20181025-Salmon in the Adams River
We went down to the Adams River to take in the very end of the Salmon Run this year. It was amazing, beautiful, and poignant to see the bright red Coho Salmon, after swimming hundreds of miles inland, struggling further up streams that are increasingly shallow to reach the place of their birth. Once there, they fertilize eggs, and die.
The salmon swam upstream, past the rotting corpses of other salmon that had completed their journeys.
Canadian Parks took pains to let visitors know to stay on the pathways, to not walk on the river or get too close to the Salmon. It disrupts egg fertilization. They even posted signs in Chinese for tourists.
Which were sometimes ignored...
My wife scolded the tourists who were walking around on the river rocks. One of their daughters said, “We’re sorry,” in English, and they got back on the path.
“I’m so mad at them!” she told me. “Don’t they know the Salmon population is declining? I know they saw the signs!”
“Hmmm. It doesn’t matter what we do,” I replied. “Everything makes you angry.”
“Yeah, it’s true,” she admitted. “Getting tailgated by trucks makes me angry. Watching the news makes me angry. Pretty much anything with people involved in it.”
So we went to the next park down the river. No one there but us, and the Salmon. It was awesome.
We went down to the Adams River to take in the very end of the Salmon Run this year. It was amazing, beautiful, and poignant to see the bright red Coho Salmon, after swimming hundreds of miles inland, struggling further up streams that are increasingly shallow to reach the place of their birth. Once there, they fertilize eggs, and die.
The salmon swam upstream, past the rotting corpses of other salmon that had completed their journeys.
Canadian Parks took pains to let visitors know to stay on the pathways, to not walk on the river or get too close to the Salmon. It disrupts egg fertilization. They even posted signs in Chinese for tourists.
Which were sometimes ignored...
My wife scolded the tourists who were walking around on the river rocks. One of their daughters said, “We’re sorry,” in English, and they got back on the path.
“I’m so mad at them!” she told me. “Don’t they know the Salmon population is declining? I know they saw the signs!”
“Hmmm. It doesn’t matter what we do,” I replied. “Everything makes you angry.”
“Yeah, it’s true,” she admitted. “Getting tailgated by trucks makes me angry. Watching the news makes me angry. Pretty much anything with people involved in it.”
So we went to the next park down the river. No one there but us, and the Salmon. It was awesome.
Comments
Post a Comment