Native Americans from a variety of northwest tribes harvest Pacific lamprey at Willamette Falls in Oregon City on June 17, 2016. Heavy water flows over the falls made the traditional harvest much more difficult than normal. Some of the 194 lamprey that were collected will be used for research while others are for ceremonial use throughout the year. Photo by Randy L. Rasmussen

Cold water beat down on Zach Penney's shoulders. Struggling in his black tank top to keep the shivers in check, he plunged his head under Willamette Falls and searched for a lamprey suctioned to the vertical rock wall.

He grabbed the slick body with white cotton gloves and broke the suction, then tossed it into a net. Ralph Lampman, manning the net, then transferred it to a brown burlap sack, where it joined dozens of other wriggling eel-like fish.

Lamprey aren't a glamorous fish. Their suction cup mouths ringed with teeth allow them to live like parasites on bigger fish until they migrate to their spawning grounds.

Penney grew up hearing about the Pacific lamprey harvest from his grandparents and elders on the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho. Not many lamprey make the trip up the Columbia River to Idaho anymore since several dams went up. So, when he had the chance to join Friday's lamprey harvest near Oregon City, he was eager to try.

Six Columbia River tribal members gathered before 7 a.m. at Willamette Falls for the annual rite. Each year, tribal members brave the current and temperatures of the early summer river to wrangle the prehistoric fish into burlap sacks that they take back to their longhouses and freezers. Some are eaten fresh, some are frozen for community events and ceremonies and some go to researchers.

Zach Penney (left) and Bobby Begay show of some of the harvest as Native Americans from a variety of northwest tribes collected Pacific lamprey at Willamette Falls in Oregon City on June 17, 2016. Heavy water flows over the falls made the traditional harvest much more difficult than normal. Some of the 194 lamprey that were collected will be used for research while others are for ceremonial use throughout the year. Photo by Randy L. Rasmussen

Penney runs the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission's fishery science department. Between the fish commission and the four tribes -- Warm Springs, Yakama, Umatilla and Nez Perce -- there are about 500 people dedicated to fishery science. They, along with many federal, state and nonprofit agencies, focus on salmon conservation. But the tribes are among the only organizations also trying to build up the 450 million-year-old lamprey runs that have been nearly wiped out in the last 100 years.

"It's just one of those feelings when you have all five senses engaged," Penney said. "It's not like sport fishing. It's something older and deeper."

Sixty years ago, 400,000 adult lamprey made the yearly trip up the Columbia River. Less than 20,000 on average now struggle upstream to lay eggs. With so few left, mainstays of tribal life on the river are gone. Children used to pull lamprey from the Columbia River and its tributaries while their older relatives fished for salmon. Now, tribal members are allowed to only harvest at Willamette Falls in a small window, because the populations are so low through the rest of the Columbia Basin.

Yakama lamprey biologist Ralph Lampman was also a novice at Friday's harvest. His work focuses on tracking lamprey with GPS, so the Yakama fisheries staff know how many lamprey are making it back to their native spawning grounds. In 2005, only 1 to 2 percent of the historical numbers made it home. That's 1 to 2 percent of 50,000 at the most.

The population has started to bounce back in Yakama waterways, but still is significantly lower than the pre-dam years. Now, at most, 87 lamprey make it back.

Bobby Begay holds up a lamprey as Native Americans from a variety of northwest tribes harvested Pacific lamprey eels at Willamette Falls in Oregon City on June 17, 2016. Heavy water flows over the falls made the traditional harvest much more difficult than normal. Some of the 194 eels that were collected will be used for research while others are for ceremonial use throughout the year. Photo by Randy L. Rasmussen

Many of the 194 fish Friday's small crew pulled out of the falls will go toward Lampman and others' research. They want to study how many male and female lamprey are showing up this time of year. If they get a better handle on that ratio, they can make sure the tribes are harvesting at a time when they are not ruining the lamprey's chance of mating.

Saving lamprey and harvesting lamprey could seem like they would be at odds, but the tribal members see them as inextricable.

"The water on your back, feeling the fish and grabbing them out -- it's an ethereal experience," Lampman said.

Sara Thompson, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission spokeswoman, watched the crew struggle to reach the best spot for harvesting from a high rock as dry as anything near the falls could be. She is a veteran of the harvest, as is Bobby Begay and his daughter, Daisy, who led the first-timers through the white-capped current and pulled the first lampreys out, holding the wriggling bodies up into the sliver of early morning sunlight before plopping them into a small net.

Native Americans from a variety of northwest tribes harvest Pacific lamprey at Willamette Falls in Oregon City on June 17, 2016. Heavy water flows over the falls made the traditional harvest much more difficult than normal. Some of the 194 lamprey that were collected will be used for research while others are for ceremonial use throughout the year. Photo by Randy L. Rasmussen

"The ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest was built on the backs of these things," she said. And, in tribal religion, that ecosystem includes the tribes. Lamprey are a first food to them -- animals that gave up their life to feed humans in exchange for stewardship. Anyone with a permit can harvest lamprey in Oregon, but almost no one other than tribal members does.

"The reason we have so many people dedicated to this is because of our culture," she said.