The Heroic Journey of the Salmon

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August 26, 2013



Poor old Matthew was up in the night with some kind of sickness bug so we take it easy in the morning and let him get it out of his system. By about 11 he’s managed to eat (and keep down!) a couple of waffles and has bounced back. The weather has made a turn for the worst unfortunately so we hadn’t planned on too much today anyway.

The local mall is just 2 minutes in the car and we end up eating there for lunch, the advantage being we all get to choose something different. I end up with Chinese (delicious noodles and sesame chicken), Matthew and Sam enjoy a piece of pizza (Matthew’s appetite now as good as ever) and Steve has the inevitable sushi.

Hunger satisfied we head off to the Salmon Hatchery on Capilano River just past the over-priced and way too touristy Capilano Suspension Bridge.

There are a series of car parks as you enter the Capilano Regional Park and we park in the second one, choosing to walk one of the trails to get to the Hatchery. It proves to be a lovely trail and follows the river where we catch sight of salmon leaping out of the water on their journey to the hatchery. It’s a remarkable and still largely unexplainable circle of life story.

All Pacific salmon are anadromous (big word I found meaning they all start in freshwater (streams, lakes, rivers etc), migrate to the ocean, then as adults return “home” to spawn and then, rather sadly, to die (within days of spawning apparently). Quite how and why they do this remains a bit of a mystery.

The boys have been talking about this for a while and aren’t disappointed. It’s the time of year for the Coho Salmon to be returning to the hatchery and we can watch them make their final ‘leaps’ of their upstream struggle in the well designed fish ladder where one side is made of glass, thus giving visitors an excellent view of the fish literally leaping out of the water in order to make it up to the top. (It’s also rather sad watching more falling back down than making it up). It’s a tough job swimming upstream but when you come from the ocean there’s really only one way you can swim.

The Capilano Salmon Hatchery was built below Cleveland Dam in order to rear and release the diminishing stock of both Coho Salmon and Steelhead Trout. Hardly surprising when you consider that for every 4,000 eggs laid, only 2 will return as adults to lay again. So the hatchery provide the nursery support for the eggs, seeing them through to “teenagers” when they then release them to the river, leaving them to find their own way back down the Capilano River and into the ocean.

After the hatchery we head further into West Vancouver, have a drive (and a nosey look) around the huge, overpriced waterfront properties off of Marine Drive and end up at Lighthouse Park. This is a great little place we’ve always loved and would bring all our visitors to when we lived here. It’s a short but lovely walk down to either the beach or lighthouse where the views back to Stanley Park and downtown Vancouver are not only splendid but offer a different perspective again. There are never enough ways to view the wonderful skyline that is Vancouver!

We sit on the rocks on the little beach. The sun briefly makes an appearance but it also tries its best to rain as well. It’s been largely dry today so we can’t really complain. As we stare out to sea coincidentally we see a few salmon leap out of the ocean and can’t help but think of the incredible journey he or she is embarking on. Life really is just one long journey for them.

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