People need clean electricity. Burning coal releases toxins that are carried up in the smoke into the air which rain down as acid rain into our oceans, kills trees and contaminates crops. The soot is also carried up and when released into the water becomes a slick oil which kills all the plants, fish and birds that come there. Hydroelectric dams are better because they don't pollute at all, but they are in the way of the Salmon. Underneath the the wall is a tunnel and the water rushes through it Spinning the turbine and generating electricity. But the Salmon can't swim up the tunnel, because of the current and also because of the turbine. Also because it's not their nature to go in tunnels. Another important reason for their going extinct is the fish farms. The Salmon farms keep their fish in cages in the rivers. These fish sometimes get disease and the wild salmon pick up the sickness and die.
There are ways of letting the fish through without destroying the dam, it's called a fish ladder. Fish ladders are just like a horse ramp except with water rushing down it. The fish go up the rapids to the inside of the dam were they are kept. The younger ones are released to their spawning grounds and the older ones are killed. A female Salmon naturally dies after spawning so to speed the process up it is killed and the eggs are taken. Half the eggs go to the nursery and the other half are made for caviar. How they can do this is because every six ounces of water = 1600 fry. When they hatch and are old enough they are released back into the wild. They will come back four years later and the same process will occur. The only bad thing about fish ramps is that they need to be much wider. Fish get crowded and die before they reach the dam to spawn. Not just salmon go up the ramps, other fish will spawn here as well.
A salmon begins as an egg, then hatches into an Alvin. At this stage they look like tiny orange minnows almost invisible to the naked eye except for the egg sack attached to their stomach, this is their source of food. When they turn five to ten weeks of age they are considered Fry which are about an inch long. By then, they have turned a murky brown silver. At this stage the egg sack is no longer attached and they feed on bugs from the surface. After a couple months they become Parr. They are now gray with a murky green brown coloration from their nose to there caudal fin. They also have the distinct “finger markings”: Small stripes running from their dorsal fin to just a little above their pectoral fin. They are about four to five inches long. After one year they become Smolts. They also develop a silver coat and this is the time that they are released from the hatchery and back into the wild. At this time they group up and return to sea were they become adults and live there until they need to return to spawn again.
The salmon is an amazing animal, but we are blocking them and their numbers have been spiraling down. Experts say that they may become extinct within ten years. I think that all dams should be required to have a fish ladder to meet the needs of the salmon. This way the people get electricity and the salmon can go to spawn. Another way could be to only take up half the river so that the fish could swim around the dam. Also to help the electricity soler panels could be put up in most of the buildings. The fish in the fish farms should be contained inside a building. Water could come in from the river and then be filtered and put in to the river again. This would make sure no wild fish, not just salmon, would get sick.
