There was no reason to spawn. Lonesome Larry is the nickname given by a researcher's wife to the only salmon that returned a few years ago to Redfish Lake in the Sawtooth mountains of Idaho. Larry's troubles may have something to tell us about some of the problems facing Alaska's salmon. Bruce Finney, a paleoceanographer at the University of Alaska's Institute of Marine Science, just returned from Idaho's Redfish Lake, a beautiful lake surrounded by ponderosa pines and snowcapped granite peaks. Finney, a scientist who studies ancient salmon runs by examining the residue fish leave behind, flew down to Washington, Oregon and Idaho to see what he could learn about the sockeyes of the Northwest United States.
Sockeyes there are extinct or endangered.
Including Larry, just ten sockeye salmon returned to Idaho's Redfish Lake between 1993 and 1997, making a 900-mile migration from the Pacific Ocean by way of the Columbia and Snake rivers. As Finney and graduate student Anne Beesley drove mountain roads to reach Redfish Lake, they thought of what it takes for a salmon to make the same trip. Even with fish ladders, the large dams that have sprung up in their path from lake to ocean make migration difficult. Smaller dams constructed in the early part of the century for private lumber mills, mining operations, and irrigation have blocked the salmons' path. A changing climate also may have affected the salmon.