A truck carrying more than 100,000 salmon overturned in an accident last week in a mountainous area in the western United States, but the majority of its cargo miraculously managed to reach a waterway underneath, according to American authorities.
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“Nearly 77,000 juvenile salmon have arrived in the river,” the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a statement issued Tuesday.
The tanker truck was driving in a mountainous area when it “flipped onto its roof” in a “sharp bend.”
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Its driver was not seriously injured. Unfortunately, not all the salmon were strong enough to reach the water: 25,000 of them perished in the truck or on its banks.
Chinook salmon are endangered by the drought that has struck the American West in recent years.
Its dramatic decline prompted a ban on salmon fishing last year off the coast of California and much of Oregon, which will likely be extended through 2024 — and an announcement of its potential renewal is imminent.
But the incident “should not have an impact on our ability to collect future poultry or maintain full future production targets,” the authorities stress.
Salmon are migratory: They are born in rivers, swim toward the Pacific Ocean when they reach maturity, where they spend several years, and eventually return to their natal waterways to reproduce and die.
But this cycle has been disrupted by the drought that has struck the American West over the past decade, which has caused river water levels to fall or become too hot.
To help the salmon, authorities raise the fry in ponds and transport them by tanker trucks to nearby Pacific waterways, once they reach a size large enough to migrate to the ocean.
This transfer dates back to the 1980s in the region, where numerous dams were erected to supply cities and American agriculture depriving salmon of 80% of their breeding habitat. But it has accelerated in recent years due to drought.
