Wrapped in a neoprene wetsuit Jerry Chen crawls upstream against 13°C water that turns limbs numb. On this mid-April morning, Chichiawan River in Taiwan’s mountainous Shei-Pa National Park is cold.
Working below demolished Dam One, Chen, a kindly, bear-sized man with surprising agility, slips through morning pools and riffles, searching. Never kicking, he pulls and pushes with muscular arms to minimize the sound of his movement. “You can’t make a big splash. You must be silent”, the researcher whispers.
The mountain slopes rising from Chichiawan are leaf-thick green in several shades and textures. Taiwan maples and cherry trees, full of fresh leaves, have caught up with other year-round leaf covered trees. It’s a pleasant 16°C. On mountain sides, mist patches form, pull apart, reform, and disappear over mountain crowns in a landscape, not unlike a New England forest.
Part of a three-scientist research team from Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Chen leads a partial Chichiawan River watershed census. Counts are bi-monthly, with two complete river counts yearly; in that case, most metres are scoured for the rare river inhabitant.
Earlier that morning at the park’s government hostel, I met Jerry, Peggy Ho and Shawn Dai suiting up. Mixing and matching from a Rubbermaid bin of worn, patched pieces, the crew got themselves ready. The wetsuit sections of varying colours and sizes present a fitting challenge. Forty-five minutes later, with everyone clad, I gave Peggy a thumbs up, and “It’s good?” The stocky, feisty researcher with a left-hand tribal swirl tattoo shook her head. “It’s not good.” A too-small top zipper strains. Shawn, bamboo thin, rattles around in his gear. Finally, wearing our park issued cotton vests, we depart. River access is restricted, and the hot pink vests help identify research teams.
At the fourth river sector, by a pale, pickup truck-size boulder nicknamed “Big White” jutting halfway across the river, Jerry bobs quietly, the snorkel tip flashes his location. This section is below demolished Dam One. On shore, last year’s walnuts are scattered between curling stone smooth rocks. Jerry scans the boulder’s massive downstream face to an undercut just above the river bottom, studying for pattern breaks, the quivering camouflage edge of something alive - movement!
Surfacing, Jerry raises a fist and then unfurls a peace sign. Onshore, Shawn records the fist and the two-digit peace sign in a spiral, waterproof notebook. Standing slowly, Jerry lifts the mask; his face scrubbed red by the cold water.
A fist and two fingers, the hand signals for two Formosan Landlocked Salmon, estimated at one to two years old. Jerry counts one of the world’s rarest fish.
The Formosan Landlocked Salmon or Taiwan Salmon, which is critically endangered, is one of the rarest and most southerly naturally occurring members of the salmonid family. This ice age relic, devastated by humans, struggles back from near oblivion in Chichiawan River and its few tributaries in Shei-Pa National Park.
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| Adult Formosan salmon. Photo credit: Cheng-hsiung Yang |
Populations from the 1980s have rebounded from levels near 200 to new millennium numbers of over 5,000 individuals. Still, after decades of conservation, the salmon’s survival is far from certain. Although much of the habitat destruction has been repaired, population fluctuations remain a concern, while scientists fear a new problem gaining strength; climate change. Higher temperatures may augur more severe weather with increasingly more powerful typhoons.
The salmon’s existence in Taiwan is remarkable, but can it survive? If a nation’s flagship conservation species remains threatened after years of hard work, what does that say for the remaining ecosystem or ecosystems elsewhere?
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Created in 1992 and straddling the Central Mountain Range, Shei-Pa National Park’s 768.5 km2 are bewildering. Located on a tropical/subtropical island, just a hundred kilometres north of the Tropic of Cancer, Shei-Pa knows snow.
With the highest mountains in northeast Asia and many peaks well beyond three thousand metres, sections of the park look North American. Many park mountains are thick with conifers, and peaks reaching the alpine zone experience subzero winter temperatures and ferocious winds. Tragically, hikers and mountaineers have perished at these high elevations when the weather suddenly turns. An almost unimaginable fact considering the park includes counties with coconut trees.
One of the world’s most dangerous places for natural disasters, Taiwan floats uneasily at the intersection of four gnawing tectonic plates. Add marauding typhoons from May to October, floods, frequent landslides, plus one-metre rainfall events in 24 hours and regions of Taiwan test the will of any living organism.
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Driving to the next site Jerry Chen explains the counting procedure. This partial census targets eight critical areas on the Chichiawan River and its tributaries: specific runs, pools and confluences. Focusing on strategic sections helps researchers identify seasonal changes, salmon population fluctuations and overall river health. Typhoons can dramatically affect salmon numbers from year to year, so monitoring is vital.
Bouncing beside Chichiawan in the university’s jacked up Mitsubishi SUV, I ask about the underwater experience. “It’s beautiful but cold,” Jerry says. A few potholes later, he continues as if clarifying his previous statement, “There are really no bad things about this work. I love it. I like watching the changes in the fish and river.”
When asked if this is his dream job, he nods slowly, looking forward, hands on the wheel. Later, with a smile, as if confessing, he adds, “When I was young, I used to look at rice field water under my microscope.”
***
Scattered sandstone chunks and hunched junipers on three mountain peaks mark Chichiawan’s extreme headwaters. The 3,300 plus metre summits of Mt.Tao, Mt. Chihyu and Mt.Pingtein, lined east to west and approximately four kilometres apart, fill two coal-chute steep streams.
Taoshan North and Taoshan West Streams are roaring wild, spilling across sheer boulders, dropping between moss-covered slabs among Taiwan cedar and Taiwan Red Pine. These pugnacious streams, with a combined length of roughly nine kilometres, hold small salmon populations in the hundreds, primarily contained in their lower, relatively flat two to three kilometre stretches. At their confluence, Chichiawan River begins its short southern, six-kilometre run.
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| Three peak origin of Chichiawan. Photo credit: Cheng-hsiung Yang |
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| Chichiawan river valley. Photo credit: Cheng-hsiung Yang |
At Chichiawan’s beginning, the narrow river valley opens a stingy half kilometre, at most, of a western plain. An eastern ridge muscles its rocky shoulder tight against the river. In spring, Chichiawan is shallow but bustling and eager. Not quite modest, the river waits for summer and fall typhoons to bring pounding flood events. Massive tree trunks chewed barkless and shipwrecked on banks, and gravel bars portend the water to come.
Fly fishers would categorize the system’s waterways as freestone. Shei-Pa’s mountain gradients contribute fast, cold water. Landslides and erosion lay down streambeds of worn round stone. This mobile, smooth rubble is true, “freestone”. Seasonal changes alter gravel banks and rock placement. With sparse aquatic vegetation or log jam cover. Almost bare, the river has a desert landscape quality.
A kilometre before the Chichiawan River converges with Yousheng Stream and exits the park, Gaoshan Stream enters Chichiawan from the west. Gaoshan Stream, an intimate, hidden canyon stream, is Chichiawan’s longest tributary at 10.6 kilometres. Like the Taoshan streams, Gaoshan’s salmon are generally found four to five kilometres just before entering Chichiawan.
The total area of the watershed is a modest 76 km2 at Shei-Pa’s extreme eastern border. Chichiawan River feeds the 124 km long Dajia River. Dajia may have provided a route for salmon to complete their original anadromous lifecycle in former glacial periods before they became landlocked.
***
Alders squeeze our vehicle as it pushes down a skinny road to another section. Parking near a farmhouse, a three-legged dog barks hoarsely but is thankfully chained. We hurry on.
Entering the seventh census site, the river collects its rapids, soothes itself and expands into an emerald fan before entering a gradual bend, smooth and deep against a declining eastern rock face. Brave ferns squeeze between cliff strata.
Peggy and Shawn enter this nine-metre wide section from the river’s shallow, west side. A few steps in, and the pair float motionless, masks facing the deep east side. Baffled, I ask why they don’t explore the pool. Jerry explains the water is clear enough to see to the opposite bank. To minimize confusion, Peggy counts Taiwan salmon while Shawn counts Taiwan shoveljaw carp.
The sympatric shoveljaw carp, Onychostoma barbatulum, is a handsome, silver-scaled fish coexisting peacefully with the salmon. Aluminum shiny shoveljaws requiring cool water similar to salmon and help scientists monitor habitat quality. Shoveljaw fry also provide a convenient snack for salmon.
Peggy and Shawn continue relaying information with hand signals. (Spitting out a snorkel mouthpiece and shouting above the river is time-consuming.) Shoveljaws are identified with a flat palm on the head. For salmon, divers go straight to size and number. For both fish, a pinky finger indicates small, a fist, medium and a thumb up, a large fish. For salmon: pinky – one year and under. Fist – one to two years. A thumb up – over two years. Amounts are then expressed with fingers.
If counting salmon in clean, clear water measures Chichiawan’s recovery, then Yousheng Stream, only metres from the park boundary and the team’s first, brief stop, recalls Chichiawan’s grim past.
Frayed fertilizer bags litter Yousheng’s banks. A broken PVC pipe juts from the stream bottom. Upstream activity periodically churns water milk tea brown and coats the bottom in smothering silt. This section of Yousheng Stream, painfully close to the park and part of the salmon’s historical range, is now empty of salmon. Researchers are here counting carp. The shovel-jaws can tolerate higher levels of agricultural pollutants. Sixty years ago, Yousheng, Chichiawan and other regional rivers swelled with salmon.
The Chichiawan watershed and other surrounding river valleys were decimated by Taiwan’s explosive twentieth-century economic growth and, indirectly, the Chinese Civil War.
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Thirty Years before Shei-Pa National Park, in the early 1960s, the island’s government created Wuling Farm along the Chichiawan River. Wuling Farm and other communal, veteran’s farms originated island-wide in the decades after Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist’s loss to Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army and subsequent retreat to Taiwan in 1949.
Established to employ some of the nearly two million veterans and their families, today, the farms operate as recreational tourist destinations open to the public. Still called Wuling Farm, the site accommodates visitors in a modern hotel and cabins.
Small plots of agricultural land persist in Wuling Farm, but few veterans remain. Fruit trees fade between replanted endemic tree species, and chemical seepage dwindles. Declaring the salmon as an endangered species in 1984, the government has poured millions into salmon conservation, the salmon’s welfare symbolizing environmental restoration in Taiwan.
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At the eighth site, the team surveys Taoshan West Stream from a suspension footbridge 10 metres above the water. Here, Taoshan West flows past a steel ladder bolted to the western rock wall. The ladder and a knotted nylon rope give us stream access. From the footbridge, we scan upstream 200 meters to Dam Four foam white-water into a blue-green pool. Below us, Jerry spots a dead salmon.
Stepping off the ladder’s bottom rung, our group wades the noticeably colder headwater stream to the east side. Hypothermia sends shivers through Shawn. The last census wraps up quickly.
Our Taoshan count is complete, and we follow the bank downstream. Just before the suspension bridge, near shore, we spot the dead salmon. It sways gently in the current a few centimetres off the bottom. Jerry dips his left hand in, cradles the fish, raising it to the surface. The salmon settles stiffly in his palm. He spreads his right thumb, and little finger apart, holds them to the fish and measures for age. “It’s two years old,” he says quietly. Taiwan salmon can live for three to four years.
Rigid, the salmon’s eyes are cloudy, its charcoal grey par marks faded against a pastel silver-rose background. The flesh is still firm but rubbery, the smooth protective glycol-protein mucus layer gone.
“Disease?” I offer. Jerry carefully turns the ridged fish over. We lean in. “No, I think it was a bird,” answers Jerry.
From the gills extending down beyond the pectoral fin into the belly, we see a deep, ragged wound and, by its size, fatal. We stare a moment, and then Jerry gently lowers the salmon to the water. It sinks slowly; an oily rainbow sheen spreads across the surface.
Adult salmon have few predators, but the Tawny Fish Owl, Ketupa flavipes, is one. And an endangered species itself in Taiwan and standing 60 cm tall, the bird is the island’s largest owl and a powerful predator. Chichiawan's Fish Owls feed primarily on toads, rodents and shovel-jaws, but occasionally take salmon in shallow gravel beds during the fall spawn or on careless individuals other times. Jerry’s team has seen the Fish Owl’s sickle-shaped talon prints in riverside sand in the past.
For Chichiawan’s salmon, sexual maturity may begin in their second year. Salmon can spawn more than once but seldom live beyond four years. Spawning salmon move from protective pools and deep water to shallow gravel beds. Beginning uneasily close to the end of typhoon season, spawning season extends from late October to early December. The clean, level beds act as coldwater incubators. Gravel protects the covered, fertilized eggs, letting oxygen flow freely around developing embryos. Depending on her size, a female can lay between 100 – 500 eggs. Once fertilized, the eggs need 12 C water to develop. The newly hatched alevin emerge between gravel chips later that winter. Each alevin, bulging with a nourishing yoke droplet, breakout as free-swimming fry once the yoke is absorbed.
***
Dr Jin-Chywan Gwo smiles and greets me in front of his Taipei condominium complex he shares with his wife and a miniature long-haired dachshund. Moments later, Dr Gwo, professor at the National Taiwan Ocean University and Taiwan salmon expert, opens his condo front door, flips off his blue Crocs and invites me in. The dachshund barks with a furiously wagging tail.
Large, potted plants crowd balconies on each side of the living room, green against Taipei’s blue backed mountains. A six foot framed satellite image of Taiwan covers a wall opposite other walls lined with bookcases, each stacked with books, magazines and papers. A seagull mobile spins lazily.
After completing his master’s degree in Japan, Gwo earned a Texas A&M PhD in cryobiology. His salmon research in Taiwan began in 1992. Settling around an expansive dining room worktable, Gwo details the salmon’s discovery, taxonomy and one conservation blunder.
A Japanese territory from 1895 until the end of the Second World War and considered the showcase colony in Japan’s collection of East Asian possessions, Japan poured infrastructure, administrators and soldiers into Taiwan. Scientists soon followed.
Taiwan, a fresh frontier for Japanese researchers, provided new ecosystems and species to discover and at least one local insect to combat.
Temperate Japanese building practices in Taiwan were unfamiliar with warm climate pests, and Taiwan termites took advantage. In the early 1900s, the damage was so severe; termite control became a priority.
Invited initially to study termite taxonomy and solutions, Masamitsu Oshima, a brilliant young, scientist reached Taiwan in 1907. In one portrait photograph as a young man, Oshima with wire-rim spectacles and black hair brushed back neatly looks bookish, almost timid; he must have been anything but. During his 17 years in Taiwan, Oshima studied and wrote extensively on termites, later expanding his detailed work to include the island’s snakes, birds and fish. And by 1917, Oshima was in California studying for his master’s at Stanford University with ichthyology expert David Starr Jordan. Back in Taiwan, Oshima’s assistant Takeo Aoki continued research and collecting.
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Although many parts of Taiwan were gradually subdued, islandwide travel was still risky and, especially for researchers, not always possible. After gaining control of Taiwan, colonial officials overpowered the populous northern and western lowland regions by the new century. Taiwan’s interior was another matter. Sections of the island’s mountains remained in aboriginal control. Proud and fiercely independent, many tribes practised headhunting and were wary of outsiders after years of lost territory.
A 1901 map of Taiwan, split roughly down the middle and labelled, “Approximate boundary line separating Savage District and Territory under actual Japanese administration,” expressed colonial opinion towards aboriginals.
In 1903, with lowland Chinese resistance largely eliminated, colonial officials turned to the mountains. Hundreds of kilometres of the existing frontier fence, originally built only to separate border areas from Chinese villages, increased. New boundary fences encircled and cut across aboriginal lands enclosing tribes. After 1915, an uneasy peace held more or less, and police entered aboriginal communities to supervise from police substations.
An ancient way of life largely destroyed, resentment must have seeped through communities. In Wushe, a Seediq aboriginal village 40 kilometres south of Chichiawan River, police misconduct and forced labour finally exploded in a 1930 revolt. Within eight weeks, Japanese soldiers crushed the uprising.
During periods of the Japanese occupation, scientists avoided specific areas.
In July 1917, while travelling in the mountains collecting freshwater fish, Aoki heard police officer Tomomatsu Tsuzaki describe a fish similar to Japan’s Yamame trout living in the nearby mountains, in an Atayal tribal area, few outsiders entered. Intrigued, Aoki hoped for a specimen in the future. Three months later, Aoki had his fish.
Just north-east of Chichiawan River, aboriginals routinely passed through a police checkpoint at Shih Yuan Pass on their way to trade near Ilan along the Pacific Ocean. Researchers believe the first Taiwan salmon specimen came from one such aboriginal trader. Tsuzaki found what Aoki requested, packed it in the only preservative available, salt, and then sent it on.
Aoki received the fish on October 18, 1917, a 33.9 cm male. Salt tattered but adequate, Aoki described the sample, published the findings in several Japanese journals and sent word to California.
At Stanford, Oshima was excited, but Jordan was sceptical, commenting, “There shouldn’t be any such cold-water fish as trout in the tropics of Taiwan.” Jordan knew the Japanese shipped salted salmon as food, reasoning the fish was probably cargo from Japan destined for an aboriginal village when it fell into a river and was recovered downstream.
After graduating, Oshima returned to Taiwan in 1918 to resume research and, in his own words, relating to the mystery salmonid, “. . . found not a fish salted for food, but a real Taiwan trout on his laboratory table.” He informed a persuaded Jordan.
Still, Oshima wanted a fresh specimen. In March 1919, Oshima followed the Dajia River upstream, keen to reach the salmon habitat near Saramao, present-day Lishan and only 12 kilometres south of Chichiawan River. Unfortunately, aboriginal unrest farther upstream stopped Oshima in Wushe, 28 kilometres south of Saramao. This unrest tragically led to the Saramao uprising of 1920.
Halted in Wushe, and by chance, Oshima learned a juvenile, 14.8 cm Taiwan salmon was kept in a pond at the Saramao police station. Soon Oshima had the second, fresh salmon on his laboratory table.
Before the Saramao trip, Oshima and Jordan agreed to name the new species Salmo saramao. However, Oshima sent his report to Jordan with a new name, Salmo formosanus. Jordan accepted the new name, and in April 1919, presented the new salmon to the prestigious Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia using the amended name.
Curiously, in June 1919, Oshima published a paper on the salmon in Japanese, published in Taiwan and using the originally agreed-upon name, Salmo saramao.
Oshima returned to Japan in 1924 to live and lecture but eventually visited Chichiawan River in 1935, collecting his own salmon specimens. His visit helped clarify taxonomy questions, and since then, the salmon’s scientific name has undergone several revisions.
Presently, depending on who is consulted, the name could be Oncorhynchus masou formosanus or Oncorhynchus formosanus. However, in Ho & Shao’s (2011) Annotated Checklist and Type Catalogue of Fish Genera and Species Described from Taiwan. Zootaxa, 2957, the salmon is listed as Oncorhynchus formosanus. In addition, the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the salmon as, Oncorhynchus formosanus on its Red List of Threatened Species.
Unfortunately, the original salted salmon specimen collected from the aboriginal trader is gone, perhaps lost during the war.
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The blunder involved the hatchery program. In 2004 a powerful typhoon flood event breached Chichiawan’s hatchery, spilling over 3,200 artificially reared salmon, the offspring of just five pairs of wild salmon, into Chichiawan River. Two years later, Dr Gwo’s research found a close homogeneous relationship between all salmon in the Chichiawan catchment. In his view, the result of several years of improper hatchery management and the disastrous hatchery escape. Dr Gwo fears genetic similarity within the species restricts adaptability to environmental changes and gives the salmon few genetic cards to play against disease.
Big White below demolished dam number one
With his Gore-Tex hood
up, perched on a rock near “Big White”, Jerry is recording fish. During
the late August count, this wet temperate forest zone lives up to its name
today – fluctuating between drizzle and a steady downpour, following weeks of summer
rain and typhoon Soulik in July.
The Tsing Hua University research team is back evaluating the eight sections for a late summer count. The river is lumpy now, cobbles and boulders prominent with sand and silt washed away. Last autumn’s scattered walnuts are gone.
“Big White” has sunk deeper under higher surrounding sediment washed down from demolished Dam Number One’s debris field and higher, seasonal water. Onshore, Jerry and I follow diver Henry Lee, a new team member. Jerry stops, looks down, points to the gravel and sand at the water’s edge; pushing a foot in, the spongy sediment leaks water. “See, the rocks are unstable. The next big rain will wash this away, and then Big White will stick out again.” The river bottom will lower, the continuous highway of debris moving on. Jerry keeps walking. A moment later, the section recorded, Jerry helps Henry out of the river. Walking the path back, I follow Henry, his wetsuit boots squeaking.
Like any river system, Chichiawan’s watershed organisms rotate in typical life cycles, but inanimate river material is conveyer-belt transient. Summer and autumn bring more rainfall, landslides, unstable debris and boulder-filled waterways, while reduced winter and spring water levels permit sand and silt to accumulate. Measured in seasons, eventually, everything moves on but at different speeds: Sand and silt speed away quickly, rocks and cobbles move slower. Huge boulders move only if their supporting sediment shifts, and then gradually.
In the 1940s, the Chichiawan River valley was one cluster of north-centre river valleys alive with salmon. Area residents harvested fish. But mechanical shovels and dynamite marching the new Central Cross-Island Highway through the mountains changed that. With the highway’s completion in 1960, people and agriculture filled valleys and activity along Dajia River, Chichiawan River, Yousheng River, Hohuan River, Hanhu River, and Sihjielan Creek carved forests and fish away. New arrivals fished salmon out, and agricultural pressure degraded habitat. Salmon in the Chichiawan watershed, within Wuling Farm and under the jurisdiction of the then Veteran Farm Committee hung on.
Fifty odd years on, in the surrounding valleys, cabbage fields roll to the water’s edge while trellises anchor fruit trees to cleared slopes. The smell of stacked bags of fertilizer wafts around mountain roads, and irrigation equipment pumps needed habitat away.
Perfectly manicured tea bushes and orchards with fruit safely tucked in wax paper bags conceal a past and present. These destructive elements aside, one artificial structure may have done the most damage to salmon.
***
Nearing site two, we gingerly descend leaf soaked stone stairs at the confluence of Gaoshan and Chichiawan. Shawn enjoys a cigarette wedged between gloved fingers. The forest is dripping shellac wet. Standing on Chichiawan’s west bank, with Gaoshan entering from his left, Shawn crosses to the far side, Henry remains. Both begin working upstream. Rain bounces hard off the river around the divers.
In his third census, Shawn efficiently completes the east side. He stands, looks across to Peggy, and then pretends to shiver, hugging himself. Peggy motions he is strong enough to continue. He flicks his hand at her, they both laugh.
Back at the SUV, Henry describes salmon lengths he saw against his forearm. Later, in the backseat, Henry stretches a leg out for relief; gravel has filled his wetsuit’s left leg through a knee patch tearing away.
At the three-legged dog site, we hear growling but see nothing. A puppy wags its tail near a doghouse. The three-legged dog keeps dry under a wooden pallet. Grateful, we keep moving. The vast emerald fan is now closed tight against the eastern rock face and the rapids are gone. The conquering ferns remain.
The steel ladder bolted to the cliff wall at Taoshan West Stream site is gone – probably ripped away by July’s Typhoon Soulik. Only the knotted rope held, tied high to a tree on the escarpment, it must have whipped violently during the storm.
Upstream from the dead salmon footbridge, the large, blue-green pool under dam four is a quarter of its April size.
***
“To my knowledge, there are few areas in the world that experience landslide problems of the magnitude of those common to Taiwan . . .”
A Reassessment of Watershed Conditions, Problems and Research Needs in Taiwan, Robert. E. Dils, soil scientist, 1978.
Civil engineers are challenged holding Taiwan’s mountains back. There are serious problems with young and weak geology, steep elevations, extreme wet weather, earthquakes, poor land use, erosion and landslides leading to siltation. Silt fills reservoirs, irrigation canals and raises streambeds.
Two-thirds of Taiwan is mountainous, and about 230 - 400 million tonnes of sediment race to the ocean annually. Seven of the world’s top ten rivers for sediment yield are Taiwanese. Incredibly, some mountainous regions exceed 3 metres of rain annually, with most precipitation falling in the May-October typhoon season. A meter of rain falling in 24 hours is not unheard of.
A 2010 landslide near Taipei crushed a six-lane highway; the estimated 200,000 cubic metre mountainside, complete with road and forest, buried four motorists.
Chichiawan’s wet weather extremes can defy comprehension. Dr Charles Yeh, a pleasant, soft-spoken hydrologist at Feng Chia University in Taichung, offers three examples. Sitting across a cafe table scattered with research papers, Dr Yeh explains torrential rain racing off saturated mountain slopes can initiate a Chichiawan River flood in just 30 minutes. Dr Yeh adds an average typhoon can transform Chichiawan with an approximate discharge rate of about five m/s2 into a deluge with a discharge rate approaching 300 m/s2. I blink and lean in. Dr Yeh helps clarify with another illustration – a raindrop can fall in the mountainous headwaters of Gaoping River, Taiwan’s second-longest river at 171 km, and reach the ocean within ten hours.
Taiwan’s economy, primed with American aid in the 1950s and early 1960s, grew, and soon a roaring GDP and population demanded a steady source of water and hydropower. The Deji Reservoir, completed in 1973, with its concrete arch, rose along a gorge wall section of the Dajia River to supply both to Taiwan. To solve siltation problems, engineers continued filling streams and rivers with check dams. Check dams are rectangular concrete barriers built across rivers to collect and hold debris. Sizes vary. Some dams are low and inconspicuous, while others are towering, reservoir sized structures.
As a result, between 150,000 to 300,000 check dams divide Taiwan’s waterways. Blocks of concrete plunked down centre-stream to hold back mountains of sediment. For salmon, this sediment solution was disastrous.
By 1978, at least ten check dams filled Chichiawan, Gaoshan and West and North Taoshan. The dams split salmon populations and warmed water. Separate populations meant few opportunities for gene exchange and tiny sectional adult spawning groups. Heavy rain swept salmon over check dams with no way to return. Sand and silt accumulated between the barriers smothering critical spawning beds while warmer, slow-moving water suffocated developing salmon eggs. Fortunately, by the late 1990s, the check dams started coming down.
Consumers may remember ‘Made in Taiwan’ on favourite toys from the 1960s and 1970s. Taiwan’s growth continued, and in the following decades, manufacturers moved from cheap products to globally recognized electronics. Similar to other countries since the Industrial Revolution, Taiwan embraced industrialization. Emerging from post-war and post-colonialism, Taiwan chose a familiar nation-building blueprint. This template creates fast economic results and wealth but devastates habitat. Western judgement might be tempered acknowledging a similar journey.
Taiwan surged ahead. Traditions, culture and lifestyles metamorphosed in a generation. 21st century children may have little idea what their grandparents endured. In Taichung, Taiwan’s third largest city, municipal governments level and recreate communities. Farmland and traditional buildings disappear.
On Taichung’s busy roads filled with shiny German and Japanese cars, some elderly Taiwanese collect plastic and cardboard for recycling. Pushing trolleys while making their rounds, they sometimes stop to stare at traffic and sky-high buildings. Their eyes seem searching for an older, recognizable Taiwan.
Environmental awareness and the environmental movement are young in Taiwan. Kenting National Park, the island’s oldest national park, was only established in 1984. But the end of martial law in 1987 and a fledgling democracy brought concerned groups and individuals into the public space. Previously fearful of criticizing authority, citizens bolstered by politician’s new accountability to voters spread a new message. Policies began to change.
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Dr Lin is making a point. Dr Hsing-Jun Lin of Chung Hsing University in Taichung and head of the Wuling Long-Term Ecological Research and Modeling (WLTERM) research team squints, closes his eyes and starts waving his arms explaining WLTERM’s formation. “Where do you start? What is important? We needed to examine everything.” He explains. The task was mind numbing. How do you gather scattered researchers, recruit others to investigate areas not studied and perhaps most importantly, how do you know what the overall plan should look like?
Returning from the University of Rhode Island with his PhD, Dr Lin began teaching at Chung Hsing University in 1999. One of his students, Shuei-Fen Yu, a National Park Service employee studying for her PhD, took his coastal ecosystem class. Later, in 2002 Yu asked if Lin could create an interdisciplinary research group to study Chichiawan’s ecosystem as a whole, a first in Taiwan. Lin studied similar research programs worldwide and then submitted his outline the following year. In 2004, WLTERM’s 12 project directors began combining research on subjects as diverse as insect and algae growth to bird predation and food web structure. WLTERM was directed to study the Wuling Farm ecosystem in detail and given a decade of funding to accomplish the goal.
Taiwan’s postwar universities, mandated by the government, focused on contributing graduates to the island’s economic growth, with salmon conservation a low priority. Still, through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s basic research continued sporadically. A 1958 report, the first since World War II, collected specimens and discussed taxonomy. Japanese researchers collected samples through the 1960s and 70s, and soon Taiwanese scientists started studying salmon numbers. Finally, in 1994 the National Park Service began detailed habitat research.
***
An October sun chases morning shadows out of valleys and off mountains. Crisp, dry days replace wet summer weather. The fall sky is clear and transparent as a final decision. The fall salmon census is a complete Chichiawan watershed count with most accessible areas tallied. It’s also three days of diving for me.
Friday morning, 17 divers and support staff gather for a communal breakfast in the park’s government hostel. Peggy places steaming pots of rice congee along the centre length of a long wooden table. Bowls, metal chopsticks, and food pass hands. Comradery is high as people talk, joke and roll eyes.
During a complete census, volunteers help supplement the university researchers. Friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, and parents are recruited, trained, given wetsuits and coached along the riverside. Some team members dive while others record.
With breakfast done, Jerry Chen briefs the three team-leaders and dive teams are transported to designated spots. Eight hundred meters below Chichiawan’s Dam Three, our team steps into an autumn field. The wind pulls rust and yellow leaves off alders.
At the river, Jacky, a veteran volunteer, reviews the counting procedure. My tight wetsuit has a familiar left knee spilt. I walk into the river and then submerge. Cold water jolts an ice cream headache across my forehead, and water leaks tiny frozen razors between wetsuit gaps. Slowly acclimatizing and warming, I slip through a wormhole into a new liquid universe. The two worlds could not be farther apart. Rushing surface crests and furrows shimmer shadows across the river bottom’s grey, orange and eggplant purple stones. Sound is tactile, bass. Disturbed boulders boom along the bottom; still, the overall ambient sound is moving water.
The centre channel is rapids, with roller coaster peaks jumping boulders and plunging into troughs. Most salmon hold in calmer streamside water. This string of mini pools and pocket water, with broken surface waves, conceal fish hugging boulders or hunkering down in gravel indentations. Pocket water is the relatively calm water behind current disrupting boulders. For salmon, pocket water is vital during flood events.
Crawling, I enter a small pool. Scanning upstream to the head of the pool, I am not alone. Several salmon study me, effortlessly holding still, their spots and parr marks pronounced against silk-pale bodies. Approaching, the fish lean back slightly, fins rippling. When I’m within two feet, they scatter. I hand signal Jacky, and he relays numbers to the recording volunteer. Count totals are recorded on accurate sketches of the waterways; metre by metre, the drawings detail boulder placement, water speed, landslides areas and sand deposits.
The sides of Chichiawan’s final 300 meters to Dam Three are compressed vice-tight. Rock slabs crush water fast and deep. My apprenticeship completed, Jacky counts the east side opposite me; we clutch ravine chunks against the current. Upstream, mist and wind erupt from the water’s impact at the dam’s four-storey waterfall base.
Incredibly, salmon occupy this section. Clutching the west wall, I discover a salmon, mid-channel, just off the gravel bottom. I Steady myself and then tilt my head sideways. The force pulls my mask and snorkel. Silver beads of air rattle past. I clench my teeth tighter, holding the mouthpiece. The salmon leads with its sharp snout and rides the bucking current, holding in place and oscillating like a flag on a brisk day.
The following morning, hiking Dam One’s 1.4 km long debris field, our team examines strewn timber. Torrential summer rains have shuffled spring’s logs, and new trunks have appeared. We inspect a large, five-foot diameter addition spray painted, ‘3-1’. Chichiawan’s watershed is intensely researched, with, at times, several university groups studying the water basin at once. Scientists often paint codes on boulders or build quirky riverside cairns, identifying sections for repeat visits. Logs are also tagged and studied.
Landslides and typhoons contribute wood to the watershed’s rivers, current then couriers logs in varying states of decomposition and at different speeds to lower elevations. But tracking logs is not always successful, “Tracking log movement is complicated, some logs just disappear.” laments Dr Yeh. Hopefully, 3-1 labellers have better luck.
Last night’s rain obscures river visibility. Salmon are fidgety, mindful of their cloudy surroundings and scatter as the divers approach. A taped plastic bag around my left knee protects yesterday’s gravel burn. The wetsuit leg split has migrated shin-south. Wriggling from pool to pocket water, my heart pounds, and the work is exhausting - faking a stone crevice inspection, I catch my breath and sip cool river water.
The river jumps with the current. Vortices twist sand and pebbles off the bottom. Occasionally, bent rebar lengths protrude - uncovered bones of destroyed Dam Two. Powerful waterfalls pour off large check dams and weaken supporting concrete by excavating deep scouring pools beneath. Its foundation undermined, Dam Two stood until a typhoon broke its back in 2005, filling the scouring pool and downstream channel with debris.
This central section is white-water driven, and teams count at the river’s periphery. Pressed against the seam, that transitional sliver of water between fast and slow current, divers are conscious of centimetres of limb and torso allowed to dangle beyond the seam before they’re tugged downstream.
An explorer’s jolt warms me Sunday morning. Wading Chichiawan River to the east side, team members approach “No Name Creek”, my final census section. Absent from research papers and watershed maps I’ve reviewed, this 1500 metre Shangri-la secluded creek enters Chichiawan from the east, just above dam three and originates off Taoshan North Stream. We count the first 300 upstream meters to an unnamed check dam. The upper kilometre-plus section is left to another group.
Too cold for Shovel-jawed Carp, sunlight pours between green leaves bent over jade-crystal water. Known and counted by scientists, still, the sense of treasure-hunt discovery is lovely. Our section culminates in a moss framed, turquoise waterfall.
No Name Creek's moss & turquoise waterfall
Heavy curtains are snug across windows, blocking late December sun in a Shei-Pa National Park Headquarters conference room. It’s the end of year salmon meeting. The first WLTERM PowerPoint presentation throws a graph on the screen: Dr Chyng-Shyan Tzeng, Jerry Chen’s boss at National Tsing Hua University, details October salmon numbers. The numbers are low, 1200 individuals, down from over 5,000 fish the previous summer, resulting from powerful typhoons in 2012 and 2013.
Scientists, government officials, grad students, and park employees in fleece shells and hiking boots sit around a u-shaped table and against walls listening. Researchers take turns all afternoon explaining findings related to their specialities.
WLTERM’s decade of government funding is finished. From now on, only basic research. The atmosphere is slightly wistful but satisfied; Scientists are gratified to have contributed to WLTERM, a first in Taiwan.
After the meeting, I ask Jerry if the low numbers, the worst since 2006, are concerning. Assuring me, Jerry says salmon numbers should rebound; they have been much lower.
The precarious recovery continues.