Yearn to Wander

Salute to the Sockeye

Red salmon filled the river with the run of the century!

This autumn as many as 30 million Sockeye Salmon left their life in the Pacific to return to spawn in the Adams River in Roger Haig-Brown Provincial Park. Their journey up the Fraser, South Columbia, and Adams Rivers happens four years after they hatched and spent their first year as fry before heading downstream to the Pacific. Every fourth year the annual run exceeds other years, but this year was estimated to be the second highest in history, the highest in 97 years. It was an event.

An estimated 70,000 people witnessed the run. I went four times, and Tom joined me twice. It truly was a festival enjoyed by people of all ages. Reportedly people from all over the world attended. I met British, French, German, Japanese, and Norwegian nationals.

How are the fish counted? The commercial fishing take is the major estimator. Another seems to be biologists et al counting at key sites along their journey. One day I went to the Kingfisher Nature Center, on the Shuswap River, east of Enderby, where several biologists were monitoring the run. The Shuswap River flows out of Shuswap Lake, into which the Adams River flows in Central British Columbia. There the biologists collected the fish, presumably after they'd spawned, cut them in half to prevent double counting, and stacked them on the river bank. It's fairly easy to catch the fish by hand after they've spawned because they are spent. They have no energy left and are ready to die. Of course, the biologists hope to catch them before the bears do.

Bears like salmon any time, but catching them during the run is easy, because the salmon are slow and so many are in the river. During the spawn, the bears eat the prime parts of the fish: the eggs and fat. After their feast, they leave the fish on the bank, where they rot, contribute to the smells of the nearby area, and ultimately become fertilizer for flora and fauna along the river.

PS Check back later to view Tom's short Blackberry video of the salmon swimming around. Hearing the flowing river is the best part of it.