So I noticed that in the past few days there have been dead salmon showing up in MacKay Creek which runs through a heavily developed part of the city. They are either chum or coho salmon and are measuring approximately 15 inches. Very pale white with maybe a tinge of peach but the tinge could be decomposition. Their faces hadn't changed into that hooked beak shape that salmon get when they start their run upstream. Maybe only some kinds of salmon do it. I will have to drop by the Salmon Fish Hatchery this weekend to find out.
Anyway, apparently a conservation group released fry into the higher up portion of the creek in the hopes of generating some kind of a salmon creek once again. One can suppose it is working since they are returning. Whether they make it back to the spawning ground is another question. It seems like a tough journey. I actually saw one alive, struggling its way up the creek. I wonder if it will make it. MacKay Creek starts quite high up Grouse mountain, about 2800ft and in a watershed so the water starts out quite clean but as it makes its way down the mountain it leaves the watershed and enters through two municipalities full of housing and commercial development. Moreover, neither municipality co-ordinates the management of the creek so at the moment, with all the neglect and abuse it is considered an endangered creek. I contacted the conservation group to see when they meet up. I wonder if they will contact me back.
On a lighter note, before I get maudlin, Maggie has turned into a Salmon Pointer. Not a bird dog this one, but a salmon dog. She was thrilled to search the banks for dead salmon and stand there waiting for me to see them. She didn't touch them, just over them. As we walked along the muddy path she would suddenly veer off and wait for me to follow her, something she never does. She rarely, if at all, leaves the path so I knew, before I saw the dead fish, that one was there. Okay, and if the wind was wafting the right way, I could smell it but boy was she chuffed when she found them ALL BY HERSELF and ALL for me to count. So anyway, I now know there are approximately eight dead salmon so far...all thanks to my Salmon Pointer.
Oh. I forgot to mention that it snowed today. First of the season! 5-6 centimeters.