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07/24/2007: "A Different Kind of Conservation"
Greetings from Seattle!
I'm sitting in my hotel room here at the Doubletree Suites Seattle / Southcenter in the middle of the night making this entry, since it's the only time all day I've been able to break away from the real work I'm supposed to be doing. It's actually a different kind of feeling, since I'm up here to participate in a workshop to support a software suite that will eventually replace the one I've spent the last two years developing. As you might imagine, I'm not a big fan of the decision, so it's hard for me to sit here and not let that interfere with my ability to be a beneficial participant. But I do what I can.
One thing that has made the trip good is the lack of rain. Every time I've been up here in the past, it's been raining, which really impacts your ability - and desire - to do any real sightseeing. With the sun shining today - and the sun not setting until nearly 10PM - I set off to see one of the sights I'd been looking forward to seeing.
Back in 1915, the Army Corps of Engineers created a pair of locks on the Lake Washington Ship Canal to regulate the water level of Lake Washington. As you might imagine, damming such a waterway really pisses off the salmon and steelhead doing their best to head upriver to spawn, so the Corp eventually added a fish ladder to let the fish through. It took a couple of tries, but the one they have today is considered one of the best examples where the public can witness a fish ladder in action - after all, it's right in the middle of Seattle!)
I have some great pictures of the dam, the locks and the ladder, but forgot to pack the card reader so they're stuck in the camera. For now, you'll just have to settle for a shot from Google Earth. The lock pair are at the top of the image, and the ladder is between the dam and the south shore of the canal. Being spawning season, we were able to see at least 20 fish make the leaps upstream during our half-hour on site. There's even an underwater viewing room where you can watch salmon and steelhead resting in one of the pools at the base of a ladder "rung" as they prepare for the next jump.
It's pretty easy to see the need for conservation when the fish are travelling through your city. The challenge for those of us who value billfish and recognize a similar need for conservation is to figure out how to make the public just as aware of the plight of these fish even though they are many miles offshore.
