From the Archipelago:Spring in Full Bloom

October-November 2002

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by Alexandra Morton

The ravens know we humans spawn every year in late March/early April at the Proctor’s homestead. They know it is about the same time as the herring spawn and the blue heron colony returns to the rookery. They watch as we collect in Easter plumage, then disperse throughout the rough-hewn property to hide our multi-coloured eggs. They know the eggs laid on the flats are easily found, while the ones on the stump-covered hillside are more difficult.

This year the ravens didn’t see the point of waiting their turn; they hopped awkwardly behind the smallest children who were also intent on raiding the newly sited nests. With brilliant eggs wedged in jet black beaks, the ravens made off to their own nests, thinking perhaps, “how did there get to be so many of this creature when they don’t even protect their eggs from their own young?!”

I am sure we mystify many creatures.

Ah, the full bloom of spring is a welter of perfectly orchestrated life! As the salmonberry bushes bloom, tiny hummingbirds appear, touching slender beaks to the brilliant pink. They arrived here and in Bella Bella only three days apart. I shiver at the thought of a tiny hummer setting out from north Vancouver Island to cross Queen Charlotte Strait. Bill and Donna on the whale-watching vessel Naiad encountered one out on that broad expanse of water.

“We were out in a big westerly,” reported Donna, “when a hummingbird appeared at the window and hovered at 26 knots in the middle of nowhere, and then was gone.” A zillion wing-beats to cross the strait? Two zillion in a strong headwind?

The herring made us wait, but finally they spawned in Wakeman Sound, Kingcome Inlet, Knight Inlet and Tribune Channel.

Over a period of three weeks a dark black center materializes within the clear eggs. Then a flicker of movement can be seen, then the water is filled with fish the width of a human hair, wriggling in prolific abandon. They feed on life so minute it takes a herring’s eye or human microscope to see. Then they align and move before the pantry empties. Swim and grow, swim and grow.

As the clouds of herring swirl west along steep-sided inlet shores, they mingle and ripple through the silver shoals of salmon. First the jailbird-striped little chums leave the sweet fresh water and change their bodies to meet the salt. They are flooding out of Kingcome Inlet as I write. Where they meet Tribune Channel the composition of the schools change and the pure silver of the pinks dominate the schools. In every dent on the coast these 2.5-4 cm fish recently born, rest and feed. Unlike the coho, also hatching at this time, the chums and pinks do not take refuge in shallow cedarswept river pools. The pinks and chums are unique among the salmonids of this planet: they don’t use the rivers to feed their young, they move out to sea as fry, not yet even smolted.

There they are met by a terrifying array of predators. Coho in their second year, now in the sea, feed so voraciously on the pinks that the margin between survival and collapse of every brood year is but a sliver. They interrupt their ocean migration to swallow everything they see.

The transient orca are here as well. In typical fashion they have been around for the past two weeks after months of absence. One day I see a big group, four females, one male, two youngsters, then there are two, a male and female, then three, two females and a baby less than a year. At first glance we think transient orca swim in groups of less than five, but to them the concept “group” differs from our own. While I see three whales, they know another ten, perhaps, are all around, snacking on seals in different inlets. Then, with some indecipherable appointment, they vanish— all of them—next stop Bella Bella or perhaps Nanaimo, or out to sea, I cannot know.

Oh, the oolichans. They swim unseen, a secret much anticipated along this coast. “Will they show or won’t they?” is the question in many First Nation villages all spring. Last week—shazam—they rose from the depths to enter the swift icy waters of the Kingcome River. These fish are not slippery like herring or salmon. They are a member of the smelt family and can be easily grabbed from eddies along the rocky, cobble bottom of the river, where the fish stick their eggs to smooth, eon-worn rocks in the spring freshets. The eagles know this and their brilliant white heads twinkle like stars against the dark green hillsides above an oolichan spawn. The eagles use the fish to accumulate the calories they require to enter their season of raising eaglets.

There is another life-form proliferating this spring, however, one that does not enter life’s equation to bring balance. Tiny, impossible to see without magnification, its impact much debated—it’s the virus IHN. In salmon farms from Quadra Island to Bella Bella and Clayoquot Sound, IHN is being released from infected farm salmon both alive and dead.

Sea lice are killing baby wild salmon which pass near fish farms. Photo: Alexandra Morton

The head fish pathologist with Fisheries and Oceans in Nanaimo appears to discount the work of her colleagues. She claims the research showing that 25% of herring exposed to IHN die, was only an experiment. But from an experiment, we can extrapolate. This is why we invented experimental science. 1.5 million Atlantic salmon at untold farm sites along this coast will bathe the outgoing herring and salmon with more concentrated virus particles than nature could ever muster. In fact, in nature this virus is not known to kill fish in saltwater. But the fish farms have given it refuge, a place to multiply and go forth. The government blames the wild fish, forgetting that predators remove sick wild fish as soon as they falter. Nature doesn’t coddle the diseased, but salmon farms do, trying to raise the sick to feed humans

I am looking closely at the baby salmon again this spring. Where there are no fish farms their sides are clean, silver-bright. Where there are farms, tiny brown copepods have bored into tender flesh, attached, and will grow, sucking life juices out of these fish—the coast’s tiny couriers of essential energy. Some of these fish are so young their yolk sacs are still visible. We know they have not swum far and so this year I will pinpoint the source of the infection of sea lice with greater accuracy than last. Last year my data showed that pink fry with lice could not gain weight and so remained too long in the most dangerous phase of their life, as coho food. The ones with lice never reached 8 cm.

The first run of kayakers has dimpled the sea before my home. Well-timed, Kevin and Garth arrived at my door just as fresh loaves of bread were pulled from the oven. “Kiwi kayakers” they called themselves, enroute from Victoria to Alaska and back. Well-spoken young men, they felt cramped by city life and jobs and desired to test their mettle against the sea. The next day I found them climbing out of a rocky nest, their yellow and blue vessels waiting patiently to be off as bags lay strewn among the rockweed. They told me of a whale and dolphin sighting and then vanished to the north. I wish them well in their search for peace on a coast where nature still reigns despite the assault.

Good paddling.