SNORKELING
WITH SALMON
I am one with the salmon.
I have seen the bubbling thrash of white water from below. I have flowed silently over elegant mosaics of multi-coloured river stones. I have been startled by the rumble of traffic on bridges. I have heard the rattle of fast water over small pebbles. I have rested in eddies and shunned fishermen.
I am one with the salmon.
Granted, I didn't swim upstream, fighting the current of a freshwater river, after two to seven years of roaming the open seas. And I wasn't crazed by reproductive desires, thinking only "spawn, spawn, spawn." I mean, cultural appropriation can only go so far. No, I bonded with my favourite fish by putting on a wetsuit and going down the Campbell River on northern Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada.
Yes, I snorkelled with the salmon.
I didn't go on my own (how lame would that be?). I went with a small school of fry (first timers) and a guide trained in swift-water rescue. On the bank of the river, we wriggled into our full-body wet suits, fins, masks and snorkels. We took off our jewelry, lest we be considered one big fishing lure. Trout are cute from a few feet away, but attached to your ear they lose some of their charm.
We were given an outline of how to use the current to our advantage and a brief intro to the wonderful world of salmonoids. Then we waded into an eddy, absorbed the quick shock of the cold water, and joined the current.
The thick wetsuit not only kept me warm, but high in the water. As instructed, I assumed the "flying Superman" position and was amazed to find myself effortlessly cruising along at a very respectable clip.
The riverbed itself, only a few feet below me, was a moving carpet of salmon and trout. Some scattered briefly as I flew by overhead, some didn't care. Underwater, the salmon looked radiant. They glinted silver, green, blue and red. The trout were even more spectacular; it seemed they were wearing more sequins than Elvis in the '70s.
When I got tired, I diverted into an eddy and hunted for crayfish as I caught my breath.
Then I rejoined the surge of the river. Two-and-a-half kilometers later, where the freshwater of the Campbell meets the saltwater of the Pacific, we went ashore. But not before taking the time to watch the baby salmon acclimatizing themselves to saltwater by alternating between the lighter freshwater that flowed at the top of the river and the heavier sea water roiling near the bottom. It was exhilarating.
Our second run down the river was even better. This time we went four kilometers up and ran the rapids (again with a guide). To my amazement -- and relief -- I discovered that if I relaxed, the water would carry me between rocks and around obstacles. So, like a limp piece of seaweed, I coursed and bobbed through the white water. It was like being in a cross between a washing machine and a flotation tank.
After the rapids, we were back in the same stretch of water we had done before. Now an old hand, I completely relaxed my body and let the river carry me. Sometimes I watched the salmon, and in the calmer sections I closed my eyes. When we passed fishermen, I would pop my head out of the water and tell them where the fish were. Call it betrayal, but I've been at the other end of that rod, too.
The whole experience was superb. And the health of the river surprised me. It turns out, snorkeling with the salmon started as a purely practical endeavor, part of a range of activities to help keep the stocks in good health.
Just upriver from where we put in is the Quinsam Salmon Hatchery. For the past few decades, the pisciculturists at the hatchery have been doing their best to keep this salmon system alive, even snorkeling the river in order to get a fish count.
They've also released millions of baby salmon. But, as Jim Van Tine, special project officer for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and hatchery manager, says: "We know very little about salmon. We're like the first settlers on the Prairies, throwing handfuls of grain out, hoping something will grow."
Luckily, the hatchery is getting waves of support from the community, a region which Van Tine considers very "fish aware." The town of Campbell River even calls itself the "Salmon Capital of the World." And local residents are doing their best to keep it that way. When it was clear that fish stocks were dangerously low, they banded together and raised money to build spawning channels. In 1995, they finished refurbishing a major spawning ground.
Six weeks later, a hydro-electric dam upstream released a flood of water and washed it away -- fish, eggs, everything. Locals went to British Columbia Hydro to see what could be done.
During a long meeting, they accomplished a feat as impressive as jumping a waterfall to spawn upstream. They managed to make Hydro more fish-aware. Hydro not only rebuilt the spawning channel, they agreed to regulate the water flow.
The stocks may not be improving by salmonesque leaps but, considering the disruptive effects of over-fishing and world climactic conditions, the fact that they are holding on at all is pretty impressive. And given that in most cases it takes a minimum of four years for a salmon spawning cycle, the effect of the new channel will only be seen in the coming years.
In the meantime, the Campbell River is one of the best (if not only) places in the world to get really up close and personal with a range of magnificent and tasty creatures. The river is an enormous, fishy, dating-club-cum-nursery. By late summer, there are hundreds of thousands of chinook, coho, chum, pink and sockeye salmon busily pairing up in about seven kilometers of the Campbell. And from the lovely shaded walkways along the banks of the river, locals watch, like proud foster parents, as the salmon get on with doing their thing. And the snorkelers glide by, doing theirs.
