Like anything, salmon are interesting if you think about them.
As I mentioned in a previous post, James and I followed the route of the sockeye salmon from the Pacific Ocean, along the Fraser River, up the Thompson River and all the way to the Adams River where the salmon mate, spawn and die.
I started the trip knowing very little about salmon. I assumed I’d learn a lot more. And I was hoping to capture some mental images of these incredible red fish, and some digital and film images of the same fish for the Pacific Salmon Foundation and their THINK SALMON campaign. (I have no idea why THINK SALMON is in all caps, but I’ve been told this is the style so for now THINK SALMON, ALL CAPS, I’m yelling it out, hooray!)
To the point, the story I was hoping to tell was not the earnest story of how these small creatures make their way across vast spans of the continent to find their way back to their birth place to start the process again. Sounded boring, but that’s the story people like to tell. The story of this great struggle. How they come over 400 km to procreate almost exactly in the spot where they were born. How water temperatures, pollution, human development, natural predators all conspire against the mighty salmon. Yes, okay, that’s interesting, but why? The why is the story I hoped to tell.
So why are salmon interesting? As I say, like anything, salmon are interesting if you think about them.
I picked up hundreds of little salmon facts this weekend. Some of them I’ll remember, most I’ll need reminding of at a later date. The big picture is what I will remember.
The word “salmon” in some native languages means “sacred life.”
Our basic instinct as humans is to protect ourselves, to protect our homes and to protect those smaller than us.
We value the idealism of children. Their enthusiasm to recycle, to protect the planet, and to believe that they can change the world. We reinforce this at every step of their lives, until they leave home and set out on their own and get jaded and pessimistic about life, work, down payments, growing old, basically until they become us, adults.
Some where along the line the enthusiasm wears off. We still believe it’s important to save the planet, but we think we can pay other people to do that, or the government will fund something, or global warming doesn’t exist, scientists just want to scare us. Saving the world is hard. I don’t have time. It’s costs money. Money I don’t have. It requires too much effort. If things were wrong there would be more panic.
Even among the politicans and activists who spoke at the salmon festival this weekend, you could see in their eyes or hear in their voices these niggling thoughts.
But I think salmon are interesting for this very reason. They allow us to hold two contradictory thoughts simultaneously: salmon are good and should be protected, and I can’t do anything to protect them.
Salmon have a pretty short life cycle, 1-4 years. We can easily imagine a year in the life of salmon. We can identify with their struggles. They’re sleek and colourful and powerful. They’re tasty. We can see them up close in the wild. We can have fun catching them. We can buy them frozen in the store. What I’m saying is that there are lots of “on ramps” here. Lots of ways for us to identify with salmon, lots of ways to start having the conversation about the bigger picture, what salmon tell us about the health of our part of the world.
From salmon stocks we can tell water temperatures, water health (how much silt, how many nutrients in the soil), and water levels.
Water is what sustains us on Earth.
Salmon are interesting because when we start to understand salmon we understand how delicate they are, how development along river banks destroys their world. Without large numbers of salmon coming back to spawn and then die, their bodies can’t decompose and enrich the soil. The trees on the banks can’t survive. The birds have no where to nest. The insects and smaller plants don’t have the nutrients to grow. Smaller fish can’t survive without the insects and plants. Bears lose a source of food. Suddenly we’re moving quickly up the food chain and the life sustaining elements on the bottom rungs are rotten or gone.
Sacred life.
When we have an experience that shows us how incredible and awesome the world is, it become very difficult to ignore our role.
Salmon are interesting because they remind us:
1) Not to put poison in our source of food, and
2) Not to piss up river and think it’s not going to affect us later downstream.
It’s tough being an adult.
Try thinking like a kid but with the knowledge of an adult. THINK SALMON