Kale Williams/The Oregonian

By Kale Williams

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Bobby Begay plunged his head beneath the rushing waters of Willamette Falls as the sound of falling water echoed off the derelict mill across the river.

Lying submerged beneath one of the waterfall's smaller cascades, Begay's hand emerged from the water before the rest of him. Held tightly in his fingers, a snake-like creature wriggled and snapped.

Quickly, before the creature could escape his grasp, Begay threw it into a waiting net. The Pacific lamprey he'd just plucked from the water was one of hundreds collected at the falls on Friday, part of a generations-long tradition for the tribes of the Pacific Northwest.

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Kale Williams/The Oregonian

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The lamprey is not a fish that conforms to traditional beauty standards. Roughly 2 feet long, the prehistoric, eel-like creature sports a powerful sucker mouth, ringed with concentric circles of sharp teeth. It doesn't have gills, rather it breathes through a series of holes just behind the eyes.

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Kale Williams/The Oregonian

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Kale Williams/The Oregonian

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These fish, prized by tribes for thousands of years, share some similarities with the iconic salmon. Lamprey spawn in freshwater and spend years living in riverbeds as larvae. Once they mature, the lamprey migrates to open ocean, where they use those power suckers to attach themselves to larger fish, living off blood sucked from the bigger animal.

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Jon Hess ducks under Willamette Falls in search of lamprey. Kale Williams/The Oregonian

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Lamprey, like salmon, have faced challenges over recent decades. As recently as 60 years ago, nearly half a million lamprey made their way up the Columbia River and its tributaries every year. That number has dipped as only 20,000 of the creatures now venture upstream to lay eggs, impeded by hydroelectric dams and changing habitats.

"Everyone is familiar with salmon," said Jon Hess, a researcher studying population genetics among the often-overlooked lamprey. He noted that there is a massive campaign to save the imperiled salmon, while the push to save the lamprey is muted.

"(People) think the lamprey is a parasite or a pest, but they're an important part of the ecosystem," Hess said.

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Kale Williams/The Oregonian

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There are some

, though. On the Umatilla River, in Eastern Oregon, members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation have worked for decades to rebuild the failing population, transporting adult fish past dams to spawning grounds upriver. As recently as 2013, there were only a few hundred of the fish in the Upper Umatilla, but earlier this year, more than 2,600 lamprey were counted making the journey upriver to breed.

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Kale Williams/The Oregonian

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On Friday, Hess and Begay, along with another half dozen brave souls, donned snorkel masks, shook off the early-morning chill and eagerly plunged into the falls, seeking out the fish that Hess described as tasting not dissimilar to the river itself.

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Throughout the morning, they pulled fish after fish from the falls and were soon joined by boats full of members of the Warm Springs tribe. By midday, the falls teemed with men and women, young and old, pulling fish as others stood by critiquing their fishing technique in low voices.

Begay said the haul sitting in the hold of his boat, a mass of writhing fish that looked as if if could serve as Medusa's wig, would be given as gifts to his elders. For Hess, the biggest challenge of the annual lamprey harvest came in preparation.

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"My goal this year is to see if I can cook them so my family will actually eat them," he said.

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-- Kale Williams

kwilliams@oregonian.com

503-294-4048