the gal and joined the Newport trolling fleet as he's watched salmon numbers dwindle so too is bastion witness the trolling fleet steady decline. Each season. Fewer of the boats he passes on the way out of Newport Harbor are trollers and fewer of those that remain still fish full time compared to when he started two decades earlier. Back then antibody could get into the business and if you just had to have the gumption or whatever that you wanted to go fishing and a lot of people did and.

Have since gotten out of the game those people have kind of faded away and now you're looking at the survivors the people that actually want to work at fishing for a living. Much of the time Bastian fishes alone used both captain and crew which means days of hard work and solitude but not loneliness. It doesn't bother me at all to be out there for five days without seeing another human you know other than that a distance. I don't get bored very easily. For the most part you're too busy to get bored or lonely. It's like going camping by yourself I don't know if you've ever done that or not but it can be more exciting than. Revelry. To stay in fishing bastion and his peers have had to adapt to fishing multiple fisheries in addition to trolling for salmon. I'll do four to five different fisheries in here and that and that includes

salmon tuna. Corgi longline. Crabbing and halibut. Those are the. Ones that will. Work for me and there's been years when we haven't even salmon fish. You guys keep struggling to make it through the year. But his fishing seasons became shorter and shorter and catch is smaller and smaller. Two thirds of salmon trollers up and down Oregon's Coast have given up on fishing and found other professions. All right. Take euro and stretch it out like this. Well if you haven't. You got to stretch it out like this. I got tie a square knot. Tim Cochran still uses some of his fishing skills to keep things interesting for his sixth graders. A lot of times my lessons in school and vav stories of times that I spent on the water. Were involved a lot of skills that I've learned in the last 20 years of fishing and tying knots of

curing boredom by entertaining yourself. Here's what you're going to do. Take the rabbit in the east down underground. He comes through the hole. Ironically it was a school teacher who got Cochrane into trolling. Now Cochrane sees a poetic symmetry to his new life. You know often I think in terms of me taking his spot he was a teacher that became a fisherman. They taught me to be a fisherman and then I became a teacher so they're sort of a nice circular path. Story Cochran's boat is still more just a few miles up the river from Newport. His daughter and son both learned to walk on the opal Wells pitching deck. My wife and I decided that fishing. If it was something we were going to do together then there's no reason why we shouldn't bring our children along with. So. Pastor you've made your first. Salmon trip at six weeks old and

she's. 14 now. I know she still had colic when you were 100 miles offshore. So there were times. Raising a family. And being a fishing family a quote fishing family that that really made this a great way to. Made it a great occupation. How many times would you have to change your watch if you traveled from Ohio. Ohio to Nevada. And though he's happy teaching Cochran admits he sometimes misses fishing. Yeah there are days there are times when I miss fishing quite a bit. I like to go down to the docks in the spring time and. And smell the pine tar on the. And the fanner and the paint being spread on boats and watching guys work hard and step back and mire their worth and there's no

guarantee that they're going to make it but in general it seems like. Trollers anyway are fairly optimistic and the ones that have survived I think that's part of the reason why they're still here because they're optimistic and they they somehow found a way to make it work. You know they survived the bad years. Bret are you doing fine. Good to see you. So it looks like you are working hard here. Oh yeah I've been real busy. Put in the new quadrant there I see that so show me what it's made with his eyes wide open. Brad Blodgett of Vancouver Washington meat cutter is ready to try his hand at fishing for a living. It's something that I wake up in the morning wanting to do. And I spent 21 years cut me and I never you know I didn't really hate it but I didn't get up in the morning actually want to do it. And that's what it is for the earth.

It looks like those bolts and they're broke at one time and then they screw great big screws in there. And so now Cochran catches last tied to the fishing life by selling the opal oil to Blodgett with no regrets. I guess I was more concerned about the boat the boat than I was about myself I knew that I there were other things I could go on and do. It was for some reason you feel like you both have a soul and I felt like I had let it down and I was happy to see that somebody get a hold of it and you know want to. Put it back on the water. Blodgett has no illusions that his entry into the salmon trolling fishery will be anything like Cochrane's back in the mid-70s. What's going to be more of a thing where it's you have to like doing it and not that you think you're going to come upon a gold mine every day and make a whole bunch of money. You know it's like going back and trips on this boat and I had some $17000

trips in the first year you know five days. In his day three hundred fish a day it was not unusual. And now at 100 in the can it is you know that's what everybody is really striving for. His next film where. We have the best he can get it. Plan but ran away. To a. Ranch in. Oregon for cooking. Fuel. There's no. Question this morning. You know. You know what killing somebody else caught on. As commercial salmon fisher strive for good catches. They confront a frustrating paradox. While they're catching fewer salmon. The prices they're getting for the seemingly precious fish are at historic low. I'm thinking we're catching salmon this year but the prices so low not to the consumer but to the prices low. And so that's that's having a banner Well we're fishing at

prices we haven't seen for 25 years. Here in the fishing hamlet of Anacortes in Washington's Puget Sound. They harvest more salmon yearly than the entire Oregon fishing fleet combined. But this huge production of salmon involves not a single boat in the small Anacortes fishing fleet. Yon and Lorenzo Vyse Hansen may look like fishermen in fact fishing in their family goes back several generations. But really they're farmers. Salmon farmers. You're in a protected off Cyprus island across the Bellingham channel from Anacortes. The two brothers operate three rafts of net bands first dam fish farms. Most of the salmon sold in northwest fish markets in grocery stores come from fish

farms just like this one. The total industry in Washington state requires less than 50 acres. I guess a normal golf course is probably 250 300 acres. So 50 acres for a production as big as we're talking to both doesn't seem like a whole lot especially when you consider that the total value of the salmon produced on Washington fish farms alone is nearly twice that of the catch in Oregon Washington and California combined. Just one of these bands produces as much revenue as Oregon's total salmon catch. About a third of all the salmon consumed worldwide are raised on fish farms in Chile Norway British Columbia to salmon farm operations like scanning Oregon salmon fishery is small fry wild caught if you're talking about fish from the contiguous United States they're almost insignificant.

These fish are about halfway to their market size of 9 to 11 pounds. They are periodically separated by size. And whisked off to separate heads. The number of workers required to raise the salmon is small. Fifteen employees on four sites like this one in addition to the advantage of low cost of production and thus lower wholesale price farm raised salmon are available year round. The main ability of consistent quality would be to two major benefits so that anybody planning on putting a salmon on the menu restaurant menu or having a promotion and a big store they would be able to plan ahead knowing that they will get the product. They know what quality product they're getting. And price can be locked in at a time when there is one fundamental difference between these farm raised salmon and wild caught fish. These are Atlantic salmon Pacific salmon do not adapt well to

aquaculture and to some consumers that is a critical difference. Here it be mollusks on the corner of Park and salmon in downtown Portland. The salmon stands out in the decor. We're on salmon street and we got a big old salmon on the outside the building and this is something that was featured at this restaurant. Northwest keystroke and you sing from the fields from the river from the ocean. And. It's really from the restaurant was really founded on salmon. But on the menu. And in the kitchen. Salmon is conspicuous only by its absence a reflection of the restaurant's dedication to featuring regional food. Pacific salmon are not yet in season. We try not to feature a lot of radiance that aren't from the area we try to call things that come in naturally here whatever hazelnuts with strawberry or. Salmon and that's it. Gil Silvia is an economist at the Hatfield Marine Science Center whose specialty

is seafood marketing. He says that Oregon salmon fisherman can't compete in the face of lower salmon catches and higher numbers of farm raised fish unless they get better at marketing the Chinook as a unique specialty seafood shop salmon actually make up only about 1 percent of global salmon supplies. Therefore we may be able to unique niche marketing which examined in a way that we can take advantage and generate actually in the long run higher prices and demand for this relatively unique product. And back at Young's Bay the experimental terminal fishery is coming to fruition. A 30 hour season is open for gill netting on the spring Chinook they're expected to return to the vicinity of the net bands where they were reared. Bryant Arab Akio and his father are having some good luck early today. Brian subscribes to Gil Silvio's theory that there is a niche market to be filled

by should look salmon. This is a fine white tablecloth restaurant. Fisher I mean it's not a it's not a charm that you would smoke in and maybe out of food coloring or something to it or whatever to to hide it that's where there's a glut of fish. There's it there is little niches I think for fish like this. You know restaurants and stuff. From Oregon's Department of Fish and Wildlife he's back to observe this first day of fishing and likes what he sees. Today and there. But he knows for gill netters it's not enough. They are not overly enthusiastic. They ask how are you doing. I'll cut a few. But overall after this first day's catch and I'm sure they will be very happy to have looks like an average catch maybe between five and 10. And that's quite good this early with this small

pilot program. So I really think that in inside. They're extremely happy. But Oregon's fissures are nothing if not adaptive. Engine powered vessels allowed fishers to drag large nets through the water and gradually various trawl fisheries developed. The Columbia River salmon fishery has been eclipsed in the last two decades by a rapidly expanding ocean fishery. Through innovation and experimentation. Fishers learn to exploit various ocean species. Shrimp the so-called gentlemens fishery because it occurs only during spring and summer when the weather is mild and the seas are calm developed in the mid-1950s. Oregon fishers borrow techniques from shrimp trawlers in the Gulf of Mexico to increase harvest. Such as pulling two nets on either

side instead of just one. And more efficient automated trim peelers made process and economical. A variety of species are taken by bottom trawlers which developed as early as the turn of the century. But a lack of markets delayed their development trawlers operate more or less the year round often braving violent winter seed. Crabbing is done mainly in the winter when fish are set hundreds of crab pots in deep water baited with dead fish. Power pulleys are used to bring the heavy traps back to the surface where the crabs are sorted by size and sacks and kept alive in tanks of circulating seawater. The single largest commercial fishery in Oregon today is a fish most Oregonians wouldn't recognize. Pacific Whiting. We're probably harvesting somewhere around

seventy eight thousand metric tons of this resource which bore us. We compare salmon which might be a thousand or to couple thousand metric tons you can see how a dwarf for example salmon and collectively Pacific Whiting is larger in volume than all the other species we harvest put together. And that's a brand new species we just started harvesting that in any kind of volume in 1900. Pacific Whiting is a perfect illustration of the barrier fishers face every time they attempt to exploit a new fishery. Market. Catching fish while it presents its own technical challenges is relatively easy compared to finding a market in which to sell them. Whiting while unknown to most consumers was well known to Oregon's fishing fleet as Pacific cake but was regarded as a trash fish. It wasn't. A fish in which our seafood industry had ever targeted. And this is because it had a relatively soft flash. It had certain types of

protease and zines that make the flesh soft and became very difficult to handle and bring ashore and process into a product that consumers would want. But scientists from Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Agriculture figured out methods to handle Whiting and turn it into a marketable product get on the shore in a short period of time within 10 12 16 hours and they get them processed quickly. And we found that by doing that and by coordinating the activities between the processor and the fisherman. One could. Dramatically improve the quality of this product. Trash fish take a turn into quality Whiting. And so that one could then make Sereny which is a wash mints protein product that's sold to make present accreditation products and sold particularly in Japan and Korea and other Asian countries. We invented on 50 minutes mission one 60 in the bank there. Fishermen like Dave Smith were quick to adjust to the opportunity Whiting presented.

Smith enlarged the holding capacity of his boat the Lisa Melinda to £250000 to. Increase the power of its diesel engines to nine hundred fifty horsepower and likes in the boat to 81 feet. The Lisa Melinda drags a single net shaped like a hundred foot long Woman stocking attached a garter like cables at a mid-water depths between the bottom and the surface and then they were under 50000. Now according to this we have got half of it right now. This shows the ocean floor. And this is that going in there right here. Sensors in the net send a signal as each section of the cod into the net goes talk full of fish. Smith says of all the improvements in fishing electronics are the most critical to the fishing he does. Without them he'd be fishing blind.

First of all you wouldn't be able to the CNN or the boat it would know your vision you know and even know where you were really relation to the bottom. I don't see you get that here. Basically I would say you would be fishing without most of the electronics. For the crew on a modern vessel like the Lisa Melinda life is vastly more civilized than for their predecessors. During a long toad or the sometimes 40 mile trips to and from the fishing grounds. There is time to relax in the roomy galley space and watch a movie on tape. But when the Nets fall there is a flurry of activity. Which is strange to reel in the fish Laden net. Heavy with catch. The COD end is so large it must be winched on board in sections

for splits. Speed is of the essence because of its delicate flesh. Whiting must be gotten aboard as quickly as possible and into chilled seawater below deck to forestall any deterioration before the fish are processed. Once the fish are stowed below and the net prepared for the next tow the Lisa Melinda heads full steam for new port and as the sun slips behind the horizon the crew turns to more domestic chores like preparing dinner. Vance Morris has tonight's culinary duties. The bill of fare is not fish but tacos. In the fishing life Vance says the ability to get along is critical to a long term career at sea. Fishing is not for everybody and never will be. It takes. A certain mentality to handle our. Special live in tight quarters like this you're constantly in contact with each other all day long 24 hours a day.

No matter when you want privacy you get when you go to your bunk. Action or to take showers. That's the only privacy. Daughter now. That. It's pretty tight quarters right know where to go. I mean you're definitely here. You're here for the duration that you're back for. Once back at port processor plant employees descend on the Lisa Melinda with an enormous hoses that will devour a Whiting from the ship's hold in just two or three hours compared to the 18 to 20 hours he would have taken in recent years past. Leaving the crew just enough time for a little shut eye and then the process begins again. Barry Fisher now retired has been a witness to the boom of the Oregon trawl fleet. He says fishermen all understand the vagaries of commercial fishing and accept them. Friend of mine put it best.

When somebody Jarno about how tough fission was is that nobody ever promised me a rose garden. So I know a couple of things and I know them real good. If I judge fish I eat if I catch a lot of fish I eat damn good and if I don't catch any fish I starve to death and it's my fault alone. Mike Rutherford is skipper and co-owner of Fisher's boat the Excalibur. He went fishing straight out of high school with a fisherman friend of the family and took to it right from the start made a free trip. I like that I didn't get sick. Realize how much the crew on that boat made. I thought hey this is I like this fish an is the thrill of me is I mean you don't know until you're out there and you see you know 10 12 15 foot waves just rolling over the side of the boat and. You're hanging on and on it it's scary. But when it's all done it's like wow. There are other times though with long stretches of frustration eclipsed

passthrough. And Rutherford is reminded why it's called fishing. And not catching. There's a lot of you know bad time. You go out on a five day trip. There might be days where you'd rip your net up every day three times a day and you're out here working and. You know 24 hours a day trying to keep things going and then other days it's just like clockwork you know just everything falls into place. So patience I guess you've got to have a lot of patience. The Troll fishery Rutherford flies is not the bonanza of Barry Fisher's heyday in the 1980s. In an effort to preserve the ground fishery government regulators limit drag boats like the Excalibur to smaller and smaller monthly quotas. The way the fishing is getting now as. We don't spend a lot of time on the ocean anyway. Like your wife hand you a grocery list. OK. Go to the store and get this this and this you know. Well that's what the Basically what it boils down to

for us is that here you have so much to catch of this and this and this point you can you know get it all. Brought in for the month and you're done so. And the limits of keep decreasing here and they're going to get better I believe. I hope. So. At the end of the 20th century the Oregon commercial fishing industry has reached the stage that seems inevitable in fishing to many fishers and not enough fish. To last 20 years have seen explosive growth in Oregon's ocean fishery rivaling the lower Columbia salmon boom at the turn of the last century. It was a boom sparked by the stroke of a pen. In 1076 Washington's late Senator Warren Magnuson sponsored an act extending the United States fishery zone from 12 miles to 200 miles.

The huge foreign factory ships that had dominated those deepwater fisheries were displaced and the American fleet expanded to fill the vacuum. They have been fishing going on by other people. Basically the Russians the Japanese out there so what Magnussen did this side that all those resources were to be for American fishermen. Of course right along side with that under the Magna snack came a lot of incentives to capitalize this this industry and lots of money moved into this industry very quickly. People built boats I don't know out of style and we're fine boats like them going out of style. When now back down to more normal times we have too many boats we have action too many processes and now our challenge is to reduce the amount of both reduce amount of people involved in fisheries in order to keep the fishery industry that's quite steady. Just as their predecessors in the lower Columbia River to many Oregon fishers now

chase too few fish. It took over a century for the Columbia salmon fishery to bottom out. Men like Don risk wick and Abby I hand witness the death throes of their way of life on the Columbia. And after just a couple of decades Oregon's ocean fisheries are at a critical stage and a new generation of fishers wonders about the future. Some small scale trollers like Tim Cochran and find work on land. While other small boat owners like Kevin will continue their struggle to compete with larger more efficient boats and stay in the fishing life they love. And larger trawlers like the Excalibur will strive to remain profitable in the face of shrinking quotas on fisheries past their peak.

Once again the boom times have passed and Oregon hunters now pursue fishing is most elusive quarry stability. Funding for production of the Oregon story was made possible through a generous grant from the United States

Department of Agriculture rural development.