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T-STORM Temp: 80 °F Wind: CLM at 0 mph Sunday, August 3, 2003 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend July 14, 2003 Rich Nawa, an ecologist with the Siskiyou Regional Education Project, keeps tabs on lampreys attempting to scale Savage Rapids Dam. Mail Tribune / Roy Musitelli Lamprey advocate An ecologist says the jawless fish should be protected just like other fish species By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune ROGUE RIVER — With its suction mouth and snake-like skin, a lone Pacific lamprey clings to Savage Rapids Dam a few feet above the Rogue River, about to begin its fruitless ascent. "He’s probably waiting for his buddies," says Rich Nawa as he squints through a spotting scope trained on the dam. But no buddies come. The lamprey sucks and lunges upward but eventually fails to scale the dam, and it plops back into the Rogue like thousands of others before it. The lamprey will pass the dam and eventually spawn in streams like Bear Creek only if it climbs the walls of the dam’s two fish ladders. Once past the dam, it will disappear from Nawa’s view — just like it has from the public consciousness. Advertisement "Most people don’t even know they’re here," says Nawa, an ecologist with the Siskiyou Regional Education Project. "I bet only one out of every 50 people even see them. But they’re fascinating fish, real living fossils." Meet the Pacific lamprey, the Rogue’s other anadromous fish now migrating upriver from the sea. And if Nawa has his way, Oregonians will not only get to know this slimy eel-like critter, but they also will start bending a bit to ensure that the Rodney Dangerfield of fish gets the respect he says they need to survive. Numbers of Pacific lampreys are down throughout the Northwest, and what few studies there are on them suggest that they have a tough time traversing fish ladders designed for more well-known fish such as salmon and steelhead. So Nawa has taken on the lamprey’s cause. He’s petitioned the government to grant Endangered Species Act protection for lampreys and he’s trying to build a fan base for this clearly unhuggable creature. "Antelope, grizzly bears and wolves have all disappeared from the Rogue Basin, and they didn’t have a constituency either," Nawa says. Pacific lamprey are living remnants of the some of the world’s first known vertebrates — jawless fishes — that date back as many as 500 million years. They are born in egg nests similar to salmon and steelhead, with whom they share spawning habitat. But from there, lampreys embark on a mysterious and, at times, macabre life. The tiny juveniles migrate out of spawning streams and burrow into silt, where they will feed off plankton and other material for the next three to seven years. They then head to sea, where they become a predator to large fishes. A lamprey’s survival depends upon its ability to latch onto a large fish, cut into its flesh and suck fluids until it becomes full then falls off in search of another victim. Lampreys eventually head upriver in the spring and summer, swimming near the surface and slow enough that they become targeted by everything from ospreys to seals and other fish. "Everything eats lampreys when they’re running," says Russ Stauff, the Rogue Watershed manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. "I’m convinced every osprey from Agness on down around Gold Beach is eating 40 to 50 lampreys a day." After their migration, lampreys burrow into the substrate again until they spawn the following spring and die. Lampreys historically have been an important food source for American Indians. But they have been little more than a footnote in Rogue fish management. Cole M. Rivers, a famed biologist who conducted many of the early fishery studies on the Rogue, viewed hundreds of thousands of lampreys on Savage Rapids Dam during the 1940s, but numbers appeared to have declined in the 1960s. But the ODFW has largely ignored lampreys, and has only tallied their counts at Gold Ray Dam for the past decade. "Since they’re not a sport or commercial species, we haven’t spent much energy on lampreys," ODFW biologist Jerry Vogt says. "I guess you make the assumption that, when you protect salmon and steelhead habitat, you’re protecting lamprey habitat." Nawa, however, says those assumptions seem to have put lampreys in peril. Rivers like the nearby Umpqua have seen lamprey numbers drop by 90 percent in the past decade, and there’s no scientific data explaining why and how to help the species improve, Nawa says. He petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for an emergency listing of four lamprey species, but the agency denied the emergency petition in March. The fish and wildlife service since has planned to review the lampreys’ status, fish and wildlife service spokesman Phil Carroll says. However, Carroll says, no review will take place until a study is funded and lampreys rise in priority over other, higher-profile species whose status reviews have been ordered by federal courts. "The ugly ones need love, too," Carroll says. For Nawa, love would come in the form of attention from state and federal agencies that manage rivers. He wants habitat evaluated not just for salmon or steelhead, but lampreys as well. Nawa also wants fish ladders designed so lampreys can find them and more quickly get past dams. Then, perhaps, the fruitless ascents at places like Savage Rapids Dam wouldn’t occur. "I don’t think you need an overwhelming constituency for lamprey," Nawa says. "You need the agencies to take them into account. That’s what government’s supposed to do — take care of these species. "We know that if you ignore these creatures, they’re gone." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] About the Pacific lamprey WHAT: Pacific lamprey ( Lampetra tridentata ) FEATURES: Long, eel-like bodies with no jaws or paired fins like true fishes. They have single nostrils, small brains and a sucker-like mouth with a powerful tongue sporting sharp, horny plates. Slow swimmers, they use their mouths to scale vertical falls, dams and fish ladders HABITAT: In the Rogue River, they’ve been observed in most areas where salmon and steelhead spawn. SIZE: About 27 inches as adults. Infants can be as short as 10 mm. LIFE CYCLE: Born in freshwater streams like Bear Creek and Little Butte Creek, they spend three to seven years buried in mud, feeding on algae until they migrate to sea. They return to spawn in freshwater, roughly at ages 8 to 10 years old. FOOD: Plankton, algae and other nutrients when buried. As adults, they attach themselves to large fishes and use their mouth to dig into the flesh and suck blood and fluids from them. NUMBERS: In the Rogue River, once seen by the thousands at Savage Rapids Dam. Lampreys, however, were not tallied at Gold Ray Dam’s fish-counting station until 1993, with numbers ranging from 155 in 1994 to 2,370 in 1996. River-wide numbers are unknown. HUMAN USES: Highly nutritious and served as a delicacy in Europe and Japan. In the 1940s, large numbers were harvested on the Willamette River as a vitamin source. Because of their evolutionary history, lampreys are often dissected in science classes. QUOTE: "I ate one, once. It tasted like a real, strong pickled something. And it was chewy." — Alan Dole, a Grants Pass Irrigation District maintenance man who watches the lampreys attempt to scale Savage Rapids Dam. Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. 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