End of the Line

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"My rage is that the fishing industry has been the only one that has suffered from this," Martin says. "For everyone else it has been business as usual."

The NMFS Draft Recovery Plan, which recommended buying out the fishermen, is particularly nettlesome. Written by a group of scientiests known as the "Lucky Seven," plan also called for developing "selective" gear types, such as fish traps, which theoretically would allow fishermen to release protected fish unharmed. Unlike hatchery steelhead, however, hatchery salmon are not marked by fin removal. Fishermen say one has to be ichthyologist or an Indian to tell them apart.

Fish traps, long loathed by gill-netters, were banned from the Columbia in 1948. Another option that the panel considered, then rejected, was drawing down the four Snake River reservoirs to riverbed level for six months each spring to allow young smolts to proceed unimpeded to the Columbia. The biologist admitted that drawing down the river to natural levels would produce excellent survival rates but would have a "drastic" effect on irrigation, barge operation, and power generation, activities that for the most part would be foregone for the period. Kent Martin and his fellow gillnetters call it "ballot-box biology" and call its progenitors "waterless gear experts" and "biostitutes," among other things.

The most galling aspect of the plan to the Martins, however, was the establishment of a five-member scientific board to oversee the implementation of the recovery plan. The Salmon Oversight Committee would consist of "scientific experts" compensated at "executive" levels for a "prestigious professional experience." The Lucky Seven did not rescue themselves from consideration.

"This is an example of the bureaucratic and academic ivory-tower mentality that dispatches an entire way of life for local communities along the Columbia and then spends five pages about job security for themselves," Kent Martin says.

The social impacts of the declining fishery most concern Irene Martin. An Episcopal minister and local librarian, she has witnessed the suffering first hand. She cites the example of a daycare center her church opened a few years ago. They created a sliding scale to calculate the fees: 20 percent for above-average income families, 40 percent for middle-income families, and 40 percent for below-average income families. Last year, 94 percent of the children came from low-income families. So many kids showed up hungry the center started a breakfast program. Seven of the kids were diagnosed as anemic, requiring special diets. Now she is seeking grant money just to keep the center open.

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