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

I started out this weekend as a travelling companion to James. James was going up to Adams River to the “Salute to the Salmon” festival. He needed help with the video camera and photos and driving and the “doing” of stuff.

I don’t fish for salmon, I can’t eat salmon due to an allergy, I basically like where salmon live. Nice river banks. Rushing water, little quite pools.

The sockeye salmon return in big numbers every four years. This is a big year. I was excited about seeing new things and generally hanging out. I had minimal expectations that it would be fun–more work than fun, I thought. I also assumed that the salmon would be cool and I’d probably meet some interesting people. All generally fitting into the “good times” category.

Little did I know that by the end of today I would be a total salmon geek.

Sockeye salmon are incredible. They travel 405 km from the Pacific Ocean, along the Fraser River to the Thompson River and then up to Adams River. It’s a long journey. Once they’re here, they joustle for a mate, spawn and die. The salmon are single-minded in this regard. Mate, spawn, die. It doesn’t matter that you’re standing on the river bank with a camera. It doesn’t matter if your dog is right there. It’s like they’ve put up the do not disturb sign but have no time to tell you to beat it.

Sockeye salmon turn a vibrant red colour. I’ve seen this in photos but to see the sockeye up close if awing. Their bodies are bright red and their heads are green. It is the strangest thing. The males develop these long teeth too so that they can fight off other males. The males also get really ugly. They have a huge hump. Hello ladies.

The female sockeye uses her tail to dig a hole for the eggs. It’s pretty crazy the way they manoeuve their bodies to create a little scoop with their tails. I learned that the males have spots on the tail and that the females are more white because they’ve scrapped off the scales digging the hole for the eggs.

When they lay the eggs, there’s about 4,000 eggs and maybe 1 or 2 make it back as mature salmon. These are really bad odds, and one of the reasons why so many people are drawn to these fish. It’s an incredibly hard journey. Human activity is hard on the salmon and we have a responsibility to think about our impact. Or so a 5 year old told me today.

That was one of the stunning parts of the whole journey. I started out knowing very little, and I quickly realized that there are a lot of very passionate salmon people, many of them under the age of 10. They’re taught about salmon in school and soak it up like sponges.

I saw a wolf, an owl, a garter snake, salmon–alive and dead, and I met lots of people–all very friendly.

I hope to share their stories soon on the THINK SALMON website. I have 60 minutes of tape–people telling their salmon stories, what they like about the salmon, why they came to Adams River, what it means to them, why they think it’s important to share.

No doubt I’ll have another salmon story of my own to tell tomorrow.