Salmon Truck Crash Miraculously Releases Fish Back Into the River

A dwindling Chinook salmon population in Oregon's Imnaha River prompted wildlife officials to bring in fish from other bodies of water in the state to boost local numbers. But a mishap on the road to their new home led to many of the salmon either losing their lives or ending up close to where they started. 

According to the Baker City Herald, a fish tanker crashed on March 29 while transporting more than 100,000 young Chinook salmon from the Lookingglass Hatchery to the Imnaha River, where the salmon population is listed as "threatened" by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The road ran alongside the Lookingglass Creek, which is where the fish originally came from, and the 77,000 salmon smolts that survived the crash were eager to return home as they swam back into the creek from the overturned truck. 

The ODFW releases nearly 500,000 Chinook salmon smolts into the Imnaha River every year. The 25,000 that were lost in the crash were about 20 percent of the total that are planned to be released into the river this year. Meanwhile, the 77,000 fish that made it into Lookingglass Creek will probably return there to spawn, producing between 350 and 700 new adults. 

Luckily, while the crash represents a setback in repopulation plans, it's not the end of the world. “This should not impact our ability to collect future brood stock or maintain full production goals in the future," ODFW Eastern Oregon fish hatchery coordinator Andrew Gibbs said in a statement. "We are thankful the ODFW employee driving the truck was not seriously injured."

For the fish, the truck crash was the definition of a happy accident.