Massive Fish Kill in the Klamath River After Flash Floods Inundate Its Waters with Debris
A murky brown riverbank clogged with dead fish. [All pictures provided by Stormy Staats/Karuk Tribe Fisheries]
Shocking photographs from Siskiyou County near Happy Camp show thousands of dead fish in the Klamath River after flash floods sent a deluge of debris into the fragile river ecosystem. The Klamath River Watershed runs through the burn zone of the McKinney Fire, the 60,000-acre wildfire that has destroyed over 80 homes and caused at least four deaths.
S. Craig Tucker, Ph. D, a spokesman for the Karuk tribe, told us that on the nights of August 3 and 4 during rain, there was a “massive debris slide out of areas impacted by the McKinney Fire” that flowed into the main stem of the Klamath after flash flooding at or near Humbug Creek and McKinney Creeks.
The fish kill lined the bank of Klamath with dead fish.
Analysis by the Karuk Seiad Creek water quality station found that the debris flows dissolved oxygen levels dropping them to 0 along 10 to 20 miles of river. This resulted in a mass of fish dying off in this affected stretch of the river and now the dead are washing up downstream from the “kill zone.”
Photographs of the Klamath River show its waters are a murky brown inundated with debris and thousands of fish float belly up along the bank.
This photograph shows the dead fish accruing at a bend in the river.
In 2002, the Klamath River experienced another fish kill event where some estimate 70,000 chinook salmon died as a result. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that water diversions caused the river’s temperatures to rise allowing gill rot to affect native fish. This event would galvanize the movement to remove the dams along the Klamath.
Due to the road closures and many of the affected areas being restricted due to the ongoing wildfire, the severity of the event at this point is unknown. Also unclear is whether this event could affect the chinook salmon fall migration.
Karuk tribal members will be working with the Yurok tribe to gain access to the affected sections of the river and continue assessing the ecological disaster.
A Karuk Fisheries biologist analyzing the affected watershed.
Join the discussion! For rules visit: https://kymkemp.com/commenting-rules
Comments system how-to: https://wpdiscuz.com/community/postid/10599/
No words for this devastation.
Mkinney Fire… natural. Thunderstorms… natural. Ash runoff… natural.
The McKinney Fire started at 2PM before the initial t-storms passed through. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, and it is considered an active crime scene, due to suspicion of human negligence or malfeasance.
Hmmm…. sure… as did the China 2 and the Alex fires.
Fires are natural, but they tend to burn through dense monoculture tree plantations associated with clearcutting much more aggressively than healthy forests. Ash runoff can also be the result of unstable soil caused by clearcutting ripping up the roots of trees and shredding the soil to remove supposed weeds. (In reality, to compare clearcutting companies to weeds would be an insult to weeds; clearcutting companies are more like parasites.)
So it sounds to me like your against logging trees! You think by clear cutting it made the fire worse than if it was a brushy healthy forest ? Let me teach you a little something, if u were to light a clear cut on fire & a healthy forest on fire, which one would burn and be more to likely to throw embers of hot burning ash into the air which start more fires? a healthy forest with tall trees would throw more ashes of hot burning embers into the air when a place that has been clear cut has short stumps and open areas which don’t throw a lot of embers into the air, some but not like a healthy forest would. Don’t u think there would be more ash run off with more wood and brush being burned that it would make more ash than a place that’s been clear cut ? I don’t agree with clear cutting myself but sometimes you have to since the smaller trees are blocking access to the bigger trees, I believe in select cutting, maybe helicopter logging when possible, much more expensive but it would let some of the smaller trees get bigger. I’m a former truck driver and I know we need trees for a lot of our human needs like paper, toilet paper, signs, pencils, house building, what ever.
Of course without a forest we’d only have grass fires in their place AND the point is about flash flooding which is more extreme with fewer trees particularly with fewer trees in one area and specifically when that area is one from which water flows into a river. Water flows into rivers all winter, we are talking about an extreme event that we can change. We can also use less. Though i to prefer it to alternatives as I am accustomed to it AND toilet paper ( and many things we think we can’t live without so will sacrifice our oxygen and oxygen the fish depend upon) is a relatively new invention; we survived forever with out it, oxygen and fish not so much.
Only 7% of fires are natural……the 93% is caused by humans not natural…
It’s thought a car pulling a trailer started it. Not proven yet but lots of evidence. Not natural.
it must be climate change
No one has ever claimed that all natural disasters are the result of climate change. However, it is common and accurate to remind everyone after natural disasters that climate change will make them more frequent and worse.
Anything to do with removing the dams recently? Possibly? Honest question. Anyone know?
The dams haven’t been removed yet. The debris flow is due to high amounts of rainfall on the burn scars of high intensity fires that left the soil vulnerable to erosion. If we were having more regular lower intensity burns this likely wouldn’t be as severe of an issue.
Thank you for clarifying. I thought I read an article that the young natives will be kayaking through the river area that no longer has dams. I’ll go read it again.
Its a future kayaking trip they are planning
No dams have been removed
Sorry, but, I read a pithy comeback earlier on a different post:
”What the hell are you talking about”[?]
The dams have not been removed yet, nor has work started on the removal It’s still in the planning stages. Though in a situation like this there would be more dissolved oxygen in the river with higher summer time flows when the dams are finally removed, greatly improving chances for fish survival
Have you ever thought about why the Lakes recede during the summer? It’s because they are letting more water out of the lake then is coming in to the lake. So there would be less river flow during the summer if the Dams are removed.
Spot on. There will be no flow by the end of summer without dams…
Theyre still up!
Could it be also from the dropped fire retardants used to attempt to combat the fires?
No. The McKinney fire was pretty new, and hadn’t been fought that long when the rains came. It’s well known there was an unusual, large series of debris flows. Retardant drops are spread out on vegetation way up high in ridges for the most part. Debris flow would also happen on places in the fire that burnt really well, indicating there never were too many retardant drops on it. If aerial retardant drops did this, why didn’t they do it last year, when we had fires, but no crazy midsummer rain like that? The retardant dropping season looks like it’s just starting!
Could it be from “alkaloid rain”, as opposed to “acid rain”?
All that fresh ash in the atmosphere, and on the ground, mixed with rain, might have created lye, suddenly raising the PH of the flash floods, as the rain first fell, and it was concentrated in the initial “wave”, to a point that was fatal to the fish, as soon as it reached them, and passed over them.
The retardant may or may not have made that much difference, but it probably didn’t help.
We need more rain.
In the hundreds of thousands of years that Salmon have traveled the Klamath, very MANY years featured fires in the basin. Very FEW years featured much summer rain.
We need more rain and fog, but at the same time, more rain by itself might cause there to be more erosion from unstable soil. We need to outlaw clearcutting and forest tilling to protect soil integrity.
Good thing nobody does “forest tilling”. Fog isn’t a normal thing that far upstream in the Klamath. The nexus between fog and redwoods health/redwoods creating fog has no real evidentiary basis, and kinda approaches magical thinking. Fog is mostly a factor of daily warming of inland valleys drawing in cool air from the ocean, upstream into coastal lowlands. the fog disappears pretty quick if you get away from Humboldt’s population centers. What is normal, is the humidity gradient lowering from west to east.
Rainfall. The last two centuries are turning out to be unusually wet. But in any case it’s all about timing, not annual totals. We could get 100″ of rain, but none in November; that would be tough on Salmon. 40″ of rain spread out, with 6″ in May would keep your springs running. 20″ of rain falling in a couple days in 2017 blew out roads, and washed 5 acres of property away from us. Low water years allow more streamside vegetation. Salmon and steelhead find refuge in cold spots, even disconnected from main flows, looking at surveys, high rain years don’t always correspond with juvenile survival.
part of a clearcut restoration plan is mulching. the equipment used to spread the mulch out ends up tilling the soil about a foot or so deep.
But, but,,,,the government just has to be at fault for dropping that nasty fire retardant..
You have a better solution besides fire retardant ? I don’t know of any, it can’t be just water cuz we don’t have enough as it is. When you can come up with one let the government know about it, I’m sure they would appreciate it.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229464190_Effects_of_wildfire_ash_on_water_chemistry_and_biota_in_South-Western_USA_streams
“We monitored streams within the Gila River drainage in south-western New Mexico, U.S.A., over a 5-year period, to investigate the influence of ash input on water quality and stream biota following forest wildfires. 2. Nutrients [ammonium, nitrate, soluble reactive phosphate (SRP)], potassium and alkalinity were most affected by fires; all were increased in stream water following ash input. Concentrations of each returned to prefire conditions within 4 months. Ammonium and nitrate also increased in stream water as a result of atmospheric fallout (e.g. smoke) from fires outside the catchment.”…
…”Concentrations of major ions and nutrients, as well as turbidity, conductivity and pH, increased immediately in stream water below the point of ashing, while dissolved oxygen decreased. Changes in water chemistry were short-lived (=24 h) except for SRP. The concentration of SRP in stream water was significantly higher in the ashed reach than the control reach for at least 1 month after ash input.”…
…”Post-fire ash is composed of a complex milieu of nutrients, ions (e.g. Mg 2+ , Si 4+ , K + , Ca 2+ ), sediment, metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and residual fire suppressants that can severely impact aquatic fauna…. …The exact mixture of wildfire ash can depend on the geographical region, vegetation type, soil and biomass characteristics, on burn intensity, and fire-fighting approach…”
A volcano would be much more in line with nature.
A volcano?
If you are talking about a volcano in the area…
It hasta be Shasta…
It apparently erupts on average about every 800 to 1,000 years…
Last eruption?
Approximately 3,200 years ago…
1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens
Ash was deposited across western states and the ash cloud eventually encircled the globe. ..
Mt. Lassen, 1917
We’re all going to go one way or another and I’d prefer not slow asifixation and starvation etc via collective suicide. We don’t tend to hang out on active volcanos but we spend every day over consuming collectively which is suicide.
I’m sure a comparison of human over consumption etc shows we collectively have a greater impact than most or many volcanic eruptions and. They are infrequent relative to our chronic, constantly escalating over consumption of unnecessary things. The melting glaciers and other effects of global warming that we do impact also may be increasing likelihood of volcanic eruptions. A volcano or meteorite may take us all out AND meanwhile would be great to be able to breathe, eat, etc.
https://www.denverpost.com/2012/06/16/wildfire-red-slurrys-toxic-dark-side/
“Massive fish kills have been documented after fires were put out in northwestern states. A legal challenge by Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics compelled an environmental impact study. Federal biologists concluded that fire retardants alone will not cause extinctions. But the lawsuit led to issuance of the rules this year to minimize harm.”
It’s reactive rather than proactive and if it’s all we have to buy time until we start being more humble restrained consumers then yes key words are minimizing harm.
Killing the suckerfish is no big loss. It would be interesting to know how badly damaged the rest the fish habitat is.
There is a lot of sediment in the Trinity and the Klamath. The flash flooding that came with the lightning was intense. It definitely saved us from many more fires, stretching from fieldbrook to weitchpec. For whatever reason, the south end of willow creek didn’t get the .3-.7 inches of rain that soaked everywhere else, and that’s why fires took off that direction.
True there are mostly suckers only in the river right now. Not a terrible tragedy but still very odd event.
It should be noted that the Trinity River and the Klamath River, the former which merges into the latter, are almost like parallel case studies in socialist or capitalist watershed management. The Klamath River watershed is a heavily industrialized with significant footprint of heavy agricultural operations, probably more than most other rivers. While on the other hand, the Trinity River watershed is almost entirely owned by the government, which is very rare.
As a result, the Klamath River is one that you are routinely warned not to touch due to pollution, while the Trinity River is the clearest river that I have ever seen. You can even see the difference side by side on Google Earth, where the two rivers merge. I don’t think the difference is caused by natural reasons.
The Salmon River is of similar contrast to the main stem Klamath.
The Klamath also differs from most other rivers in that the vast majority of development within the watershed is in the upper reachs (not headwaters)…where most rivers have the majority of development closest to the mouth & coast.
Yes. At least collective wisdom can be stored and referenced and communicated by government and transparency and accountability a possibility relative to private industry . We need to be rigorously active in government and make it more accessible, transparent and adaptable to new knowledge in order to minimize the potential pitfalls of any system including socialism.
Don’t polarize the conversation with politics…
Damn Mr Branscomber! you need to educate yourself on the role of the sucker fish and what it does for River health. The sucker fish is a Native species as well. If the sucker fish was to vanish there’d be a ton of suckers wondering why the river is so unhealthy.
Why defame Mr. Branscomb and name is this.
I would suggest that as our rivers suffer from drought, these fish become more important by the moment. They are the balance keepers. They are the “Sanitation Department” of the river and contribute heavily to disease prevention. They also serve as food for other fish, birds and mammals.
Imagine your home with nowhere to dispose of your garbage.
Except It wasn’t just suckerfish.
Anyone have actual info on what species and at what life stages were killed in this stretch?
everything that needs dissolved oxygen including the neotenic salamanders. most people are not aware of how many giant salamanders never leave the river.
Losing the suckerfish is a tremendous loss to the river ecosystem. They are the river garbage clean up fish. Without them the normally clean river would soon be polluted and become unhealthy for all the fish that live in it.
I think it was just a excuse to write off the event as who cares, anyway.
Spot on Ernie…
The way that fires have swept through with no trees left making the earth resemble the face of mars, then torrential downpour have a significant effect on the fragility of our ecosystem. The trinity is running brown like chocolate right now from a slide at soldier creek, but even worse is the north fork out of Helena. This once beautiful clear water is so thick with mud you can’t see your hand one inch below the surface. You have to wonder between fires and flash flooding if the dozers in the wilderness helped this treachery as well. For the first time during the monument fires last year FS plowed into the wilderness with heavy equipment, and as usual it didn’t hold the line. So many rivers that are salmon and steelhead spawning have the potential for never being the same for years to come after this incident. It’s so sad
Are the monument fire dozer lines anywhere near the debris flows out of the McKinney fire?
…but I see you may have been talking about the North fk. by Helena. Pardon e moi.
They’ve put dozers on the wilderness lines and just over in several previous fires for the past half century. when they do it’s site specific and not a 3 blade wide line. Not the best practice but beats the alternative of just more burned out wilderness and FS land. Some of the Mud flows are originating out of areas that did see heavy and light fire activity but have not been manipulated landscape wise since 1800’s early 1900’s
Eh? I reckon ‘treachery’… happens naturally. Mountains here are continually sliding and sluffing away… otherwise the coastal ranges would be 30,000 ft high. Hundred year floods, earthquakes, and forest fires wipe out entire watersheds.
Human life spans… we are here for just a short while. Relax.
Just because it’s natural doesn’t make it any less devastating to wildlife and fish that rely on clean water to live. Humans fucked it up, or at the very least made it worse. It’s common sense things happen like this but all at once it has a different effect. Maybe you don’t mind looking at the trinity mucked out or dead fish but it’s still a big deal. For everyone who lives here and loves it, and in 35 years with all the flash flooding etc that I e seen here this is by far the worst. Maybe you’re too relaxed
Nope… I have seen it all (mostly) ‘come and go’. These fish were likely killed by ash in the water. You should have been around in 1880, 1955, 1964.
This ain’t nothin’.
“This ain’t nothing” means that it is something.
I agree completely. Clearcutting makes many wildfires worse, even if it didn’t start them. The starting of a fire (like the starting of a pandemic) is not the only event that matters.
Short while yes and meanwhile I’m not interested in suicide nor homicide when avoidable. I may get apathetic at some point … beginning to look like a better option that stressing out.
Looks like a bunch of sucker fish to me. Definitely some salmon in there somewhere but the pictures all look like sucker fish. This could actually be a huge stroke of luck if it wiped out a large swath of that invasive species ahead of the salmon run. Those things eat salmon and steelhead eggs and smolts.
Suckers are native to our river systems.
American Shad were introduced.
They are the only non native fish we have and they don’t hurt anything.
Some of those aren’t pike minnow? I thought those weren’t native.. to the Eel at least. Striped bass were introduced around Humboldt bay 100 years ago, but never really took. I heard there’s a population by Coos Bay.
The Klamath doesn’t have those pike minnows like The eel river does
Cool. I’m curious the difference, and where the pike minnows are native to. There’s native “hitch” in Clearlake that look like that too…
Sacramento river has native pike minnow, as do other rivers in the Pacific Northwest. They only become a problem in places that have warm summer water temps and low summer flows, mostly caused by dams. They eat juvenile salmon
the difference is one is aggressive and will eat other fish and hit lures if you are fishing, the other one sucks organic matter off the bottom/rocks and won’t kill anything.
Pike minnow are native to the sarcemento river, and were released into the eel river by fishermen who were using them as bait fish. Im not sure if the Klamath has pike minnow
These fish are beneficial to the watershed !
Check your six. Ernie just got raked for the same kind of talk.
Sucker fish
Try to keep up rather than parroting the same crap to make it seem like you know what you are talking about.
Fact: The mud flows are not just the klamath river. Flows are/were and still in the Feeder Creeks and Salmon River. It is not just Sucker fish…..it’s all Fish species. There’s not that many salmon to begin with as well. There gos the Fall run.
The rivers in my memory from the 80s were much closer in time to the 64 flood than the rivers today are to the “War on Terror”era, or the Green rush. Sediment from the 64 floods, or the Honeydew earthquake slide/lake in the 80s are still moving through in waves. Trippy man.
I hope this doesn’t decimate the spring salmon run.
sleepy joe hiden is responsible! Useless old fool is destroying everything!
Biden is responsible for not doing more to push for a national ban on clearcutting, if regulation is your thing.
Kill all the sucker fish.
Ban all of the clearcutting bulldozers and forest tillers.
I vote No.
I read a lot of comments here regarding the cause of this disaster. Just some observations from my take. Several days ago, Wednesday August 3, I believe, the Trinity River at Cedar Flat muddied up to a dark brown with zero visibility. I thought USGS had released water from the dam to cool the river. I found the USGS had stopped their water measurment at Cedar Flat, perhaps due to the mud content of the water. I considered the flash flood possiility. The water level never really went up much, which is unusual for flash flood or water releases. Notice in this link the USGS web site for CF stopped working August 2.
https://waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/nwis/uv?period=14&begin_date=2016-02-24&end_date=2016-03-09&cb_00060=on&site_no=11523200%2C11525500%2C11527000&format=gif_mult_sites
The fires near Willow Creek started Friday morning, August 5, so it has had no effect on this brown out. Also, the river never muddied up like this all winter long, even though the Monument fire burned much of the area last summer, and we got some good storms up here.
I have read that when reservoirs release from the bottom, sediments can be flushed out. Perhaps this is the reason. It would be pretty irresponsible of the USGS to do so without consulting state and fed fish biologists if they did. If the USGS did it here, could they have done it on any dams upriver on the Klamath? Anyone up there care to tell us where the brown water stops up the Klam? Or the Trinity?
According to the Trinity Journal, August 3 edition, the spring run has been good. Also, it is mentioned that in order to cool the river water it has to be drawn from the cold water pool. It also mentions that increasing sediment can suffocate eggs. That’s a safe bet for this brown out.
What ever the reason is for this, it appears the management of our river systems is not very good.
The Trinity River dams are operated by the Bureau of Reclamation, not USGS. I wouldn’t be surprised if Reclamation did something negligent, because they are a very shady government agency that likes to evade regulations and damage the environment.
I’m pretty sure that the Klamath River dams are privately owned (by PacifiCorp). They too are a very shady and do not care about the environment.
I hope CDFW does an autopsy on these collected specimens. Excessive flow, ie flooding, would not seem hazardous for healthy adult fish.
Im sad this happened.
Without dams, will we still have water in our rivers, during the summer months or will they run dry?