Category Archives: Alaska Salmon

Tiny but Fierce

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Aki showed indifference while I pulled on my bike gear and left the house this morning. I didn’t hear her howl when I rode out of the yard and down the steep hill into downtown Juneau. She seemed calm when I took a post-ride shower. But her patience and understanding ran out when I filled a mug with coffee.  Okay little dog, we’re going.

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I crack open a window to distract Aki and drive over to muskeg meadow. It should be empty of people. No one I know would spend a sunny afternoon hunting and pecking on the muskeg for ripe cloudberries. Only expats from tundra towns or Scandinavia seek them out.

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At first Aki refuses to follow me off the gravel trail.  She has learned to avoid the normally wet muskeg. But thanks to our recent drought the meadow is dry. She can spring over it in search of interesting smells. After plopping a cloudberry into the container, I look up and spot my little poodle-mix legs up on the muskeg.  With the look on her face of an aficionado with a mouthful of perfect ice cream, she rubs her back on something that must smell like doggy heaven.

This is why I choose to ride my bike to Sheep Creek this morning rather than take you there in the car.

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That morning, I had heard the scream of gulls before reaching the creek. They fought for position on gravel bars and places in the stream full of holding salmon. A dozen bald eagles held a meeting on the Gastineau Channel beach. Already dead salmon—the kind that dogs love to squirm in—were pilling up on the beach.

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In mid-stream, a lone Bonaparte gull landed on a partially submerged rock. While she screeched from her rock, a dog salmon slapped her pulpit with its tail.  The little gull flew off and dive-bombed an eagle as it ripped flesh off a dead salmon. Tiny but fierce bird.  Kind of like Aki.

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Hjortron Berries

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A week shy of August and it’s time to gather food before the fall. Aki and her humans head into a wood thick with blue berry brush. While the little dog chases her Frisbee, her humans range around the woods but find very few berries to harvest. Our search leads us to the edge of a stream that should contain spawning silver salmon. But like the blue berries, the salmon are hard to find.

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We leave the forest to search another, crossing on the way an open muskeg meadow. Cloudberries the color of birch or maple leaves in fall dot the wet ground. I pluck a ripe one up, pleased that it tastes like the salmon berries we once harvested on the tundra of Southwest Alaska. Like its tundra cousin, this muskeg cloudberry (hjortron) tastes sweet and sour with a bitterness that you’d expect from something grown in ground dominated by winter.

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It’s Salmon All The Way Down

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We see the four eagles before spotting a salmon. One of the eagles is tearing flesh from the flopping fish. The other three have spread themselves out on the gravel bar.  Each of these is hoping to snag the next salmon that moves out of the current to rest in the lee of the gravel bar.

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Down river, another quartet of bald eagles bickered over a different salmon. Eight eagles and one only two salmon might indicate a problem. There should be hundreds, if not thousands of dog salmon moving up the river now to their spawning grounds. I pray that the fish are just late.

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If they have any spiritual beliefs, the Eagle River black bears might be appealing to their deities. They need lots of fish to get through the winter.  None of the eight piles of fresh scat that we skirted on the river trail contained remains of fish. They were spotted with unripe high-bush cranberries.

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Aki, the health of everything along the river depends on good salmon returns, even the trees.  The salmon could fit in my hand when they first left the river. They need to spend at least a year wandering and feeding in the ocean before coming home to spawn. Some might be five or ten kilos when they arrive. Something or a combination of things—warming sea temperatures, pollution, new ocean predators able to take advantage to climate change—might be threatening the fish upon which so much of rain forest life depends.

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Giving In

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While Aki sniffs at a spot back up the trail, I watch drops of water fall onto the surface of a beaver pond. Minutes ago, before the rising wind shook droplets from an overhanging tree, the pond surface was still. Grey clouds clogged the sky. Rain fell. The forest showed only muted earth colors. But the sun broke through as the wind started to shake loose the raindrops.

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If not for the working songs of birds and the creaking of wind-animated trees, I could hear the spat of drops hitting the pond. It’s too early in the day for the start up of the industrial tourism machinery. Aki and I are alone on the trail.

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I should be at Tai Chi class. But Aki gave me a hard look each time I tried to explain the need to postpone this morning’s walk. She held the moral high ground. I had gone fishing for salmon yesterday rather than take her for a walk. In order to shift things to a more equal footing, I reminded her of how, last night, she had enjoyed eating the crisp skin of one of the salmons that I had caught while she stayed home. I wasn’t surprised when she rejected the argument. The little poodle-mix tends to remember her disappointments better than her happy moments.

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What started as an enterprise driven by guilt turned into one of wonderment after the sun broke through the clouds. Aki, who never seems to raise her noise more than three inches above the ground during our walks, probably doesn’t even recognize the power of the sun to turn rain soaked leaves into jewelry as it is doing this morning on the False Outer Point Trail.

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Waiting Game

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The beaches and bays around Amalga Harbor are places of waiting. Most are waiting for salmon. A protected area just outside the harbor is full of seine boats. Their captains and crew kill time until the next commercial dog salmon opening. The bears that recently left scat on the Amalga Meadows trail also wait for the fish. Salmon stage for the incoming tide to carry them to the top of the waterfall the drains Peterson Salt Chuck. Hungry Black bears will be there to greet them.

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Aki and I walk across the meadow, and then up and over the low ridge that separates the meadow from Lynn Canal. Heavy rain drops plunk and plonk off the trailside devil’s club and skunk cabbage leaves. Tired of waiting for other victims, mosquitoes swarm out of blue berry bushes to bite the little dog and me. Tired of being bit, I speed out of the forest and onto a rocky point.

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In front of us, the seine boats have formed a waiting community. Behind, a half a dozen eagles, including one with cruciform wings, wait on spruce roosts. Others fly circles over the beach. Feeling the place too exposed for the little dog, I waste no time returning to the protection of the woods.

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Summer Famine

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There are many reasons why we don’t visit Fish Creek this time of year. All of them are linked to salmon. In a normal year, hundreds of king salmon would be splashing in the creek’s pond. These draw crowds of fishermen trying to snag the big fish with weighted hooks. Chum and pink salmon should be holding in the creek, ready to move upstream to their spawning grounds.  They bring the attention of bears. But today, perhaps because of the disappointing salmon returns, there are no cars or bear scat in the trailhead parking. These absences, plus the fact that the low-gas-warning icon lit up five miles ago cause me to pull into in the empty lot.

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Two ravens guard the footbridge over Fish Creek, hopping slowly down the railing as Aki and I start across the bridge.  I look down at a gravel bar for the expected dog-salmon carcasses and find none.  The ravens must be here to attack a garbage bag that hangs partway out of a waste bin. Above the ravens, an eagle screams.

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A king salmon, already robbed of its silver color by time in fresh water, rises on the pond surface, drawing the attention of an airborne eagle. Nearer to us, two other eagles perch on pond-side spruce trees.  The one with the chestnut and dun feathers of an immature bird appears to take interest in Aki. I think about putting the little poodle-mix on her lead but in a minute we will be back in the trees where she will presumably be safe from eagles.

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A minute later, while we walk down a forested path, the immature eagle flies low over our heads and lands clumsily thirty feet up a nearby spruce. We watch each other for a while and then I follow Aki away from the pond toward the creek’s mouth.  This eagle will follow us to the mouth and back to the pond—with the purposeful casualness of a spy, not the focused intensity of a mugger. After the third eagle flyby I clip Aki’s leash to her collar as the immature eagle settles onto another spruce branch.

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Bubble Netting

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Aki looked concerned, even desperate. It got worse after she watched me carry my fishing gear to the front door. If she could have understood, I would have reminded her how much she hates bouncing up and down the back side of Admiralty Island in a 24 foot Sea Dory.  While walking out the door, I reminded myself that in a short time the little dog will be chasing her Frisbee down a North Douglas Island beach. After I left, her other human took her on an outing after I left for the boat.

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After leaving the harbor the captain and I bounce up Favorite Passage on chop formed by wind blowing in the opposite direction of the ebbing tide. It’s worse when we round the top end of Shelter Island and enter North Pass. I can barely see a pod of humpback whales bubble feeding near Hand Troller’s Cove. Ten whales splash and release bubbles to trap krill and herrings in a net of bubbles. Then they burst up through the resulting ball of bait with open mouths.

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The Feast is About to Begin

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Aki is halfway up Mt. Roberts on an all female expedition. We are in the middle of a heat way. Today the temperature could climb over 80 degrees. I’m trying to sneak in a bike ride before the heat of the day. To get to my goal, Sheep Creek, I have to run a gauntlet of tour buses, vans, and the tourists they haul from their cruise ships. Away from that jam, I can hear the sound of dog salmon leaping out of the waters of Gastineau Channel. They have already run their gauntlet of predators and climate hazards.

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Chum salmon have drawn a crowd of eagles to Sheep Creek.  Female salmon dig shallow ditches with their tails to receive their eggs. Their action draws the attention of males. Two bald eagles eye the action. They can’t harvest the powerfully muscled salmon now. But soon, after the salmons’ eggs are released and fertilized, the dying will begin and so will the feasting.

Survey Trip

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Aki doesn’t know it but we are on a scouting trip. As usual, she thinks the outing is about her and her orange Frisbee. But her other human and I are here to measure this year’s blueberry crop. We only have one small plastic bag of blues left in the freezer.

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While the little dog roars after her beloved flying disk I gauge the river’s level to determine if it has left us enough trail to negotiate. By detouring into the riverside willows we can make it. Across the river the Mendenhall Glacier appears to snake out of the clouds to devour the spruce forest at its foot.

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Only a few small berries show through the leaves of the trailside bushes. Last year large berries weighed down the branches of the blue berry plants. It might be a bad berry year for us and a worst one for the bears, who also must deal with a low salmon return. The high bush cranberry bushes are setting large numbers of berries. Maybe the bears can substitute sour cranberries for the sweeter blues. But Aki’s family prefers blueberries in their Saturday morning pancakes. We’ll look higher in the mountains for our winter’s allotment of fruit.

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Canaries

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Walking where yesterday we saw a whale, Aki and I watch charter boats trolling for king salmon near the mouth of Gastineau Channel. Most will catch nothing. Aki doesn’t really notice the boats. She is too busy sniffing and peeing.  When I share out loud my thoughts about the fate of king salmon she ignores my words. But I fool myself into believing that she is listening when I ask if king salmon might be serving the same role for the rain forest as a canary does in a coalmine.

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More susceptible than men to methane gas, the canaries inform miners of the gas’ presence by dying. The king salmon, who postpones its return to their spawning waters longer than any other Pacific salmon, is the most susceptible to negative changes in the ocean. When, as happened this year, they return in low numbers to their home streams, like the nearby Taku River, we should be alarmed into action.

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