ALASKAN ADVENTURE: THE SALMON RUN
BY RACHELLE BURK
My husband and I spent a day walking in the rain around historical
Skagway, a staging town for the Klondike gold rush stampede of 1897. It’s a cute
little town with wonderful museums. Streams run through various parts of the
town. Every stream this time of year is truly a macabre sight; spawning salmon
navigating through a graveyard of fish carcasses. Salmon spent their early life
in rivers, then swim out to sea for their adult lives. Then they travel
hundreds, or even thousands of miles upstream, battling rapids and waterfalls,
to the exact place of their birth. There, they spawn and die.
We saw the salmon run first in the Yukon, Canada, where the fish swam
over nine hundred miles to spawn. If I was a salmon, I’d want to be born in
Valdez. On the Alaskan coast, the fish have it easier, traveling as little as a
mile or two from the ocean back to their natal streams. Valdez is a quaint
village on the pristine Prince William Sound at the tip of the Kenai Peninsula.
Here we bore witness to the fish making their death swim over jagged rocks in
shallow waters littered with their dead and dying compatriots. The dead fish
provide nutrients for the soil and waterways, and is a literal feast for local
wildlife. Scavenger sea birds abound, picking the meat from fresh carcasses that
wash ashore during low tide. Our favorite moment was watching a black bear
fishing at a stream not fifty yards from the road. Oblivious of the few cars
stopping on the side of the road, it turned to face us a few times, granting us
some lovely mug shots.
PEGGY HILL: My niece is an RN and one of her first duties was in a hospital on the Kenai Penninsula. She was able to witness the incredible salmon runs. She shared the same kind of wonders that Rachelle writes in this article. My niece loved it there and wished she could have stayed but it was not to be. :) Glad Rachelle was fortunate enough to see this wonder.
ReplyDeletePeggy
What a good place to go out in the rain, ah, that seems like it a beautiful river.
ReplyDeleteWhen we visited Alaska, there were still remnants of salmon carcasses and although they provide nutrients to the soil and food for wildlife, boy do they ever give off an awful odour during decay!
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