Spawning Season

It's spawning season, time for the salmon to go back to their own spawning grounds where they will lay their eggs, milt, and be their final resting place. As the salmon begin to migrate back to their spawning grounds, they school together, weaving in and out of each other's paths, in seemingly wild directions, with the purpose of keeping them safe.

There is safety in numbers. There is safety in moving constantly. There is safety in moving unpredictably. Being safe is their top priority as it is the final stretch of life for these creature's as they set off to leave behind nothing but hope that they may parent some of the future generations of fish to come.

Weaving through the ocean with just their instinct to guide them, they meet countless hungry predators who've all learned of a salmons spawning season and have prepared themselves for the feast to come.

Killer whales, intelligent and organized, love themselves some fresh, beautiful salmon. It's like a dessert to them. They eagerly hunt their fill and, in their excitement, create a game of toss amongst each other with a fish that will sadly not make it to his spawning grounds.

As the salmon get closer to the shallows and along the coast, seals find themselves waiting for the salmon to come inland so they too may feast on the delicious food that is presenting itself so readily for the hungry mammals who've prepared themselves along the oceans shorelines. Another group of salmon, lost to the food chain as they make their way out of the salt water of the ocean, into the fresh water of the river.

But their numbers are still great, and their determination is unwavering as the school of salmon begin to make their way up river. As the trek continues for the salmon, the river begins to get steeper, rockier, tougher. With every ounce of energy in them, they leap out of the water, over and over again, desperate to make it just a little further with every attempt.

Sadly, some of their bodies will not survive the beating they took getting up the steepest part of the river, but those, will feed the scavengers that know of spawning season, but do not actively hunt for their own food.

Sadder still, are the ends of the salmon that made it all the way up the rough part of the river alive, just to end up in the mouths of bears who enjoy catching fish in the rapids.

Thanks to their schooling, evading, and a little bit of luck, the salmon that have made it this far have found that the river has begun to calm, but in the calmer waters they face a new foe and possibly the most dangerous creature of all. Humans.

Humans have set up right below the spawning grounds in boats with rods, reels, nets, and a determined look on their face, that they are not leaving without what they came for. The humans set up cameras, set up their rods, and ready their nets for the hunt that ensues. They cast their lines as the fish swim past, starving, tired, and waiting for their journey to end. Some salmon give into the obvious trap and hungrily eat the bait set out before them, getting caught on the hook, reeled out of the water, vanishing.

One first-time fisher, nervously setting up his camera, explained that because there were so many fish, he would attempt to catch one using just a net. Looking directly at the camera lens, he dunked the net onto the water and began moving it about wildly, pulling it up out of the water with nothing in it.

Embarrassed, he submerged his net a second time, aimed for, and caught a male salmon using nothing but a net. He removed the salmon from the net and pointed out the vast differences the salmon had gone through as it readied for spawning season. How the scales change color, the shape of the mouth changes, the body, as well as the teeth become more dangerous looking. As he finishes pointing out the differences, he gingerly tosses the salmon overboard.

That salmon got lucky. He was caught by a catch & release fisher, seeking only to educate people and let nature go about its business. The salmon finished his trek to his spawning grounds, released his milt, and left the world another generation for the next generations to come.