A truck carrying more than 100,000 young chinook salmon was bound for Oregon's Imnaha River, to help populate a waterway where they're considered a threatened species. But tens of thousands of them ended up in a creek near their former fish hatchery home instead, after the vehicle carrying them to their destination crashed on Friday, reports the BBC. Per a release from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the 53-foot fish tanker was trying to take a sharp corner during its planned three-hour drive when it rolled over onto its side, then skidded down the road and over an embankment, where it flipped onto its roof.
The New York Times notes that the truck would've weighed about 80,000 pounds when filled with fish and water. The driver escaped with minor injuries, but his silvery-sided passengers weren't so lucky. About 77,000 safely landed in Lookingglass Creek, but more than 25,000 of the smolts, which were tossed about the truck and onto the ground, "were not able to flop down into the water" and perished, the ODFW's Andrew Gibbs tells the Times. There was also a small amount of fuel spill, but that was "quickly contained" and didn't require a full-scale hazmat cleanup, per the ODFW release.
Members of local Native American tribes showed up to help ODFW staffers "collect, count, and scan dead fish" for transponder tags, the release notes. The ODFW says the fish that swam away in the creek will head for the ocean, forage for a few years, then most likely return to that spot at some point and produce up to 700 more adults. "They kind of smell their way back," Gibbs tells the Times. "It's an incredible life history." The ODFW notes that the lost juvenile fish represent about one-fifth of the total that are set to be released in the Imnaha River this year. (More chinook salmon stories.)
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