umm, salmon

I have never fished for salmon, never seen in person bears catching them.  But I love them.  I love watching video about them.  I love eating salmon.  A week or two ago I and the wife watched a PBS special on them, and since I have been reading.  There are many kinds, and they migrate from saltwater upstream to spawn at different times of the year according to the species, some go a hell of a long way, as far as the mountain brooks in Idaho.  They are in trouble, some could be wiped out like we did the sturgeon on the east coast, there are no sturgeon runs in the Carolinas, no New York or Boston caviar, gone, the way of the passenger pigeon and the eastern woodland buffalo.  Welcome to the Anthropocene.

The flounder was fished out, the population collapsed and has not again dominated the "grand bank" with it's tons of buttery flavors.  There is resumption of limited fishing in limited locations, but most the stock of the most plentiful table fish on the east coast is struggling, competition from interlopers and reduced feed stocks hold the population low.

Salmon stocks are falling, one high inland spawning creeks report finding 3 salmon last year, 30 years ago the water boiled with thousands dying in their one spawning orgy in life.  Millions of dollars are spent in some areas hatching and raising salmon, but they keep them for weeks even months before release, at this point they have "learned" to be fed and no survival skills.  When released the death rate is hugh.  Wild salmon normally get to the ocean by facing upstream and letting the flow take them.  NOw they must swim through damed up lakes and slow moving straightened dredged boating channels, the free ride is gone, they must expend energy getting to salt water, more die.  Millions die going through generator turbines, the pressure and turbulance in these tunnels kill 98%.  The lucky few find the water ladder, and some are actually trapped at dams and put in trucks and ships and delivered to the ocean at a cost of more millions.

Now they are in the ocean for a few years, some survive and it's time to go back, but their gps says go to the hatchery, not to the higher mountain streams.  A few do somehow go on, but the return is small, plus the dams block some, and at the dams they bunch up before moving in waves into the water ladders, sea lions have discovered this and swim a hundred miles to stay at the spillway and catch the stalled mass of fish.  It's amazing, but some make it and the species still survives, barely.

There is a hugh movement to take down dams, and many were removed, and some more planned, better ladders are being ask for but time will tell.  Upstream years ago army corps of engineering decided to straighten creeks in some farm land, now there is a movement to put back the meanders and bends and rocks and plant trees to shade/cool the water, where this is doen the benefit is seen within a few years, higher survival rate, more fish returning, better water conditions.

Though the population is under stress, I say eat wild salmon if you eat any at all.  It is better for you than farmed they have shown this, and it is better for the oceans.  Farmed fish in general, is fed mostly a diet of ground up fish.  There is an industry out there dragging nets catching things we don't normally eat, but are the food stocks of those fish we do eat.  The waste is hugh.  The oceans food fish stocks are being starved down in some areas by this practice, and we wasting fuel to do it. It is not sustainable, it's a race to the last fillet.

Salmon restoration is going on along the west coast, there are many NGO's, and sportsmen clubs and hobby clubs working on this.  Nature had a method very efficient to deliver our salmon, we have hosed it up.  If you live on the west coast, maybe you want to consider finding on line one of these clubs or organizations and help prevent another sturgeon.