Scientists Committed to Finding Ways to Get Salmon Smolts Down the Columbia
By Alec Maule, June 14, 2018. Before the dams, the Snake and Columbia Rivers were cold, fast moving, and generally narrow waterbodies. Salmon smolts swam hundreds of miles on a down-river current and reached the Pacific Ocean in a few days. The completion of Bonneville Dam in 1937 began an era of harnessing the Columbia Basin rivers.Dams changed the rivers into a series of slow moving lakes. Now the smolts’ journey can take up to several weeks, leaving them vulnerable...