Long Live the Kings

In 1980, Jim Youngren and his friend Walt Moller had the idea of raising salmon in the watershed. There were no native salmon because the final 20 feet of the creek’s drop to the bay was over steep rocky cliffs that no salmon or sea-run trout could jump. So they sourced some fertilized salmon eggs from a mainland fish hatchery and raised them in ponds. When they released the first batch of a few thousand smolts to the ocean they really had no idea if they would come back or not. But they did! A few years later they were back, ready to spawn and die—beginning the cycle anew. A concrete fish ladder was built where the creek meets the bay to provide the salmon with a way to get up into the fresh water to fully mature before spawning. That was 30 years ago and the fish are still coming back, supported now through the efforts of the nonprofit group, Long Live the Kings (www.lltk.org).