Oregon Fish Truck Crash Is Emotional, Environmental Roller Coaster Ride

Small Smolts Spilt, Splashy Spectacle Spells Spoilage, Smells

The driver had only minor injuries. Photo: Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

A tanker truck transporting baby Chinook Salmon in Oregon — they’re called “smolts,” even in other states, and we bet the term could also apply to s’mores made with baby salmon — crashed Friday when the truck took a corner too sharply and overturned, spilling most of the load into a creek but leaving about a quarter of the 102,000 smolts dead on the banks or in the overturned truck. The rest of the fishies went into Lookingglass Creek, a tributary of the Grande Ronde River, and if they survive and make it to the Pacific Ocean, they may even return to the creek in the future to spawn.

We learned of the accident from this tweet that sums up the epic tale of tragedy and survival, from KGW News environment reporter Kale Williams, whose first name, we feel compelled to point out, could also be a weird ingredient in s’mores.

As brief adventure stories go, this has Hemingway beat all to hell:

a truck carrying 100k chinook salmon smolts (yay!) crashed in eastern oregon and flipped over (oh no!) but did so right above a creek (yay!) and a bunch died (oh no!) but more than 75k of them were inadvertently released and will likely return there to spawn as adults (yay!)

Mr. Williams, who wrote a book about a bear according to his Twitter bio, added in a follow-up tweet that “also the driver suffered injuries (oh no!) but they were minor (yay!)”

The press release from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife also notes that “Small amounts of diesel fuel were quickly contained and did not result in a hazardous material spill response.” (yay!)

The smolts were being hault from the Lookingglass Hatchery, which raises them to mitigate the effects of hydroelectric damnation of the Lower Snake River, to be released in the Imnaha River, a tributary of the Snake.

The loss of smolts will have only a minor effect on salmon recovery efforts, too (yay!), according to ODFW:

The smolts lost represent about 20 percent of the total that will be released into the Imnaha River this year. Fishery managers expect to see about 500-900 fewer adult fish returning in 2026 and 2027 due to the loss. The 77,000 fish that made it into Lookingglass Creek will likely return there and produce approximately 350-700 additional adults.

Way to go smolts!

After expressing relief that the truck driver, an ODFW employee, was not badly hurt, Andrew Gibbs, fish hatchery coordinator for Eastern Oregon, said, “This should not impact our ability to collect future brood stock or maintain full production goals in the future.” (yay!)

The deceased fish (oh no!) were recovered and scanned for tags that identify smolts as members of a particular hatchery batch, to better estimate how many fish made it into the creek, and to track their future return as adults.

We bet the truck driver is feeling kind of dumb about crashing the tanker, especially if their coworkers keep teasing them and reminding them that "he who smolt it, dolt it.”

On the whole, more (yay!) than (oh no!), so while the smolt spoilage was smad, feel free to smelebrate with some smolt and kale s’mores.

[ODFW / Kale Williams on Twitter.]

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