ENDANGERED? SO WHY CAN WE EAT THEM?

Imagine creating a tourist attraction by playfully tossing around the carcasses of California condors.

Imagine buying spotted owl drumsticks at the supermarket.

Imagine government-sanctioned hunts for black-footed ferrets. Limit: two a day until each hunter has six in the freezer. It couldn't happen for any of those endangered species. Now imagine Pacific salmon. Some runs of salmon are in such dire straits, the government may rip out Snake River dams, curtail West Side development and limit water rights for farmers. In 1995, the government spent five times more on Snake River salmon than on any other endangered species. Yet salmon steaks at Spokane grocery stores sell for about the same price as beef steaks. Salmon flesh is so plentiful that Washington's few remaining commercial fishermen earned less than half as much for each pound of fish last year as they did a decade earlier, even though the catch has dropped by three-quarters. The Pike Place Market has become famous for its fishmongers, who toss and catch chinook, sockeye and other species as if they were footballs. It was one of the scenes of Seattle featured during the CBS broadcast of Saturday's NCAA basketball tournament. And while sport fishing is severely curtailed in Washington, Alaskan and Canadian resort owners continue to lure anglers for abundant salmon. No wonder speakers at nearly every public hearing on Northwest salmon question the government's decision to protect the fish. "If salmon are really threatened or endangered, why do we still fish for them?" Steve Appel of the Washington Farm Bureau said during a Tri-Cities rally to oppose breaching Snake River dams as a salmon- saving strategy. Appel isn't the first to ask the question. Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, gained national attention in 1994 for saying what many people were thinking: a species can't be endangered if you can buy it canned in a supermarket. Of course, few of the salmon seared over barbecues each year are from endangered runs. In fact, a growing number aren't even Pacific salmon. "Over half of the salmon sold now are commercially raised," said Andy Appleby, fisheries biologist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. "And for the most part, they're Atlantic salmon," a species separate from Pacific salmon. Atlantic salmon are grown in pens in such places as Chile, British Columbia, Iceland and Scotland. Relatively few are reared in the Northwest. And what about those fish still caught commercially in Washington? Restrictions in recent years have eliminated nearly all commercial trollers, which catch fish by dragging lures or bait from the back of the boat. There was no way for the trollers to target healthy fish runs without catching endangered fish. Now, most commercial fishing is done by net, at times and in places where specific, healthy runs congregate. Chum salmon make up the bulk of Washington's commercial catch. It's a species with so little commercial value that Puget Sound fishermen last year earned just 13 cents a pound, said Roland "Doc" Hublou of the Puget Sound Gillnetters' Association. That compares with $1.20 a pound for sockeye bound for British Columbia's Fraser River, the only other fish captured in large numbers in the Sound. Prices for chum and sockeye are at near historic lows, said Hublou, who remembers years when chum sold for $1.55 a pound and sockeye for $4.65. He, like others, blames the decline largely on competition from farm-raised Atlantic salmon. There are five species of Pacific salmon. Chum and pink are generally in the best shape because they spend less time in streams than do sockeye, coho or chinook, said Chris Foote, a University of Washington biologist. They also don't venture as far upstream. "The other species are much more subject to the places where humans have done the most damage, which is the upper reaches of streams," Foote said. Of the 44 Washington salmon runs identified as "healthy" in a 1996 study, 20 were chum and six were pink. While Tuesday's announcement covered every run of chinook from the scores of streams flowing into the Puget Sound, only two populations of chum and no pinks were added to the list of endangered species. When grocery stores do offer fresh-caught coho, chinook or sockeye salmon, they're typically from Alaska. Most Alaskan salmon runs are healthy, notwithstanding recent startling declines of some Alaskan sockeye populations. Each May, Spokane chefs go gaga over sockeye from Alaska's Copper River. Advertisements boast the 2- to 6-pound salmon are tastier than most other salmon that are commercially available, and it's probably true. Fish that must swim long distances upstream to spawn put more of their energy into storing fat than producing eggs, Appleby explained. Fat adds flavor, explaining why marathoners such as Copper River sockeye are considered delectable while sprinters like pink and chum are considered bland by gourmands. Flavor can vary greatly within a species, depending on an individual fish's home stream. Using the fat standard, the few lonely sockeye that still migrate up the Snake River are probably the best-eating salmon on Earth. They must store up enough oils to travel about 700 miles from the Pacific to Red Fish Lake in the Rockies. The fat-vs.-eggs equation also explains why Foote believes that if Snake River sockeye are lost, they'll never be replaced. "If you took a fish from any other stream and put it in the Snake, it couldn't make the trip," he said. Scientists say such differences show why it's important to save more than just remnant populations of the five Pacific salmon species. There might be any number of physiological reasons that a chinook whose ancestors evolved in one stream won't thrive in another. "You can't just say that a chinook is a chinook is a chinook," Foote said.

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