Recently I took advantage of a rare sunny, cloudless morning in the midst of the current monsoons to head up to Little Mountain to check out its woodland of beautiful smooth trunk arbutus trees and views beyond of the valleys and island mountain range. I was not the only one with this bright idea. Already settled in were several wildlife photographers, all ready for action with big cameras and tripods. They were focused for the moment on a big group of hummingbirds, who were, as usual, not playing well with each other, on top of the arbutus trees, but what they really were hoping to point those big honking lenses at this day were the dwarf pygmy owls who live up there. I was told that these owls were about the size of a robin. Oh great. If I have such a hard finding the 2 foot tall Barred Owl in my own forest, what are my chances?
Chatting with one of the photographers who had travelled up from Nanaimo to hang out this day on a mountain in Parksville, I asked her where else she liked to go around here, what were some of her favourite places. “Oh that depends on the season and on what’s happening”, she replied with a very dreamy smile. “I’m up around the beaches at herring fishery season, or over at the Little Qualicum Estuary to see the trumpeter swans that winter there, or up to Fanny Bay where the sea lions hang out in winter. I go where the action is”.
A gal after my own heart (albeit with a much bigger camera lens). I too have been hanging out where the action is this fall, in this case the nearby rivers and estuaries where the salmon are returning from the ocean to spawn in their home rivers and then die.
In the clear, sunny days of late September it was the Coho run I first witnessed. At the estuary, the fish linger for awhile in the mix of salt and fresh water getting used to the change and when high tide comes in, swelling the waters, they make their move upstream, running the gauntlet of the supporting cast that lies in wait for them. The gulls perch on the sand and gravel of low tide, dozens of eagles watch from their panorama viewpoint at the tops of tall cedars and the anglers wait as well, by the side of the estuary, moving around from time to time to cast a line as the waters change. The stony ground crunches under my feet and I notice I am actually walking on the bed of the river and ocean. I spot herons, both on the beach and sitting in low scrubby trees and out on the rocks I watch 3 otters munching away on a couple of salmon carcasses.
I run into an artist I know from life drawing class who arrives to set up his easel on the high end of the tide line. “Ah it’s autumn, you can tell from that haze on the mountains”, he says, inhaling the sea air with a grin. He tells me he did his chores for the day – chopping firewood – this was his reward, to hang out and paint this beautiful scene, his life as well one of going where the action is. His wife, a keen birdwatcher, watches the action from her telescope on a tripod on the beach. I chat with a fisherman, in his waders and boots and jacket full of pockets, carrying his rod as he walks back along the beach towards his car. He caught 3 fish out there this day but had to let them go. They were wild and he’s not allowed to take them. I’m puzzled. Wild? He educates me. These fish are returning to a river where some end up at the fish hatchery upstream. Before they release the new fish back to the river they mark them by removing the adipose fin, a small, fleshy bump just above the tail. This way you know whether they were raised at the hatchery or wild. You can keep a quota of hatchery fish but not the wild. He tells me that the system is self-regulated for the most part as over the past decade government fisheries staff have been cut by 80% and there are now only 2 fisheries officers covering the coast from Campbell River to Nanaimo. He speaks with regret about the big one – hands spread wide, wider – that he had to put back.
Upriver near the hatchery operation in September, the river was a beautiful sight, with fall colours reflected in the water, and only a few salmon yet visible if you looked closely. A lot of fishermen hanging out in the water casting a line.
That was then. By now, mid-November, these idyllic upriver scenes are now a shocking and wonderful vision of noise and what looks like mayhem. Except it’s not.
The river now roars and fills its banks as it white waters its way down to the sea, fueled by 40 days and 40 nights of rain in these parts. Circling gulls shriek. Large white carcasses of recently dead Chum salmon float in the calmer side channels, piling up against the banks. Bodies are littered everywhere along the shore and further inland, dragged up by one or the other of the wildlife that also hang out where the action is – racoons, gulls, eagles, gulls, bears, in addition to those estuary birds and animals at the beginning of their journey up the river to spawn and die. Walking the paths along the river bank you literally have to step over the bodies. The air was heavy with the smell of, well, death.
The sight of this huge nutrient dump that forms the ecological backbone of these coastal forests made it all finally make real sense. I had read about it and seen images and video (thank you nature photographers and filmmakers) but the sight of the sheer volumes of fish, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them, piled up in the river was something I was totally unprepared for. This is a scene that repeats along this Pacific North American coast and beyond up around the Siberian coast on the other side of the ocean.
I watched through the shallow water as now small numbers of the fish swam over the bodies of their compadres reaching the rock and pebble beds of the channel, home at last, and watch others stop moving much on their own, drifting towards the shoreline to join others snagged among the grasses and branches along the shore. I was watching the end of their lives. Watching them die. Home at last after an epic journey from thousands of miles out in the open ocean back past the estuaries, past the rapids, past the predators lined up at the buffet, to the river where they create the next generation before feeding the forests, animals and trees alike.
I will not forget this sight.
