A World Without Salmon . . . .?!

By The Marine Detective on November 16, 2013

Dear readers, the following is a rework of a little rhyme I wrote in 2009.

Many of you will recall that 2009 was such a bad year for wild salmon in British Columbia that it led to the $26 million Cohen Inquiry into the Decline of the Fraser River Sockeye.

And yet, there has been no solid action on the 75 recommendations resulting from that Inquiry and government has yet to take any sort of dedicated or meaningful action for the wild salmon – and all that depends on them.

The attempted messaging in my little poem may be all the more relevant now with the threat of tanker traffic coming to our fragile Coast.

The good news, I believe, is that with such threats more and more of us are united in understanding that, while resource use is a necessity, it has to be sustainable. It is impossible to have infinite economic growth on a finite planet.

With sincere apologies to Dr. Seuss:

A world without salmon would be oh so sad,
This is very important, so listen here Dad!

Without salmon, we will have broken the link,
That Nature intended to keep us in the Pink.
(And Sockeye, and Chum, and Chinook and Coho!)

Salmon bring the wealth of the ocean back to the Coast,
Right back to their birthplace so without them – we’re toast!

Their bodies are gifts to the future – that’s really key,
Delivering food for their babies and even the trees.

They feed fish-eating orca, sea lion and eagle,
Wolf, seal, deer, shark and . . . an occasional beagle!

They help bring the tourists. They fill fishers’ nets.
There ought to be enough so that all needs are met.

So little investment, so great the return.
Safe passage, and food – this, salmon surely earn?

But, instead of precaution, loud voices at desks,
Say, “Why it’s Nature that’s made this big mess.”

“It’s salinity, cycles . . . the phase of the moon!
Or some other reason we’ll think up real soon.”

What possible gain would justify such a gamble?
The cost of losing wild salmon would be so substantial.

Without salmon, grizzles stare into empty rivers,
No fat salmon to save them from winter shivers.

The orca diminish without their Chinook,
Peanut-shaped foreheads reveal this tragic truth.

And Bobby and Susie and even Aunt Myrtle,
Are left holding fishing poles, till they turn purple.

Shhhh can you hear that? No, I don’t hear a thing,
For without salmon, birds around rivers don’t sing.

The People of the Salmon were able to thrive.
Dance, song, carvings  . . . the wisdom to know what keeps us alive.

Salmon are the glue in a vastly connected web,
Why without them big trees would even be dead.

Then, there goes habitat, oxygen production and buffering of greenhouse gas.
Why to flirt with the health of salmon you would really have to be an  . . . . (you know).

The survival of salmon shows how we humans are doing.
Do we know our place on the planet? No. Nature is booing!

The solution is simple. It really isn’t hard.
It’s not tree hugger verses resource user. Let down your guard!

Logger, storekeeper, teacher, and you under that streetlight!
We keepers of paradise need to unite in what’s right.

Make a stand for the salmon, the whales, wolves and Coast.
We all know clean water and food is what matters most.

Choose for sustainability, not short-term economic gain.
Otherwise explaining things to our children could really be a pain.

Use vote, vision and voice, to help wild things grow.
And when it comes to gambling with salmon – just say “No!”

Then, because a whole lot of us care a whole awful lot,
It will be clear that BC’s natural splendour can’t be bought.

Since writing this blog, I have been asked “Salmon feed trees?”. Indeed, when they spawn in their natal rivers which can be more than a 1,000 km from the sea, salmon bring the richness of the ocean not only to animals but to plants.  The nutrients from their bodies feed the trees and plants including  . . . salmon berry! Animals like bears further the reach of salmon nutrients by taking spawned-out salmon from the rivers deeper into the forest where they can feed undisturbed. They eat their favourite bits and leave about 50% of the carcass in the forest which benefits the plants, song birds, and even animals like pine martens. Of course, bears also poop in the woods, which leaves more salmon nutrients in the forest. So the bears are like gardeners, bringing fertilizer much deeper into the forest!

It was initially Tom Reimchen’s research of the early 1990s that brought the knowledge of “Salmon Forests” to the world. He quantified how much salmon was in the trees by measuring the amount of “marine derived nitrogen”.  That research has expanded to where nitrogen and carbon isotopes are measured to quantify the uptake of salmon-derived nutrients by mosses, herbs, shrubs, trees, insects, songbirds, and wolves. So while salmon don’t grow on trees  . . . trees most definitely grow on salmon.

This knowledge solved the mystery of how you can have giant trees in a rain forest when nutrients get washed away by the rain. It’s the salmon who replenish the nutrients by delivering the richness of the sea through their spawning behaviour – just the way Nature intended. And of course, without those giant trees – imagine the reduced habitat and production of oxygen and buffering of carbon dioxide.

This makes clear how far reaching the role of salmon is; how interconnected the web of life is, and just how much depends on the health of wild salmon.  No better man to fully explain this “exquisite interconnectedness” than Dr. David Suzuki. See the 5 minute clip below. There is also a David Suzuki children’s book called “Salmon Forest.”

I have also been asked, “Deer eat salmon?!” They do. They feed directly on the spawned out carcasses of salmon and also benefit indirectly by feeding on the vegetation that has been fed by salmon.