This year’s Sockeye run is a dominant run occurring every 4 years. But it’s also the largest run in almost 100 years (since 1913 when a man-made rock slide at Hells Gate put a temporary stop to the migration of fish on the Fraser). 9 million fish are expected to return to the Adams River this year.
We checked out the viewing points at Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park, watched the fish mill around in the spawning channels and walked down to Shuswap Lake, where the shore was covered with rows of dead fish (and some divers were getting ready to push their way through floating carcasses for a dive with the living fish).
The piles of carcasses are less disturbing when one considers that this is evolution in action: the salmon's strategy of survival to produce an enormous amount of biomass for a short period of time - more than predators could possibly consume.
Before we left, we paddled our kayaks down a section of the Adams a ways above the viewing area. We found an never-ending stream of fish, fish darting away as we floated down the drops and the eddies were red with them. It occurred to me then that our salmon runs really are one of nature’s big spectacles, comparable to the big animal herds of the Serengeti and the arctic caribou.
