Mark Kurlansky - Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate

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SALMON

A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate

MARK KURLANSKY

SALMON

A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate

Patagonia publishes a select list of titles on wilderness, wildlife, and outdoor sports that inspire and restore a connection to the natural world.

Copyright 2020 Mark Kurlansky

Image copyrights held by the photographer or illustrator as indicated in captions.

Excerpt from October Salmon from Collected Poems by Ted Hughes. Copyright 2003 by The Estate of Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Faber and Faber Ltd.

THE GRAND COULEE DAM, Words and Music by Woody Guthrie, WGP/TRO- Copyright 1958, 1963, 1976 (copyrights renewed) Woody Guthrie Publication, Inc. & Ludlow Music, Inc., New York, NY; administered by Ludlow Music, Inc. International Copyright Secured, Made in U.S.A. All Rights Reserved Including Public Performance For Profit, Used by Permission.

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Hardcover Edition. Printed in Canada on 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper.

EDITORS: John Dutton, Sharon Avrutick, Sarah Morgans

PHOTO EDITOR: Jane Sievert

ART DIRECTOR, DESIGNER: Christina Speed

ILLUSTRATOR: Andrea Gabriel

PROJECT MANAGERS: Jennifer Patrick, Sonia Moore

PHOTO PRODUCTION: Sus Corez

PRODUCTION: Rafael Dunn, Tausha Greenblott

CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Bill Boland

CREATIVE ADVISOR: Jennifer Ridgeway

PUBLISHER: Karla Olson

Hardcover ISBN 978-1-938340-86-4 E-Book ISBN 978-1-938340-87-1

Library of Congress Control Number 2019952136

Published by Patagonia Works

Publishers Cataloging in Publication

NAMES: Kurlansky, Mark, author. | Guyeski, Nick, writer of supplementary textual content. | Lichatowich, Jim, writer of supplementary textual content.

TITLE: Salmon : a fish, the earth, and the history of their common fate / Mark Kurlansky.

DESCRIPTION: Ventura, CA : Patagonia, [2020] | Appendix by Nick Guyeski and James Lichatowich, further explaining several issues with conservation of salmon. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

SUBJECTS: LCSH: Salmon. | SalmonLife cycles. | SalmonEnvironmental aspects. | SalmonEconomic aspects. | SalmonEffect of habitat modification on. | SalmonConservation. | Salmon fisheriesEnvironmental aspects. | Salmon farmingEnvironmental aspects. | Salmon industryEnvironmental aspects. | Aquatic ecology. | Fishery conservation. | Indicators (Biology). | Global environmental change.

CLASSIFICATION: LCC: SH167.S17 K87 2020 | DDC: 639.3/756dc23

Golli Kjartan Thorbjornsson

To the fond memory of Orri Vigfsson

A kind and gentle man, who understood people and how to talk to them. If he had saved lions or mountain gorillas he would have been famous, but he only saved a fish and the world owes him much thanks for that.

COVER PHOTO: A sockeye salmon in the Adams River, British Columbia. Eiko Jones

END PAPERS: Many other animals benefit from salmon. Here, freshwater crayfish feast on the remains of a pink salmon in the Campbell River, British Columbia. Eiko Jones

Salmon migration route: Burdwood Group, Broughton Archipelago, British Columbia. April Bencze

Pink salmon school in the deep pools of the Campbell River, before venturing farther upstream to the spawning beds. British Columbia. Tavish Campbell

This creature known as man is of course highly intelligent, hes capable of manufacturing almost anything from rumors to test-tube babies and yet he destroys two or three species every day.
This is the absurdity of man.

Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

When we perceive and consider the existence, life, and activity of any natural creature, e.g. an animal, it stands before us, everything zoology and zootomy teaches not withstanding, as an unfathomable mystery. But must nature then, from sheer obduracy, forever remain dumb to our questioning? Is nature not, as everything great is, open, communicative and even nave? Can her failure to reply ever be for any other reason than that we have asked the wrong question, that our question has been based on false presuppositions, that it has even harbored a contradiction?

Arthur Schopenhauer,
On the Suffering of the World

Salmon fishing boats at anchor behind Goose Spit in the Egegik River, Bristol Bay, Alaska. Bristol Bay produces roughly 40-50 percent of the worlds commercially caught sockeye salmon. Chris Miller

Setnetters working the Kvichak River where sockeye enter from Bristol Bay, Alaska. Corey Arnold

Men lower nets, unconscious of the fact that they are desecrating a grave

Marianne Moore, A Grave

I met Curtis Olson, known to everyone as Ole, on the docks in Dillingham, the rough-hewn port town for Bristol Bay, Alaska. In his mid-sixties, he is a thickset, short man with a red, weather-beaten face. He shouts like a man used to giving orders. You want to say he has a deep, booming voice, but actually it is high pitched, more like the insistent rapid-fire rolling of a snare drum than the pounding of a kettle drum.

Ole, like many people in Alaska, is not from there. He had been working hard outdoors all of his life, first on his familys dairy farm in Minnesota and then in an even tougher but more lucrative trade as a sheepshearer in Montana. There are only a handful of shearers in the United States northern Rockies and they travel from ranch to ranch, wrestling frightened animals that sometimes outweigh them to remove their thick coats of wool. There are sheep-shearing competitions, and Ole claimed to have been a national champion. In recent years he had been a sheep auctioneer, which was probably how he developed his seemingly amplified voice.

In 1981 he chanced across another way of earning money. The idea that quick money can be made from commercial fishing is very old-fashioned. But in Alaska it is still sometimes true. Ole came up to Bristol Bay and crewed with a setnetter for the six-week sockeye salmon run. It was a modest income compared to shearing, but the run fell outside the shearing season and he could see that if he owned his own boats and hired crews, he could make very good money in what was, for him, the off-season.