The Odyssey of the Sockeye Salmon

I

THE fishing industry of British Columbia is of enormous importance. The aggregate value of the fish captured each year is over $14,000,000. Toward this the salmon — so-called — contributes about two thirds, and of the five species of fish classed locally as salmon, that known as the ‘sockeye’ is most numerous and economically the most valuable. However, it is not now proposed to deal either with the economic or the strictly scientific aspects of the sockeye, but rather to describe some of the known features of its remarkable life. These are of quite extraordinary interest.¹

In a technical sense the five species of fish known as salmon on the Pacific Coast are not salmon at all — although more or less closely related to the Salmo genus. All five belong to the genus Oncorhyncus, the sockeye being known as 0. nerka. The derivation of the term ‘sockeye’ is obscure; Dr. Jordan suggests that it may be derived from the word ‘sukie,’ by which this fish was known to a tribe of Indians which in old days inhabited parts of the southern section of what is now British Columbia. The sockeye is the smallest but one of the five species, its adult weight being about six pounds and its length averaging some twenty-four inches. It is lithe and graceful in form. While in the sea the back and upper portions of its sides are of dark, metallic blue; it is silvery-white beneath. When the fish enter the fresh water the colors dim; later the back becomes suffused with a reddish hue. Throughout the journey to the spawning-ground the sockeye never breaks its fast. And this journey (up the Yukon, for instance) may involve a swim for some fifteen hundred miles against a swift and turbulent current, the temperature of which is but little above freezing-point. The range of the sockeye is from Northern Alaska to the Columbia River.

The beginnings of this creature’s life are well known. From the embryonic stage to the end of approximately the first year of its existence as a freeswimming ‘fingerling’ in one of those crystal-clear lakes with which the northwestern part of America is so richly dappled, the nature and habits of the sockeye have been carefully observed and studied. But in late spring or early summer the young fish disappear into ‘the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea ’ — and of their life therein for upwards of two and a half years, there is literally no record. No sockeye between the fingerling and the adult stages has ever been captured. In early summer, just before the run inland, adult sockeye have been taken in purse-nets on the Swiftsure Bank, just outside the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Fragments of its meat, mixed with those of other fish, have been found in the stomachs of sea-lions killed farther north at the same season. The netted specimens revealed that the sockeye feeds upon a small crustacean and upon a form of Ammodytes, or sea-lance. But no sockeye has ever been known to take a bait.

The average four-years’ life of this fish falls, therefore, into three periods, two of which are known and one unknown. This rule has exceptions. A few individuals, almost exclusively males, mature in three years and come in with the adult run. These are the socalled grilse. A few others remain for two years in the lake before migrating to the ocean. In the case of the Fraser River sockeye a curious fact has been observed — every fourth year an enormous run takes place. The last occurred in 1913. No such phenomenon has been observed in respect of the other spawning areas.

II

The approximate year having been spent in a fresh-water lake, the frail atom of a fish has grown to a length of from two to three inches. Some time between March and June, instinct prompts it to start on the perilous journey to the sea. This journey may take only a few uneventful days; on the other hand, it may involve traveling a thousand miles to some misty fjord where a brown spate, flung by melted snow from the Rocky Mountains, clashes with a brimming tide at the full of the moon. The little creature — so soft of texture, with its large, soft, apprehensive eye — has to run the gauntlet of numerous enemies. It is flung down foaming, vertical cascades; it is swept into shouting rapids combed by fang-like rocks. At the stream’s mouth it is met by new dangers; fresh and menacing problems are found at every turn. There is the sudden transition from fresh to salt water, involving chemical, dynamic, and respiratory changes. There are fierce enemies, openly ravaging, and stealthy murderers with ingenious lures and devices in operation, lurking in every nook where shelter might be sought. Yet it miraculously adapts itself and survives, — to disappear from human ken in the mystery of the illimitable sea, — until it reappears, adult, some three-andthirty months later.

It is about midsummer — although the time varies slightly according to locality and individual season — when the sea gives up these mysterious denizens, the adult sockeye, which entered it as fingerlings three seasons previously. From far and near the schools crowd in and assemble before those lone and misty gateways through which the Pacific rollers smoke and thunder. The southeast limit of Vancouver Island is approximately four hundred miles from Prince Rupert, at the mouth of the Skeena River; but the intervening coast is much broken and indented — probably more so than that of any other with the exception of Norway. It is said that if the coast-line of every island, promontory, and indentation on the British Columbian coast were to be followed, a journey of twenty-seven thousand miles would be involved. This is irrespective of the immense and convoluted expanse of the Alaskan coast, which also lies within the sockeye range. Practically every indentation on the coast north of the Columbia has its stream, and — here lies the greatest marvel — every stream suitable for spawning appears to have its separate frequenting pack. It has, in fact, been practically determined that the sockeye will spawn only where it has been spawned.

After having digested their last meal — for at this period the stomach of the sockeye is invariably found to be empty — the fish leave the salt water and, entering the gates through which they emerged, make for their respective spawning-grounds. These lie on the shallow margins of lakes or, preferably, on the margins of streams by which the lakes are fed. Enemies of many kinds beset the sockeye’s course. North of smoky Quatsino Sound the predatory legions of sea-lions and hair-seals lie waiting for their easy harvest. Of the former there are believed to be over 11,000 within the compass of a small triangle north of Vancouver Island. A full-grown sea-lion weighs upwards of a ton. The havoc wrought by these creatures among the sockeye and other fish may thus be imagined.

The European fishermen with varied scientific devices crowd the areas where the salmon assemble from the sea. It is computed that in the area including Georgia and Juan de Fuca Straits and Puget Sound, 33,000,000 salmon were taken from the sea in the 1913 season. All along the river-banks the Indians stand with their scoop-nets, lifting out fish at the rate of hundreds a day. Below each rocky bar over which the fish have to leap, the wearied wayfarers lie resting — gaining strength for the effort. If the obstacle to be surmounted should be one of those cascades whose course is over sharp rocks standing in foaming, swirling eddies through which contending currents are flung, a large number of fish may be injured, and in the pool below are assembled a sorry company of the halt and the maimed — many with their sides cruelly gashed. Every now and then one notes a gleam of silver on the surface — and a dead fish floats away downstream. Perhaps one of the gorged fish-eagles may swoop down and seize the carcass; oftener it will be swept unregarded away.

The number of salmon crowding into a stream when the run is heavy is almost incredible; occasionally they lie so densely packed that it seems almost as though one could walk from bank to bank on the mass. In the big Fraser run of 1913 many millions of fish were sacrificed owing to a landslide at Hell’s Gate, near Yale. This narrowed the channel and increased the speed of the current to such an extent that the fish could not surmount it. They lingered, exhausted, for days below the rapid; then they floated downstream, died, and were borne as carrion toward the sea. Below Hell’s Gate are good spawning-grounds, to be reached via the Harrison, Lilloet, and Pitt tributaries; but rather than spawn at any other spot than that where they themselves had been spawned, the fish forewent the great purpose of their lives.

The evidence in favor of the view that the sockeye will spawn only at their birthplace is overwhelming. Anderson and Nahmint lakes in Vancouver Island lie less than two miles apart. The vent-streams from both run to Barkley Sound. Both lakes are fed from the same snowand rainfall; both lie embowered in cedar, hemlock, and pine; on both the same sky looks down between mountains of similar geology. Yet Dr. Gilbert will distinguish between a sockeye taken in Anderson Lake and one taken in Nahmint. It may be by the shape or size of the scale, the form of a fin, the angle of the jaw, or, if the specimen be a female, by the size of the ovum. But the distinctive peculiarity will be there, and will be found constant in every specimen examined. It is quite possible that with a little further knowledge, it will be practicable to determine, not only the lake in which a given fish has spent the first year of its life, but the tributary streamlet on the gravel of which the ovum that gave it life was spawned.

That this habit will in course of time give rise to different races, and eventually to different species, is a fair inference. That the process is now going on is clear from the circumstance that already racial strains are arising. For instance, a sockeye of very large size has been found at Yes Bay in Southern Alaska. A number of eggs of this variety have been laid in a lake down in Vancouver Island and another in the State of Washington. All this involves an astounding proposition, but one which, on the evidence, we cannot avoid accepting.

To what may we attribute this inevitable determination of the sockeye to return for the purpose of spawning — and then incontinently dying — at the spot where it was spawned? Is it to a blind, compelling instinct void of conscious thought, such as characterizes so many of the marvelous operations of the honey bee; or is it a passionate love on the part of the fish for its birthplace — an overwhelming desire to revisit and end its life in the beautiful spot where life and light first dawned upon it? For all the spots where the salmon spawn are beautiful. Is it perchance what Schopenhauer, in connection with higher animals, termed ‘the genius of the genus’ working through the mind of each individual, urging it to forge the link of continuance between the generations in a perfect circle, ending where it began — spending the strength it amassed amid the rich pastures of the ocean in striving for a goal which has been an ever-present dream ?

The evidence is, one may think, in favor of an intellectual rather than an instinctive process. Place twenty bees in an uncorked bottle of clear glass, and set the bottle on its side with the closed end in sunlight and the open end in shadow. The bees will die of exhaustion after vain struggles to penetrate the glass, but they will never attempt to escape through the open vent. Their instinct is based on a long racial experience that light indicates an opening, and their intellect is incapable of leaving the rut thus formed. But if a salmon-run be obstructed, the fish will diligently and intelligently seek in every possible direction for a passage. Moreover, they will at once make use of a fish-ladder or other arrangement placed for their convenience. If, owing to heavy rain, a river becomes swollen, and a fall, passable at ordinary times, becomes impassable, the sockeye will wait patiently in the pool below until the spate has gone by, and then resume the interrupted journey. Among bees, so far as can be observed, individual preferences are unknown; the individual is nothing; the dominant note of the bee’s life is a passionate devotion to the commonwealth, manifested upon rigidly fixed lines. But the salmon have individual preferences; male and female mate together, and in their mating they exhibit jealousy and other characteristics which link them with the higher animals — and even with human beings.

It must, one thinks, be a fixed idea —a memory-visualization which guides them. Do these creatures, throughout the course of their perhaps worldwide wanderings during nearly three mystery-shrouded years, dream of the little submerged cairn of purple gravel over which the crystal water lapped and murmured — that cairn among the interstices of which they found safe refuge from watchful, ravening foes, from the greedy trout and their own hungry kin of a previous generation? Do they dream of the sombre, stately cedars growing from the edge of the stream; of the rugged pines festooned with sage-green Usnea moss; of the lace-like fronds of the hemlock and the swaying fingers of the maple? These trees stand, dreaming, between the sky and the murmuring water. Do the tired wanderers long for those fleeting glimpses of the folded hills, — perchance backed by sunlit, snowy peaks, — glimpses had when they sprang, playing, into the air at sunrise? Does the lure perhaps lie in the miraculous clearness of the peaceful water — a clearness so startling that its realization comes as a shock to the observer? One cannot tell what it is, but the lure is there; the magnet that draws the doomed creatures from the most distant and secret places of the sea, over stunning obstacles, by a memory strand so strong that only death can break it. And the most significant circumstance is that these salmon forego the purposed culmination of their tragic life — the fulfillment of the love-instinct and the consequent continuance of the species — when they fail to reach the shrine desired for its consummation.

At length, all difficulties surmounted, the goal is reached; perhaps one in ten, one in fifty, of those who as fingerlings ventured to the sea three seasons previously, may have escaped their legion of foes and surmounted the obstacles of their difficult path. The wanderers have returned to their native lake — to the placid sky-mirror in its frame of sombre green hills, or stark, snow-encumbered mountains, which they have never forgotten. But the perils are not at an end. In the central waters of the lake, in the larger pools of its tributary streams, safety is to be found, but spawning has to be effected on the margins — in water but a few inches deep — and close to these margins watchful enemies lie ambushed. If the lake lie near the ocean, the fish arrive in fair condition; they even appear to experience something of the joy of life; one may watch them leaping from the deeper pools of the tributary streams; occasionally from the lake itself. But if the latter lie very far inland, the effects of weariness and the long fast become apparent; the fish take on a gaunt and haggard look. In the male the upper jaw undergoes a marked change: that portion immediately behind the snout becomes depressed, the forward portion curves almost into a hook. This gives the fish a most sinister expression.

After a few days’ rest the process of spawning begins, and, under the veritable shadow of the wing of Death, — in a furnace, as it were, of terror and pain, — the link joining past with future generations is forged; the perfect circle is completed.

III

The sockeye have now almost reached the final stage of their long travail. The supreme and most fatal sacrifice has yet to come — the immolation of a generation upon the cold and thankless altar of the Future. But there intervenes a period of rest, — of cessation from persecution, — a few score hours of luxurious, almost effortless gliding to and fro beneath the placid surface of the liquid mirror into which the inconstant sky glances as it is borne past by the circling earth. Beneath this surface the water is literally as limpid as the untroubled atmosphere which lies so lightly upon it. Midsummer is now gliding imperceptibly into the fall. The days are long and dreamful; the winds are hushed; the sky is unmarred, its blue unflecked save by occasional drifts of fleecy vapor — immaculate flocks born of snow which has melted on distant peaks, straying over the rare, pellucid pastures of the upper atmosphere. The shrieking tempest and the blinding snowfall have been — and will again be — in some distant and incredible future.

The days are sultry and the nights are mild. The water is warm and delicious; nevertheless, it is fatally charged with the germs of a terrible disease, — with the spores of the Saprolegnia, that foul fungoid which will inevitably attack and destroy the debilitated fish when they have reached their final stage of exhaustion after the strenuous spawning effort. But in the meantime, in those lakes around which the shallow spawning ledges lie, there is little to suggest danger or death. It is true that the fish-eagles, having followed the run from the sea, perch expectantly upon the tall, gaunt stumps — those sinister reminders of long-past forest fires which, like skeletons at the feast, are seldom out of sight even in the most luxuriant of the forests of Northwestern America. Behind the inevitable rampart of dead logs — usually invisible owing to dense undergrowth — lurk bears, grizzly or black according to locality. These wait sulkily for the final holocaust. They sleep most of the time, their dreams, no doubt, being full of gustatory reminiscence and anticipation. Their taloned paws are pressed against their temporarily depleted paunches; it is not likely they will be disturbed, for their lairs have been cunningly chosen. Many of them have followed the pack from the coast, gorging luxuriously at each obstruction, going empty when the course was clear. But their final and most Gargantuan feast is now nearly at hand. The restless coyotes slink in and out of the thickets, hollow-flanked and impatient.

But in the meantime the fish are out of danger and at peace. There are exceptions to this rule. If the run be a great one there is considerable competition for the available gravel-beds; consequently the sockeye set to work preëmpting spawning-sites immediately upon arrival. At night the drumming of the ruffed grouse may fill a steep gorge with miniature thunder. Occasionally the long-drawn howl of a timber-wolf or the gulping snarl of a panther, as it tears at the throat of a slain deer, makes weird the night. But such sounds are rare; the North American forest is usually as silent as the grave.

However, under the surface of the lake is peace, utter and profound; and, for the moment, safety. Dawn sends its spell across the dreaming forest, dappling its darkness with softly-paling shades. As the light grows, each tall fellowship of firs stands forth in sombre relief. The nearer comes the sun, the darker grows the forest. The surface of the lake is like glass — except where broken here and there by a leaping trout. A piercing ray of light thrills like an arrow through the trees cresting the eastern horizon. Then the timid dawn flies westward, and morning, triumphant, reigns. The slow hours trail on to noon — to afternoon — in sultry procession, until evening essays to reproduce the rapture of daybreak, but fails for lack of mystery.

And what of the sockeye during those halcyon hours? One does not know; yet one may reasonably believe they enjoy a measure of content — even of happiness. May it not be that during this interval they seek their affinities — those mates in conjunction with whom the final and fatal mystery of their love’s consummation may be fulfilled? That they do select their mates is certain; it is also certain, as will be shown, that the process of selection is marred by disharmonies and cruelties very similar to those which so often disfigure the sex-relations of human beings.

But may we not at least infer the sockeye’s enjoyment of the sense of having triumphed over enormous difficulties and escaped frightful dangers — their realization of the desirous dream which was ever present during their long, eventful wanderings? Here is the region where they first swam freely — breathing and, by the same operation, feeding upon those microscopic organisms with which stepmother Nature had filled the limpid waters for their first nourishment. Here, by the constant discipline of escape from the Steelhead trout and their own aberrant kin who decided to spend a second, or even a third, year in the lake, they had braced and schooled themselves for tremendous achievements. Here Nature, in the guise of ‘ the genius of the genus,’ had broken the cells of the germ-plasm with which their tiny brains were charged, and revealed to them — by the process we name instinctive — the tremendous purpose of their mysterious existence.

Nature has strange and often unthought-of methods of adjusting balances. May it not be that the happiness, the bliss realized by these creatures as they lie wrapped in the mild waters of their natal lake is deep and searching enough to compensate for all they have endured? May it not be that if only one in a hundred — one in a thousand — realizes it, the hundredth or thousandth chance of realization may be sufficient recompense? ‘Many are called, but few are chosen,’ was said by the Christ of men and the Kingdom of Heaven; and the God of Israel was justified in that terrible saying. May not the same be true of fishes — their travail in the Great Waters and their short interval of blissful peace in the Delectable Lakes? But who shall dare to justify the majestic, terrible, and blood-stained steps of that awful entity we term Nature?

The final act, the spawning, begins. The female sockeye selects a gravelly spot, usually near the margin of some tributary stream — a spot over which water, to the depth of some three or four inches, flows. Her chosen mate follows and watches her actions with anxious attention. The fish have now markedly changed their color: the clean metallic blue has given place to a hectic flush of red. The female lies sideways on the gravel, with her head upstream. Then she bends her body and immediately again straightens it with a quivering jerk. This displaces the gravel over an area about equal in extent to the palm of one’s hand, and causes a slight hollow. The displaced gravel is pushed down stream and thus forms a hillock below the hollow. The fish then rubs her abdomen sideways and with a quivering motion on the lower edge of the hollow and close to the upper base of the hillock, emitting the ova as she does so. During the operation the hillock grows by accretion of the disturbed pebbles. The male fish is at hand; he expresses the milt in the same manner in which the female expresses the eggs. The milt has to reach the eggs within two minutes and twenty seconds of their emission; otherwise fertilization does not take place.

The eggs are carried by the milt-laden stream into the interstices of the hillock. The fish resulting from those eggs which remain exposed die within a few days after they have been hatched. Even if they escape the host of greedy enemies lying in wait for them, they become infected fatally in the region of the umbilical sac by the Saprolegnia fungus. It is still unexplained why the fry hatched out among the stones of the hillock are not attacked. Possibly the spores of the Saprolegnia cannot live in darkness; possibly some antidote-parasite exists which is ineffective in light. Herein lies an interesting subject for investigation.

The expression of the ova as well as that of the milt is a purely mechanical operation, for the sockeye has no muscular apparatus to assist in the process of voiding. It is solely through the bending of the body, the quivering jerk, and the rubbing on the pebbles that the expression is effected. The female normally contains some five thousand eggs. About four days are consumed in the work of expressing. By that time the abdomen of the fish is usually raw and void of scales in the vicinity of the vent.

Herein is manifested one of Nature’s energy-saving devices. If the sockeye were furnished with the usual expressing apparatus, it would not have to jerk and struggle; thus the hillock would not be formed, and some roundabout way of eluding the Saprolegnia spores and other enemies would have to be devised. So Nature withheld from a highly specialized creature an organ proper to its rank in the zoölogical scale — forcing it to descend from the heights of specialization and perform a lowly, rudimentary action. It is almost as though the commander-inchief of an army were set to the work of digging trenches.

If the run be a moderate or a small one, each female sockeye insists upon having a considerable space free around her spawning hillock, and will energetically attack any other female venturing into her vicinity. But if the run be large and space be consequently limited, other fish may spawn within a few feet and no objection be made. Should another female attempt to appropriate a preëmpted spot, a fierce combat would result.

Sockeye both male and female — unattached, unconventional beings not bound by the accepted ethical rules: piscatorial home-wreckers, in fact — are apt to disturb the harmony of the spawning grounds. Some female fish, whose symmetry is comparatively unmarred owing to a succession of lucky escapes, and who consequently has most of her strength in reserve, may glide in and try to appropriate the hillock on the erection of which some matron-fish has expended almost her last available energy. A combat will inevitably ensue; contrary to all ethical canons, victory will most likely go to the intruder. The male fish will not interfere. His tail fanning just enough to counteract the pull of the current, he will impartially watch the contest. If his old companion be driven forth to a lonely death, he will impartially mate with the newcomer. Again, one may observe mateless males of comparatively superior physique moving about over the spawning grounds, evidently on the lookout for mated males whose physique is inferior. When one of the latter is found, a combat — which may exhibit great savagery — will follow. In such cases the female regards the situation with tranquil unconcern. Should the male originally in possession be vanquished, he will accept the inevitable and glide tranquilly to his death — let us hope a euthanasia — in the profound calm of the adjacent waters, while his wife accepts the companionship of the victor with equanimity.

The foregoing represents ideal spawning conditions, which, however, do not as a rule exist. When the pack arrives, the carnivora of the forest-covered ranges surrounding the lake crowd in to take their toll of the hapless sockeye. The great grizzly bear lumbers over the gravel-beds, and, displaying unsuspected quickness with his murderously taloned paws, flicks the wearied and preoccupied fish high and dry into the undergrowth. After he has gorged his fill, the grizzly will lay up treasure (that will soon smell to heaven) for the coming weeks. Twenty to thirty fish he will collect into a heap; over these he will pile logs and rocks so large and heavy that, even remembering the strength of his thews, one wonders at his ability to move them through the dense jungle. The black bear gorges too, but apparently accumulates no store. Nevertheless he becomes fetid, blear-eyed, unhealthy generally, and filthy in his habits. Sometimes his dulled fur falls off in patches until his once silky coat suggests that of a mangy dog. The coyote, too, gorges to a point of scandalous obesity. Every creature capable of sustaining its life upon flesh crowds in to take toll of the hapless salmon.

Spawning over, the spent and exhausted creatures, now mere living corpses, — distorted, emaciated, and disfigured, — cleave their slow and painful way back to the deep waters of the lake. The results of the Saprolegnia infection now develop: foul festoons — the bearers of spores to infect the next generation of sockeye — hang from lips, eye-rims, gill-shields, and fins. The pairs which have spawned together as a rule maintain their companionship, each pair seeming to shun the society of others. Their movements become slower, stiffer. This existence may be prolonged for a fortnight; it usually continues for a week. Then comes death. For a brief period, the poor, disfigured carcasses float at the surface; then they sink to the bottom, where the soft tissues undergo swift disintegration.

The hatching-period of the sockeye egg varies according to the temperature of the water. The governing principle has been ingeniously worked out and determined by Mr. Wallach, of the United States Fisheries Department. It is as follows. Take freezing point, 32° Fahrenheit, as the basis. Then take the mean temperature of the water on each day, starting with the day on which the egg was expressed, and deduct 32 from it. As soon as the remainders reach a total of 990, the egg will have hatched.

To make the thing quite clear the following table is given. Assume that on the day of spawning and the four subsequent days, the respective mean temperatures read as follows: 52, 55, 53, 60, 54.

1st day, 52 — 32 = 20

2nd “ 55 — 32 = 23

3rd “ 53 — 32 = 21

4th “ 60 — 32 = 28

5th “ 54 — 32 = 22

and so on. When the footing of the third column reaches 990, the egg will have hatched. The little fish soon becomes a free swimmer, but some eight weeks pass before the umbilical sac is fully absorbed. Then the minute, semitransparent creature, helpless, except for the instinct that prompts it toward concealment from ever-vigilant enemies, starts on its independent career.

And what of that atom of faintly clouded jelly — its brain? Did any other physical substance ever bear such a tremendous load? Pictured or written therein is the vast and varied experience of the whole sockeye race, probably dating from a period before Vancouver Island emerged from the ocean, when the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains were wave-washed islands (there is evidence to be deduced from certain habits of the sockeye that this is the case). In that receptacle must be stored records of millions of precedents — clues for guidance through a life-embracing labyrinth of dangers and difficulties. It contains the tragedy and the triumph of the sockeye race. One’s mind reels before the abyss.