The 2014 Adams River Salmon Run

On October 23rd I join some Alberta friends for a trip up to Adams River to view the salmon run.  Every four years is a "dominant" run with millions of salmon expected to return and 2014 is one of these years.  The fall has been warm so the salmon are later than usual.  Even though it is late October, the wave of fish is peaking and we hope to see the river red with salmon.

The day is dreary, with intermittent drizzle setting a somber mood for our viewing of tens of thousands of crimson coloured Sockeye salmon waving their bodies to remain stationary in the creek, their green faces pointed upstream.  They are positioned in pairs, the males recognizable by a hump on their back and their long deformed snouts with razor-sharp teeth.

Silver scars mar their battle-weary bodies from their arduous journey upstream from the Pacific Ocean, into the Fraser River and up its tributaries to the very creek where they began.  Here they return to spawn, laying and fertilizing their round translucent pink eggs in the gravel. Of the 4,000 eggs that each female lays only two will survive and return in four years’ time to start the cycle again.  They will stay and guard their eggs for about 10 days and then drift into the shallows where they will die.  The sweet stench of dead Chinook salmon and earlier Sockeye hangs in the air. Their deformed, decomposing bodies are strewn along the shore or float motionless and bloated in the quiet pools of water.  This is not a killing field but the end of a four year life cycle that disintegrates and enriches the  land.

  A biologist wearing a floppy fish shaped hat holds his blood soaked hands above a gutted Sockeye, running his fingers over the orange flesh, pointing at the remaining eggs.  His sense of ease and knowledge draws us in and we see the slab of fish as a fascinating specimen.  He pulls out the fish's eye and pops out the perfectly round fish lens for us to examine.

Display of maturing salmon from egg to fry

  We return to our car feeling a mix of fascination and macabre, amazed at the force of survival of this cycle of life and death but wanting to wash our hands and escape from the lingering smell of fish.