Last Dance

Valentine’s Day may seem like a strange day to write about spawning salmon, but think about it… creating life and dying to ensure that future generations may live, is a love story. Perhaps not “love” in human terms, but it is an awe-inspiring story that needs to be told. Wild salmon are born in a fresh water stream, sometimes far inland along major river systems. They then migrate into the ocean to live in salt water, migrating thousands of miles before returning to their natal stream to spawn. Largely guided by smell, their voyage home is of epic proportions, swimming upstream against strong currents, past riffles and chutes, often in water so shallow their backs are exposed. Their bodies become brightly colored and distorted, and by the time they reach their spawning ground, their bodies are spent. Carcasses line the riverbanks, providing food for scavenging birds and mammals. And a new generation of tiny salmon hatch from the eggs to begin the cycle again.

We were driving across the Kitwanga River on a warm September day when I first witnessed this mystery of nature… and I marveled at a creature with an instinctive urge to return so fierce that nothing would hold it back, but death. I pulled off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pant legs, and waded into a stream filled with thrashing salmon, oblivious to my presence. I later wrote a poem about that experience…

LAST DANCE

Kitwanga River sings
Beneath the wooden bridge
Splits at a gravel bar with willow
And tangle of spring flood logs
Three Ravens stand on a rock
In shallow water
Winged shadow of Eagle
Falls upon the ground
Its high-pitched whistling cry
Screams overhead
Pervasive smell of death
Tumbled on the bank
Carcasses picked clean

Thrashing upstream
Great hulking backs above water
Splash! Splash!
Scales turn white, flesh rots
Spawning salmon return home
River to sea to river

A last dance
Male and female slide together,
Sides touching,
They linger in a quiet eddy
Another male comes, circles
The first darts out, attacks...
Returns to the female
Who expels her red jewels
Among small stones
His milt, a cloud of white, hangs
Suspended above her eggs
Then settles, conjoins
The dance is fulfilled.
Life to death to life

This age-old migration of wild salmon may be nearing an end. “Salmon farming operations have reduced wild salmon populations by up to 70 percent in several areas around the world and are threatening the future of the endangered stocks,” says a new scientific study by two Canadian marine biologists. “Our estimates are that they (the farms) reduced the survival of wild populations by more than half,”

This is not a good way to end a posting on Looking for Hope. But my hope is that with knowledge and awareness, we can yet avert that tragic end. That is my Valentine’s Day wish. Learn more about this issue and make responsible choices when buying fish. See also Save Our Skeena Salmon and Save our Wild Salmon

... P. L. Morningstar
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