Pacific salmon

 

 

Five species of pacific salmon thrive in the Pacific North-west of North America and Canada. They begin their lives on the fresh water streams, lakes and rivers and migrate to the sea as small fish called smolths. Aftera athey transition from fresh to salt water and grow into adults in the high seas of the North Pacific ocean, a biological clock tells the salmon when it's time to return to the place of their birth to spawn a new generation.

 

Before the arrival of Europeans, the abundance of food in the coastal regions of the Pacific North-west of the North America supported a unique and extraordinary culture. The relatively mild climate provided an ideal environment for human inhabitation, also making the rivers of the region perfect salmon grounds. Salmon runs in the late summer and autumn , provided a huge resource of food.

 

 

As well as the hunting them with spears and traps, the people erected large fish wiers spanning a river completly or stretched across a channel where the salmon were known to swim. Large quantities of food could be caught this way.

 

The importance of the fish to the people of the Pacific North-west coast has been compared to the role played by the the buffalo in the cultures of the tribes of the Great Plains and has led to them being discribed as the ‘salmon nations’.

However, in the eighteenth century, the people of the first nations were exposed to a disese called small pox which was a devasting flow to the culture causing villages to be abandoned and accmulated knowledge that had been passed down through the generation.

In the nineteenth and twentieth century, sea otter fur was highly sought by China so there was a serious decline in sea otter numbers to the point of extinction before conservation measures were put in place. The salmon also went into decline as commercial fishing expanded. The link between the fish and the people remained but few of the First Nations relied on the runs for food anymore.