On the other side of that window a woman sits in a little dark room observing them. She is the fish counter. At a glance, she identifies the type of fish passing by her window. She adds a fish to her count that makes forward progress and subtracts the backward moving ones. As she explains her work, I can tell she obviously takes pride in what she does. Jim explains the bigger problem is getting the fingerlings down. Forty million dollars was spent at this dam for a fingerling bypass, so the little baby fish don’t have to go through the turbines en route to the ocean. Jim estimates a mere 4% mortality rate even if they did go through the turbines. Gulls, he estimates, account for a much higher mortality rate . The Army Corps has installed wires over the gates to lessen the impact of gull predation on the fingerlings. We hop back in the truck for our next stop[on our personalized tour of John Day Dam.].