7/17/2019

We met with Alex again and he took us to the Klamath tribe research facility, where he gave us a lecture on the Klamath River basin and its history. In 1907 with the Klamath Recreation Act the lands were to be drained and then made into something useful for agriculture, they made a canal in order to drain the lakes into the river and other places. Then in 1954 the Termination Act was the end of the assimilation period for the tribes and were no longer recognized, but then in 1986 the tribes petitioned for the right to be recognized again. There were 13 native fish species in the Klamath River and 7 of them are an endemic species. The L’waam (lost river sucker), and Koptu (short nose sucker) are two important food sources for the tribes. In 1988 both were listed as endangered, for ceremonies they only take one or two fish instead of hunting for them as they used too. These fish are long lived, living up to 33 and 55 years old, there have been no new born fish introduced into the population since 1993-1995. When all these old fish go up the Williamson River to spawn the juveniles, then by October, head back to the lake where they die because of the water quality. The L’waam can lay up to 33,000 eggs and the Koptu can lay up to 44,000-200,000 eggs, however none of these are able to survive the lake conditions. The newly hatched fish are supposed to live in the tulie area of the lake but between water quality and irrigation this habitat is uninhabitable so they are forced into deeper water where they can’t survive.

The reason the lake is so toxic to them is because of a number of reasons, but it’s mostly because of how the lands were forced to change. This habitat was a wetland which means that it filters unclean water and captures nutrients like phosphorus. Phosphorous is a limiting nutrient in fresh water so things only grow relative to how much phosphorous is in the system. When they drain Tulie Lake they uncover all the peat moss that captures all that phosphorous in the system, also peat moss is like a sponge when it dries up it shrinks this is why you can stand on the road and see that the part of the lake not drained looks like it is on higher ground than that of what has been drained. During this time all that phosphorus is concentrated and Algae like Cyno Bacteria and Microcystin flourish with it. They use up all the dissolved oxygen (DO) in the water, which by the way fish do breath in oxygen they just filter it through their gills, and when all the Algae  die they release ammonia into the system. With no DO in the system and massive amounts of ammonia the Juveniles are being both suffocated and poisoned by the water.

The Sprague Fish Water Lab is where Ben who is specializes in hydrology, and Travist who is a biologist, they both work in the chem lab and do a lot of testing of the phosphorous in the lake. They do these tests every couple weeks to see the content of the water. The results will very because of the seasons and also due to runoff, and Algo blooms, the pH will fluctuate throughout the season and get as high as 10.5.

We were then shown the fish hatchery, this is a place where put the juveniles they have taken from the river in order to raise them in clean water before they reach the lake and die. They had fish of different ages in the pools and will probably release them when they reach mature age in about 3-5 years.

Leaving the facility we were then taken to the Barkeley Spring. This is a spring that holds short nose suckers and it is the only place it can survive because of the clean water quality. Its gets it water from the fractured basalt of the Modoc Ridge across the road. It has not been studied how long it takes a drop of water to reach the bottom from the top. Alex did explain that a way to study this would to take a drop of radioactive isotope and monitor how long it will take to reach the bottom.