KLAMATH, Calif.—A tiny boat carried three teenagers to the mouth of the Klamath River on a bright, chilly afternoon. There, the river's clear, fresh water empties into the mighty Pacific Ocean.
The students from Klamath, Calif., went to that spot last spring to fish and catch eels as part of a cultural program offered by their high school and the Yurok Tribe Fisheries Program.
The trip wasn't just another school activity. As Yuroks, they sought to preserve their culture, which, like the river, is struggling to survive.
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The Yurok Tribe is one of many whose ancestral homeland lies along the Klamath River in northern California and southern Oregon. Yuroks rely on the river for water and food, especially salmon, and it is a source of many of their cultural practices and beliefs.
But largely because of six dams built along the river, the fish population and the water's health are rapidly deteriorating. The Yurok have watched their cultural traditions disappear and their health worsen, too.
"The fish used to be able to go in 350 miles from the ocean," said David Hillemeier, fisheries manager for the tribe. "Now the furthest they can get is the Iron Gate dam," 190 miles upstream from the ocean.
Tribal, environmental and coasting fishing groups are fighting to have the dams removed.
Recently, as a condition of license approval, two federal agencies ordered PacifiCorp, an electricity provider that operates four of the six dams, to install devices to help fish travel upstream on the dams.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is completing an environmental impact statement, also part of the licensing procedure. Steve Rothert, director of the California field office of American Rivers, a group that monitors river health, said the report should be released by year's end.
In an effort to mitigate the dams' effect on the river, PacifiCorp also is involved in confidential settlement negotiations with 26 other parties, Rothert said. Included in these talks are the Hoopa and Yurok tribes, American Rivers and groups of area fishermen.
Dave Kvamme, a PacifiCorp spokesman, said that some of the dams are too high for fish ladders to be effective and that the company is asking the federal government to truck fish over the barriers. The dams provide energy for about 70,000 homes, he said.
Hillemeier isn't convinced. "Almost everyone but the companies that have the dams want them taken down," he said.
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For the Yurok, salmon are a livelihood.
But in recent years, sedimentation caused by damming the Klamath has interrupted fish spawning.
"The river isn't able to flow and bring out the sediment that wouldn't be there," said Jamie Holt, a technician for the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department and a tribal member. The declining fish population has become such a problem that 50 percent to 60 percent of the river's fish are spawned at the Iron Gate Hatchery.
The dams not only prevent fish passage and trap sediment but also elevate water temperature. That supports growth of blue-green algae, which is believed to cause stomach problems for humans and be deadly to small animals if eaten in large enough quantities.
Warm and calm surface water created by Iron Gate and Copco reservoirs provide an ideal environment for the growth of large algal blooms, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
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Several Yuroks recall a time when salmon were so plentiful that a person could "walk across the water on the backs of the salmon." Tribal people voice that phrase repeatedly.
"The one thing we noticed is the decline of the people who live on the river since there's not as much eel or salmon," Holt said.
Problems on the Klamath have led tribes that have relied on it for generations to begin losing their cultures, Yuroks said.
Hillemeier said many tribes upriver from the Yurok see fewer fish and have lost much of their culture because of the dams.
More people also participated in Yurok traditions when the river was healthier, said Fred "Corky" Simms, a tribal elder. "Fishing was something we looked forward to," he said. "People now are mainly looking at survival. There's a lot of hardships around here in this place."
Yuroks' traditional diet, once almost completely provided by the river, has changed, and eating fast food has led to health problems.
"A lot of our elderly people have been getting diabetes and things like that," Holt said. "They're not used to eating things like hamburgers and french fries."
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Yurok tribal leaders have had to work even harder to preserve and pass their culture to their young. An important tradition they have taught young people is fishing.
On their excursion to the mouth of the Klamath, the high school students learned to net fish and catch eels. The only young woman in the group honored her tradition by not catching eels because tribal customs do not permit it.
After a long afternoon of competing with sea lions for fish in the rushing water, no one had caught anything. Then Sean O'Neill shouted triumphantly that he had captured an eel.
The Yurok student swung the hook over his head to keep the eel on it and ran along the beach.
"Sometimes, I think if I had a time machine, I could catch more fish," he said. "Twenty a day, maybe even more."