From the Archipelago: Spring is Time for Sex

June-July 2003

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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Female and male Wood ducks resting at the water’s edge.

We humans would like to think we do sex best. Some even debate whether the "lower" forms of life can feel anything approaching enjoyment. Well, take a look in the sea in April - lust and release are visible everywhere.

Some of the most obvious sex is among the Pacific white-sided dolphins. These animals are thrill seekers and the more that is going on at one time, the more they seem to love it. Dolphins like to have sex at 22 knots, under the bow of my boat, while at the same time trying to knock a buddy off the bow wake.

The herring are the most gregarious, amassing in tons for the procreative act. Silent and unseen, they move into the places they prefer. Some bays will twinkle with them in the early evening as the fish rise to feed, following the plankton layer to the surface. My neighbour patrols the herring spawn, measuring the layers and areas covered. Every year he is never certain when the fish will get "in the mood," but he looks for it around the new and full moons. Suddenly they are there, frosting kilometers of coastline milky white as the males fertilize the eggs. They wriggle and shudder and glint among the fresh green of the Fucus or rockweed. Something urged these fish to congregate. They certainly didn't come for pain - why not pleasure? Mother nature has her ways.

At every fallen tree with branches reaching into the sea, tube snouts are setting up house. The males of this species build nests and defend them from the other males. Ripe females are invited in and, when they leave, the males defend the nests. The males are easily visible, patroling and darting at each other.

From the ramp to my boat I sometimes watch the courtship of the white nudibranchs. I cannot stand there for the days that it takes, but rather I see their tracks as they approach, sometimes circle and find each other. Finally their spawn is left behind - concentric spirals in a design as old as life.

But the most sensuous have to be the hooded nudibranchs. These translucent, pale blue creatures swim in a manner completely unique to them. They fold one way and then arch backwards to fold the opposite way, like a butterfly in slow motion. Somehow hundreds of them know to meet in a small passage near my home. How they made this date, how they remembered it and how their ballet through the sea gets them there remain a mystery to me. But once arrived, they form clusters on the available rocks - discreet gatherings that sway and caress each other with the flood and ebb of the tide around them. From these bouquets of moonstone coloured creatures, frills of eggs appear, attached to the rocks nearby.

Pacific white-sided dolphins.

I do not stay long, only note their presence in this passage and carry on, for my search is different. My reason for staring into the sea for kilometer after kilometer of coastline is to find the progeny of the most flamboyant sex on this coast - the tiny salmon just beginning their trek to collect what the Pacific Ocean has to offer and bring it home to feed the coast.

This spring, most of the diminutive schools of 3.5 cm salmon are chums, not pinks as in previous years. I have learned that chum salmon are not the surface dwellers that pinks are. They spot my boat and dive. They must think I am the mother of all mergansers. But their fear is quickly lost, because they must feed and grow as rapidly as possible before the coho put to sea and start gobbling them up.

Small bays are sprinkled with these silver wigglers, dark against submerged white shell beaches. They lie motionless then dart at invisible speed for a tiny mouthful of food. They are not going anywhere right now, just moving west with the tide to disperse into bays and nooks along the shore.

Pink and chum salmon enter the ocean smaller than any other salmonid. They do not rear in freshwater, choosing instead to do their initial spurt of growth in the sea.They grow rapidly in the archipelagos and inlets, moving only gradually towards increasing saltiness, their guide to the sea.

I scoop them in my dipnet and examine them closely in a bucket. The tiny chum have jailhouse stripes, the tinier pinks are only silver slips: their heads are large, their bodies little whips to propel the mouth and brain. I run my eyes along their bodies and many this year are smooth and clean. But, as in the previous two years, if I am near a salmon farm, tiny "hairs" bristle out from silver sides, clustered along the gills and occasionally hanging on to their tails. I know these "hairs" well, having examined over 12,000 of them now. They are the juvenile stage of the salmon louse.

The little fish's sides pinch tight around the parasites, their normally rotund bellies become concave.

No other record of this parasite exists on tiny pink and chum fry, and many would like to think I am hallucinating. But given safe haven among the densely crowded farm salmon, this tiny crustacean has not only marred our wild fish, it is now leaving its mark on our government.

As our officials try to deny the lice, sex in the sea produces millions of them at salmon farms every day - the power of procreation unleased and run amok by those who dare break natural laws.

Nature is ruthless, she lavishes fecundity upon the sea but when millions congregate where they don't belong and can't disperse, she will always muster response - death to pink salmon and the many creatures relying on them.

Here in this spring, the choice is ours - we can have lice or we can have salmon.

© Text and photos by Alexandra Morton (R.P.Bio). Alex is a marine mammal scientist and author in British Columbia's Broughton Archipelago. www.raincoastresearch.org.