From the Archipelago: Eternal Rhythms

October-November 2003

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

Gulls feasting on the herring ball.

Shafts of sunlight sent parallel lines of essential energy deep into the cold, clear water. Here in the dynamic tide line of Blackfish Sound, the tidal force of the Pacific Ocean slid sensuously along the exhalation of Blackney Passage. Billions of gallons of seawater were forced out of Johnstone Strait and pressed seaward, until the mighty passage would breathe them in again. The roiling choreography of these surface currents sucked deep seafloor waters from their relentless glide across the globe. Numbing cold, oxygen depleted but enriched by the rain of a million lives completed on the surface planes, these ancient waters arched up towards the light to spark life once more.

Through the meeting of living and dead waters, the dark green back of a 16 kg chinook salmon swayed back and forth. Like another predator, the shark, this fish was confident in her ability and big enough to intimidate all but the ultimate predator, the orca. This made her bold enough to swim without schoolmates, exposed, suspended in the crystalline waters. She circled below the coppery writhing ball of herring,oblivious to the gulls, auklets, murres and eagles. At the slightest urge, this salmon would strike deep into the herring and in a sprinkling of lost herring scales, grow another gram heavier, and nurture the pink eggs carefully stowed against her spine.

At the next step down the food-chain, the herring enacted an alternate strategy. For them there is no desire to reveal a solo silhouette to all below; the only hope here in the vice of opposing tides is having schoolmates. None could bear to be the outside fish and so each of the thousands nosed furiously inward, until those in the middle were forced skyward. Flaying, beached upon the solid mass of fish below, these were the offerings to the winged birds. The web-footed birds got the fellows below and the fish in the middle had no oxygen, all water squeezed seaward by the mass of imploding schoolmates. A galaxy of scales twinkled down-current, broadcasting the scent of this passage of energy from one trophic layer to the next.

A rainbow arcs over orcas at the Tsitika.

The sound track thrummed with deep hummings, more vibration than sound, the rumble of tide, the roar of molecules tumbling against one another. Laid over this were the sweet notes of young Springer, successfully reintegrated with her orca family, tussling with the young male she has adopted as brother and playmate. Better equipped ears might also hear Dall porpoise mothers admonishing youngsters, “breathe with me, do not wander, follow me or perish”, a message passed lightening quick, ultra-soprano, beyond human perception. And then the whine of outboards, fishermen skunked and heading home.

Moments later, a solid wall emblazoned by a streak of gray shot past the school. This was a warning to all feathered feasters to take wing. Banking left beneath the rising flock, the Minke whale parted pleated jaws, rolled to her side and engulfed the school, then expelled the water which had buoyed the fish, and slid deep to swallow. The few herring which escaped, darted to lie beneath islandsof kelp spinning in the meeting of tides. With their DNA from a spawn deep in Knight Inlet, these fish would carry forth the line.

Pulled by the ripening of her unborn, the salmon left the banquet to resume her migration south; the auklets struggled to fly home to Pine Island with a payload of herring for growing chicks; the murres found their mothers and paddled obediently behind to await the blossoming of another feast; the Minke rose to exhale a fishy sigh and—’snap’—had her fin photo-identified by me August 16, 2003, 1:12 pm.

Thirty seconds had passed in Pacific Management Area 12.

© 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.