Thousands Of Salmon Spilled In Truck Accident Make It To Creek To Start New Lives

A 53-foot tanker truck carrying 102,000 Chinook salmon in Oregon skidded off the road and rolled over late last month, but it did so in one of the best possible places.

The vehicle hit a sharp corner and ultimately overturned on the bank of northeastern Oregon’s Lookingglass Creek on March 29. The truck driver experienced only minor injuries and was “safe” after the accident, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a Tuesday news release.

And about 77,000 of the young salmon, known as smolts, made it down the bank into the water and simply swam away.

“They hit the water running,” eastern Oregon fish hatchery coordinator Andrew Gibbs told The New York Times.

Not all of the fish were so lucky ― 25,529 of them died either inside the vehicle or on the bank, having not made it to the creek.

Gibbs called the truck full of smolts “kind of a fish taxi,” part of a state program that transports young salmon from a hatchery to bolster populations in the state that have been negatively affected by dams. These 18-month-old smolts had been en route to a pool at the state’s Imnaha River to kick off their entry into the wild, per the Times.

The smolts that made it to the creek are expected to survive, Gibbs told the local Baker City Herald. Within 48 hours of the crash, some of them were already located at the nearby lower Grande Ronde River. They’ll ultimately head to the ocean, and are expected to return to Lookingglass Creek as adults to spawn.