The way I understand it, the Pacific Salmon at the age of 4 or 5 struggles up countless rivers, streams and creeks until they finally come to the spawning ground of their birth. There, they lay eggs or fertilize, depending upon the individual salmon’s gender, and then they all promptly die and go belly up; some to be feasted upon by seabirds and the less discriminating bears, but most just to rot and stink up the great North West.
Why aren’t there human fishermen waiting at the spawning grounds to scoop up the freshly dead fish before they have a chance to rot or become Jonathan Livingston’s brunch? Is there something toxic in the meat of a shagged out salmon or is it just considered more sporting to catch them on the way to the big orgy?
I believe that when the fish are farm bred that’s exactly what happens. Only they don’t really get a chance to breed. The eggs and sperm are removed, and the next generation is artificially inseminated. This isn’t too hard to accomplish since insemination happens outside of the fishies anyway.
There are laws in the Northwest indicating where and when the salmon can be caught. They try to keep the fishermen as far away from the breeding grounds as possible for obvious reasons. It would be cool if they just picked up a dead salmon, but how do you know how fresh it is? You’ve have to sit around and watch the poor sucker go through its death throes to be sure. Also some species of salmon can actually live to spawn again.
Finally, the dead bodies of the fish are very important to the bears and other life forms of the Northwest. Much of the nutrients that are washed away in this rainy climate feed into the sea, and the salmon are a very important method of bringing these nutrients back.
Many of the rivers and streams have been almost ruined as spawning grounds through pollution or construction of hydro dams (Fraser River, for example), or through silting as a result of runoff from clearcutting, or even just the building of logging roads. http://www.sierraclub.ca/bc/Campaigns/WildSalmon.html Many of the remaining streams are now protected (for at least part of their length) by Provincial or National Parks.
Just 4km from where I sit typing this is Goldstream Provincial Park, which has a terrific salmon stream, connecting to the Pacific ocean. http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/goldstre.htm Every year, from October to December, an estimated 22,000 chum salmon return to spawn and die. The stream runs milky with the milt, and of course decomposing fish. The smell can be pretty bad at times, although nearly 60,000 people visited in those months last year to watch the spectacle (which is pretty amazing).
IIRC, the great chemical changes which take place in the salmon after they leave the salt water and return to the freshwater streams (turning their backs bright red) causes their flesh to become unpalatable to humans. Certainly many of them seem to be rotting before death–a lot of loose skin, etc.
Black bear, gulls and ravens do a lot of cleanup of the carcasses, but the 200+ bald eagles which nest in the area probably do the majority of scavenging.
As Rodd mentioned, salmon that have spawned are not in their prime. They don’t feed, they live off stored reserves (their own flesh) and they are pretty much spent by the time the job is done. They are edible but they’re not good eatin’. It probably doesn’t make much difference to a bear, but why would you eat a crummy looking, tasteless, stringy fish simply because it’s easy to catch just before it dies?
Good salmon is a culinary treat. Salmon fishing is an enjoyable sport. Scavenging dying salmon has neither of these benefits.
