Goldstream Provincial Park, Salmon Run
mid-late October -> early December
Goldstream has a world-class salmon spawning stream with thousands of Chum Salmon returning each year. Bright colours and hooked jaws develop on male Chum salmon after they enter breeding streams. This accounts for the very different appearance these fish have from when they are caught in the ocean.
Every autumn, million of Pacific salmon forge their way up the myriad streams of the Pacific northwest to spawn and die. Pacific salmon have always been fishes of mystery. We know them well as fine food, and as superb sport fish, but the details of how they spend their time in the ocean and of how they find their way back to their home pools in their parent streams are even today not fully understood.
In Goldstream, salmon appear about mid-October, and may be seen for about nine weeks, the dates varying from year to year. Of the five kinds of North American Pacific salmon it is the Chum salmon that is most abundant in this river, though you may also see some Coho and Chinook salmon, as well as the Steelhead and the Cutthroat trout.
|If you watch quietly and do not disturb the fish, you will likely see some working their way upstream, while others, in pairs or groups, dig, defend their "redds' or nests, and spawn in the gravel. The female selects the spawning place, and digs the "redd" or trench for her eggs. This she does by turning on her side and repeatedly lifting her tail violently away from the gravel. A partial vacuum lifts the gravel, and the current moves it a little way downstream, leaving the desired trench.|
When the redd is near completion the female tests it for depth by arching her body in a "u" shape and feeling for the bottom with her extended anal fins. Meanwhile the male stands guard close by, fighting off rival males who approach the redd. The big, hooked jaws and large, strong teeth, with which the fish fights, develop only as the fish approaches sexual maturity. With them it can wound quite severely. When the trench is ready the female moves over it to deposit her eggs or "roe" in batches, the male crowding close to fertilize the eggs with showers of white "milt".
Chums do not pair as definitely as most other kinds of salmon, so you may see one female with two or more males. More than one may share in fertilizing her eggs. When the task of laying and fertilizing the eggs is completed the redd is covered. This is accomplished simply by the female moving her digging upstream, so that gravel is now shifted over newly laid eggs. Eventually she will have completed a "redd" or trench, in which her eggs lie covered, then, weak and exhausted, the salmon slowly dies. But in the gravel a new generation lives to carry on the cycle of life.
You will miss much, though, if you visit Goldstream and notice only the salmon. Their spawning is only the most obvious and dramatic episode in a complicated interplay between many creatures of forest, stream, air, and sea, and the forces of nature. As you watch the salmon, look also for the speckled flanks of the sea-going Cutthroat trout that are here for a feast of roe; look, too, at the "Dippers". The small birds that teeter on the rocks between underwater forays for salmon eggs. Some gulls are after the same fare, too, whilst others greedily gorge on dead and dying salmon.
You, of course, only see a few who share your interest in the spawning fish. At night come the shy mink, raccoon, otter, and, perhaps, a bear. Bacteria in their visible billions are breaking down the tissues of the dead fish, as are the fungi. These latter you may notice as discoloured patches on fins or body. Obviously the salmon don't simply come here to spawn and die and that is the end, for all about you is a host of living things taking the energy stored in the salmon's body and recycling it via the forest or the stream back to the sea. The Indians of old, believing that the "salmon people" were immortal, returned salmon bones to the river so that they might be used again by the fish. If you think about it, this Indian philosophy