Instead of skipping ahead to winter holidays, let’s fall back and celebrate autumn and Halloween by highlighting a fish that has been demonized in the past, partly for its looks, and partly for our past perceptions of it as a blood-sucking, bottom-feeding trash fish*: the Pacific lamprey.

Mother Nature can be comforting and calm but this year it seems like she used our first, middle and last name as she scolded (or scalded) us … “Pacific North [emphasis added] West, what in the world were you thinking?!” … for punching our hypothetical little sister (California).

Humans. What other sentient being designs a tool requiring hands and feet and expects animals without limbs to use it? Alas, the answer is humans. Humans created a ladder for fish, which is quite effective in certain situations – but isn’t a blanket solution to every fish passage problem.

Off the coast of Oregon, Big Bertha moves in the water, inching toward land. Bertha, as her government creators to refer to it, is the result of three years of inter-agency planning.

This twist of the screw – creating a creaking, rasping, scraping sound – generates enough hydraulics to keep small fish from escaping the slowly spinning, cone-shaped collectors – or, screw traps

Kevin Brice stands in his office at the Portland District in downtown Portland, Ore. He has been the Deputy District Engineer for Programs and Project Management for the Portland District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers since May 2007 and will retire in June 2021.