Off The Hook: An Essay

“Duuuude. Is that a shark?” a high school student exclaims as she approaches the observation area of the Viewing Pond at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery in Cascade Locks, Oregon. The small group erupts into laughter and pubescent human bodies begin to line up along a middle window pane to gawk at the proud display.

A giant fin saunters by in view. "He dwarfs the others,” a second voice booms from the crowd now gathered at the window panes.

It is a crisp autumn afternoon at the Fish Hatchery. Sunlight speckles the small forest grove of douglas fir and white oak trees overlooking the observation area of the Sturgeon Viewing Pond. There is a slight smell of fish in the air. Tiny flies are buzzing around in the sunlight, so small they are almost invisible.

The tank in front of me displays three large windows, peeking into the contrived habitat for one of the oldest living species of fish on the planet - white sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus). The tank contains the trunk and gargantuan root system of a felled tree, flecked with a moss-like aquatic plant. Rainbow trout whiz by, seemingly unfazed by the bustling crowds. Fall leaves hang suspended, yet sinking in the substrate, while sunlight mottles in streaming lines from the skies above. Fish heads and carcasses dot the floor beneath the living fish.

The giant sturgeon do resemble sharks in that they are cartilaginous (comprised of cartilage) and have smooth scale-less skin. Bumpy protrusions called scutes line their side bodies like armor. However, unlike sharks, they are bottom feeders and have mouths designed to suction the benthic floor, rather than mouths full of sharp and dangerously pointed teeth. Although salmon are what visitors may normally expect to see at the hatchery, the sturgeon are an attraction all their own.

There is a particular sturgeon in this tank who is called Herman. And Herman is a popular fish. Michelle Dennehy, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is quoted in a September 2017 Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) article as saying that Herman is “an icon and something of a pop-culture figure.” Over half a million people visit him every year. She mentions that concern over his welfare is what ultimately solidified the decision in 1985 to stop the tremendous task of transporting his gigantic body once every year between the Oregon State Fair and his former home in the Roaring River Viewing Pond. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) website says: “After many years of taking Herman to the fair, ODFW managers decided the ordeal was causing too much stress on him so the practice was stopped. No one responsible for his well-being regrets that decision… yet 30 years later, people still remember Herman’s state fair days and continue to ask ODFW staff (at the fair), ‘Where’s Herman?’” The 2017 OPB article then goes on to chronicle Herman’s “wild life” and eases readers fears that the Eagle Creek Fire evacuations did not harm their beloved fish friend.

I see one of the largest of the white sturgeon in the tank lays in the benthos with its head in the corner of the tank, so its tiny eyes are just out of view of the crowds. This sturgeon sits seemingly unmoving, frozen in time, and remains in the corner for the entire 80 minutes that I remain perched on a built-in slab of stone to observe the human visitors to the observation tank. A dull and young male voice begins a lesson over the loudspeaker. There are three buttons toward the entrance to this particular exhibit with built in audio recordings. Someone has pressed the button for “Herman the Sturgeon” and the tedious voice resounds: "Welcome. In this pond there are rainbow trout and white sturgeon. The largest one is Herman. Herman is approximately 10 feet long, 450 pounds, and 70 years old. The white sturgeon is the largest freshwater fish species in North America. It can reach lengths of almost 20 feet, can weigh up to 1000 pounds, and they may live well over 100 years. These sturgeon came from the Columbia River in 1998, when the sturgeon center was constructed." 

Stories told of “Herman the Sturgeon” are saturated in myth. And the facts surrounding his life get more than a little fuzzy at times. Upon further researching Herman, it becomes hard to piece together whom he really might be (or even if only one Herman really does exist) with all of the varying reports on his life and key facts. With some sources such as OPB reporting that Herman has survived through not only 50 years of display at the Oregon State Fair, but also a stabbing, a kidnapping attempt, and also the Eagle Creek Fire. While there are other rumors that claim that there is no real “Herman” at all and, instead, it is only the name given to the largest fish housed in the observation pond at any given time. A claim perhaps even softly admitted by the monotonous voice over the loudspeaker which touts that all of the sturgeon came from the Columbia River in 1998, nine years after the so-called “original” Herman was retired from the Oregon State Fair.

The first time I encountered Herman, or rather this tank full of sturgeons, I was stopping off for a short reprieve and bathroom break after driving home from a hike with my husband. I had stopped at the Hatchery once before on the way home from a solo hike. I wanted my husband to see the salmon and how they would jump from the spawning basins up the man-made waterfalls. It was quite the show. This time, though, I asked him if we could go see the Sturgeon Viewing Area that I had previously skipped over. I have to admit that, from the moment I laid eyes on the beasts, I was smitten. They charmed me and ignited in me a creative fire to talk about them, to write about them, to learn more. The whole Hatchery has this strange sadistic charm about it. It’s a place that really forces you to consider the world. I knew I had to dive deeper.

“Fish are one of the most highly utilized vertebrate taxa by humans; they are harvested from wild stocks as part of global fishing industries, grown under intensive aquaculture conditions, are the most common pet, and are widely used for scientific research,” begins the abstract to “Fish intelligence, sentience, and ethics” by Culum Brown in the 2015 Journal of Animal Cognition. Brown continues, “But fish are seldom afforded the same level of compassion or welfare as warm-blooded vertebrates. Part of the problem is the large gap between people’s perception of fish intelligence and the scientific reality...Because fish are also phylogenetically distant to humans in comparisons with mammals, we find it difficult to empathize with them. We cannot hear them vocalize, and they lack recognizable facial expressions both of which are primary cues for human empathy.”

The same Brown paper goes on to say that “recent reviews of fish cognition suggest fish show a rich array of sophisticated behaviors. For example, they have excellent long-term memories, develop complex traditions, show signs of Machiavellian intelligence, cooperate with and recognize one another, and are even capable of tool use.” A different paper published in 2015 in the journal WIREs Cognitive Science by B. Wren Patton and Victoria A. Braithwaite confirms: “Fish use tools, develop cultural traditions, take turns, cheat, punish, cooperate in hunting both within and between species, communicate, learn by watching their companions, among many other diverse skills.”

What I find so interesting is that Herman is largely the exception, rather than the rule to this addressed overall lack of compassion. Although, in my 80-minute observation of the viewing tank, I witnessed patrons have varying responses to “Herman” and the other sturgeon in the tank. The cognitive dissonances many humans experience over their feelings toward their fish friend Herman became apparent in many of the interactions I witnessed. The public perception of fish as whole points to a role that are supposed to take in our lives. We see them as barely sentient beings and therefore we feel ethically justified to use them for whatever reasons we need. In time, it starts to become more clear to me that Herman is, himself, a stand in for (and also an exception to) the public perceptions that humans have about fish, fish sentience, and our utilitarian relationship to them as a species.

When first approaching the tank, one older woman dressed in a bright turquoise vest and salmon-colored pants exclaimed proudly to the two friends she had arrived with “This is my favorite fish to eat!” Upon observing how the one extremely large sturgeon was frozen, locked in place in the corner of the tank, hiding its head, she later asked in a somber tone, “Are you alive, Herman?”

Another family arrived later who were quite impressed by the facts slowly leaking out of the loudspeaker. A mother exclaimed in a matter of fact tone to her adult daughter who had a stroller with a baby in tow, “200 million years ago, Syd - they're Jurassic!"

The adult daughter responds sometime later, “They're like giant catfish" and then adds "He's the right one,” referring to who she thinks might be Herman, holed up in the corner of the tank, and letting her voice trail off in astonishment tinged with a hint of realization.

"See? They look prehistoric. They've been around since the dawn of time, right? I've never seen one this big pulled out of the river…” the mother adds talking to her daughter and hobbling back and forth between the viewing windows now that the crowds have died down a bit. One of the larger sturgeons now sits in her direct view in the middle window and she begins to talk to it in a baby voice, “Hi! Hellooo, hello. What's you think? Are you stuck in here?”

"Mira! Mira!" a different mother proclaims as she scoops up her little boy who is of the toddler age when there is a lot of walking to be done, but not much talking yet. He leans in toward the glass in his oversized backwards cap to take a peek. When he sees what she is telling him to look at he gasps and squeals in excitement, not yet having the words to describe exactly what he is seeing, but not really needing them also.

Most all of the visitors I observed could agree on one thing, “Herman” is large, big, humongous, wow! All of these things. That is, nearly all of them except a group of high schoolers donning clipboards who were off to their next lesson and who exited the area in agreement: “He ain't as big as Shaq.” The students were referring to a display exhibit adjacent to the tank with a six-foot replica sturgeon popping out of the wall in three dimensions. If the Herman in the tank is really ten feet long, he most certainly is bigger than Shaquelle O’Neal, who only clocks in at an inch over seven feet tall. 

Many people enjoy fishing as a pastime because it gives them space and time (and setting) to think. Fishing is often a treasured meditative activity that spans generations, with parents teaching children who will then teach their children and so on to infinity. There is a primal pleasure in the waiting and in the hunt. In this visit to the Hatchery, I couldn’t help but take on a bit of that same mindful feeling. And now I am left to think. I think about Herman. I think about all of the sturgeon, plucked from the wild waters of the Columbia, who will spend their lives in those tanks. I think about the fates of those same sturgeons that were taken from the river, had they not been forced into captivity and had they instead ended up as someone’s sturgeon steak. I wonder who got the better deal.

I think about the concept of a fish twice as old as me. I think about how I have reverence for this creature and have regarded it with respect since the moment I laid eyes on it, regardless of its lack of vocalization and distinct facial expressions. I wonder where that comes from. I think about how the brilliance of a fish does not matter because they taste good, because it’s easy to eat them, because it’s fun to look at them through glass. Because it’s easy to visit them and forget about them.

It’s easy to move on when you aren’t the one stuck in a tank.

Isn’t it?