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.
The good folks at