See Salmon Swim

For me one of the special things about autumn in the Greenwood neighborhood is watching salmon return to Piper’s Creek in Carkeek Park.

Most of the salmon which return to Piper’s Creek are chum salmon, the second largest in size of the five species of salmon on this coast. They are pretty fish. Most females have a dark horizontal band on their side.  Most males have reddish and black flame like strips shooting up their sides.  The fish  slither powerfully and noisily across the gravel bars, their backs out of water.  One can often hear the fish before they are seen.  They rest in the deep pools.  They swim forcefully over the logs in the creek until the female finds a spot to her liking and begins to dig a nest.  Once the eggs are laid the adult fish soon die.  This is a good thing because their decaying bodies feed the insects which will feed the young salmon when they hatch in a month or two.  The dead fish also feed birds and animals (in Carkeek that means raccoons and otters) which drag the carcasses into the forest.  This fertilizes the trees as well.  It’s not a stretch to say that the Northwest coast is green because salmon bring ocean nutrients inland.

If you want to see the fish, they usually enter the creek about the last week of October.  The numbers peak about Thanksgiving and in most years there are no more live fish by the first week in Dec.

Most Saturdays and Sundays in November there are Naturalists at the creek from 10 or 11 to 1 or 2 to help you find fish and understand what you’re looking at.  It is a great opportunity for kids (of all ages) to experience God’s world first hand and to learn a bit more about stewarding it.

Mary Vincent

Categories: Newsletter

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