Category: kids

Thoughts about change

The Chi­nook Salmon

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 22:53:40

I learned that salmon swim upstream, spawn and then die.

I learned that salmon stay out in the ocean to feed, get­ting big­ger, pack­ing them­selves with nutri­ents from the ocean. They will stay out for years eat­ing every­thing, eat­ing for up to sev­en years before they decide to return home. Dur­ing those years they would get real­ly big (90lbs and big­ger!) and used to be called June Hogs by the fish­er­man wait­ing to catch them. We used to have sev­en-year salmon, but now, maybe if we are lucky, we have two- or three-year salmon cycles.

I learned that salmon can get up into the moun­tains before final­ly get­ting home and spawn­ing and then dying. It has been record­ed that Chi­nook salmon will go as far in-coun­try as Ida­ho. They have trav­eled up to 900 miles and have climbed from sea-lev­el some 7,000 feet in to order to find their natal stream, their birth place. They are so pre­cise that they can find the exact, lit­tle grav­el-bed they were born in years ago. We think it’s based on mag­ne­tore­cep­tion that allows them to find the river’s mouth and then with their high­ly accu­rate sense of smell they track down the pin-point streams where they were born.

After spawn­ing, their bod­ies are designed to break­down quick­ly. This allows the nutri­ents that have been stuffed into their bod­ies from years in the ocean to be released back into those tiny lit­tle streams which would feed new baby salmon and end up nour­ish­ing every­thing, every­thing else: those lit­tle streams would feed oth­er lit­tle streams which even­tu­al­ly would feed into and nour­ish the rivers, mak­ing them health­i­er and able to sup­port more life. All that ener­gy being released over and over again until it reached the oceans and to begin again.¹

They are not designed to be grand­par­ents nor take vaca­tions, but to con­tribute as much as they can to help their off­spring, nev­er ever know­ing if they will suc­ceed, but we know they did. For a time, they suc­ceed­ed so well it was astound­ing. At the Columbian The­ater, I saw a movie about Old Asto­ria. A grainy, black-and-white film showed the riv­er so spas­ti­cal­ly packed with salmon that you could walk out onto the riv­er, step­ping on the backs of the sar­dined salmon.

I used to think that the big­ger they got the far­ther up-stream they would swim but this cor­re­la­tion does­n’t seem to hold very well. You would think we would know this. The salmon are as inten­sive­ly stud­ied as any­thing in the world, both by cor­po­ra­tions and sci­en­tists and yet I can’t seem to find a clear answer of this. One thought is that the salmon that trav­el the far­thest aren’t the biggest because they have to leave their feed­ings grounds ear­li­er than oth­er salmon who don’t swim as far upstream to arrive at the right time for spawn­ing so they miss out on addi­tion­al growth but oth­ers have not­ed that the big­ger salmon seem to spawn more and the more they spawn the larg­er the salmon get (maybe from com­pe­ti­tion) and that larg­er salmon are going to have more ener­gy reserves need­ed to swim the far­thest. The point is that with just a cur­so­ry review of salmon migra­tion and its deter­mi­nants demon­strates how astound­ing­ly com­plex salmon eco-biol­o­gy is and how impor­tant it is we under­stand them because they are key­stone species: they are fun­da­men­tal to the pacif­ic rim’s very make up and survival.

Years ago I read Grav­i­ty’s Rain­bow. It’s a book where the hero disappears/​disintegrates half-way through the nov­el and the sto­ry ends with the unavoid­able dread of know­ing what is scream­ing through the sky, what is com­ing and still not under­stand­ing what it all means nor how to stop it, but yet the nov­el still had moments of inex­plic­a­ble hope; none bet­ter show­ing hope than a quote from the most famous Nazi Scientist:

“Nature does not know extinc­tion; all it knows is trans­for­ma­tion. Every­thing sci­ence has taught me, and con­tin­ues to teach me, strength­ens my belief in the con­ti­nu­ity of our spir­i­tu­al exis­tence after death.” ‑Wern­her von Braun

It makes me pause and won­der if every­thing, Every­thing is relat­ed. And hop­ing it is.

KGW report² Woman2 dies after rolling her SUV near Seaside05:13 PM PDT on Sat­ur­day, June 17, 2006 By KRISTINA BRENNEMAN, kgw​.com Staff SEASIDE, Ore. A Man­zani­ta woman died Sat­ur­day morn­ing when her vehi­cle drift­ed off High­way 26 about six miles east of Sea­side and flipped over, state police said. Lt. Gregg Hast­ings of the Ore­gon State Police said Vick­ie Yung­hans, 46, of Man­zani­ta, was dri­ving a 2002 Nis­san Pathfind­er east­bound on High­way 26 near mile­post 6 when it drift­ed off the south side of the high­way around 7:30 a.m. The SUV drove into a ditch and col­lid­ed head-on with the side of a raised dri­ve­way entrance, he said. The vehi­cle then flew into the air, struck a tree and rolled at least once before com­ing to rest about 10 feet off the high­way. Yung­hans was pro­nounced dead at the scene. The cause of the crash is unknown, Hast­ings said. The high­way was not closed dur­ing the investigation.

Date: 2013-03-08 Fri Author: Ger­ar­do Arnaez Org ver­sion 7.8.11 with Emacs ver­sion 24 Val­i­date XHTML 1.0