Today is my birthday and Diane and I went to the Bonneville Dam and Fish ladder. It was foggy in the morning but soon cleared up. Some pictures were taken early and some later with clear skies.
Here's a Google map overview of the dam complex.
There are actually three dams, two are generating electricity
and one is just holding back water.
You see the red Google flag? That's Oregon's generating dam.
The Dam
Looking up stream from the Washington side of the Columbia River.
Washington on the left Oregon on the right.
The dam on the Oregon side of the river.
There are generators inside generating lots of electricity.
See, in the picture above, all the burned trees on the hills behind the dam? This is the area of the Columbia River Gorge that burned in 2017. Fire caused by teenage boys. Read about that fire here.
The Lock
Looking down stream at the entrance to the lock.
The roadway is on a 'swing bridge'.
Which swings open for incoming boats and barges.
Taken through a window, sorry for the reflection.
The down river end of the lock. Note water level in lock is up to match
the water level on the uphill side of the dam.
Here's a short video about how locks work click here.
It's about the locks on the Mississippi River but they all work the same.
The Fish Ladder
This is an enlargement of the first map.
The fish ladder starts in the lower left area and is dark colored because of the water flowing through it. Remember that all water on the left is down stream, meaning it's much lower than the water on the right of the dams. The fish enter the ladder and work their way up to the middle of our picture, where the white water is.
The poor fish have a long way to go to get up and over the dam.
And up. This is the white water area in the map.
See this top step? Remember it as we'll come back here in a bit.
And up.
The fish are entering this area on the very far left, and swimming
their way through this maze.
If you look closely you can see this last bit of their ladder I call the maze.
They come through the white water area into a calm water pool, to catch their breath
and through the maze and out into the water by the red band just above the word Google.
They are finally in the upper waters above the dam.
Ok, remember the top step in the whit water area? We stood and took pictures of the fish as they were making their way over that step.
A little tail splash.
More tail splash this time at the top.
They count the fish as they come up the ladder and past the counting window.
These are American shad.
We finished up our day at the Sturgeon fish hatchery.
Here is some information about sturgeon, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife web site.
Sturgeons predate many fish species, appearing in the fossil record approximately 200 million years ago. There are 26 species of sturgeon and paddlefish in the Acipenseriformes group and many of these species are harvested as food. Living in a range of habitats, from subtropical to subarctic waters, sturgeons are found throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. They are bottom-feeders, eating small fish and invertebrates they find from sifting through silt or sand on the bottom of rivers and oceans. Some sturgeon species can grow to enormous sizes, reaching 12 feet in length.
Sturgeon and paddlefish are harvested for their meat and roe (fish eggs), which is then processed into caviar, a very expensive product for which there is a high demand. Sturgeon roe now represents more than 90% of the commercial caviar market.
Click here to go to the web site for more info.
This was the small one and he came up to the window to see me.
Then I went outside to see him. It's a bit hard to see him but let's give it a try.
Here he is swimming from left to right in the middle of the picture, he's grey.
Here he is coming straight to me and I almost missed him.
He was about 8 feet long.
From the sturgeon pond we headed over to the rainbow trout pond. I know you're getting tired of fish pictures so I'll keep the trout pictures down to two.
Arn't they beautiful?
The hills are covered with wildflowers.
That's all for now. Tomorrow is our boat trip up and down the river. More about that later.
One last note, all pictures are taken with my iPhone 7+, with no editing.
One last note, all pictures are taken with my iPhone 7+, with no editing.
