Salmon Time

Telling The Rocky Brook Story Through Time and Change (Part One)

Blog 16

Time 

is Nature’s Way 

of Making Sure That 

Everything 

Doesn’t Happen 

All At Once

“Rocky Brook Time”, for me, can be looked at in four distinct ways:.

1. Salmon Time
2. Long Time
3. Human Time, and
4. My Time

Each sheds light on this place I share with salmon and myriad other creatures (including family, friends, neighbors and visitors.)

Salmon Time

In Jonathan Balcomb’s 2016 book, “What a Fish Knows”, he states that “fish are not just sentient, but aware, communicative, social, tool-using, virtuous, even Machiavellian”.

I highly recommend this book. It uses recent research findings to challenge our long held beliefs that fish are cold-blooded, unthinking, unfeeling creatures which are best captured and eaten.

I have no idea as to what time might mean to a salmon. I can only imagine that they live, like much of biological life, in the GREAT PRESENT. But I may be wrong, time will tell.

They must be acutely in-tune with some kind of clock, one which tells the young alevin to squeeze through the gravel which has been home for months, wiggle up to the surface of the stream, take a deep breath to inflate its swim bladder, and then begin to swim about, looking for food while hiding from unknown creatures which might consider it food.

Is the salmon “clock” internal … or external?

Are they responding to external signs and cues, such as water temperature, light changes and food availability when they one day decide to head downstream to the river estuary and salt water to live, or is it some internal clock which tells them to do this at this moment? Research suggests that it is a bit of both.

Different kinds of salmon do things at different times. Pinks and chum salmon spend little time in a river or creek such as Rocky Brook or the Dosewallips. They emerge from gravels and almost immediately head downstream to salt water. On the other hand, coho will stay for a year in a stream such as Rocky Brook before doing this. Some Chinook salmon may remain in a river for two or even three years before heading out to sea.

We call these changes that a salmon goes through, from egg to adult to death (after hopefully leaving fertilized eggs to continue the process) their life cycle.

I maintain an informational sign next to the area where people park to walk up to experience Rocky Brook Falls. It is my attempt to introduce the salmon life cycle as well as answer the three questions I most often get from people.

The first is “Are there any fish in there?

Living here has taught me that there are always fish in there; they are just too small, dispersed and inactive to see (fry and fingerlings seem to be more active and visible at night, with a good flashlight).

On the sign I try to alert people to what is happening now in the life cycle of the salmon that spend part of their lives in Rocky Brook. To most visitors who come during the summer months, this means that the salmon present are coho fry or fingerlings living along the edges of pools and under logs and overhanging trees. For those that enjoy a swim in the pool at the base of the falls, the sign reminds them that there are fry and fingerlings there, as well as a few larger (nearly a foot long) rainbow and possibly steelhead trout.

The sign tries to communicate that at this time, most of the salmon that come to Rocky Brook and the Dosewallips to spawn in the fall are out in saltwater, growing.

I update the sign monthly to alert people to changes that are happening, both observed (by me and WDF&G biologists) and what we generally know from research.

The second question people ask is, “What kind of fish are in there?

The sign tries to help visitors understand that there are actually six different kinds of wild Pacific Salmon (if you include steelhead which are commonly thought of as a trout, but which are genetically and biologically a salmon). Those that take the time to study the sign learn that Rocky Brook, at least today, is mainly a coho and pink stream. It notes that fall chum runs occasionally occur, and a few Chinook and even steelhead will venture out of the larger Dosewallips to try spawning in Rocky Brook. Sockeye are not expected (they usually depend on a lake as part of their life cycle). And there are rainbow trout as well as smaller, non-salmonoid fish such as sculpins.

I recently expanded the sign to include Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife fish count data since 1943. This helps see larger salmon cycles; changes in numbers over decades. Unfortunately, because these stream surveys were so infrequent (in early years, only one survey was done, a whole year’s numbers dependent on a single observation) it is hard to draw accurate conclusions regarding how the runs have changed. Luckily, since around the 1990’s the counts became almost weekly, so a more accurate picture is emerging.

Most people find this new sign TMI ((to much information), but there are a few hardy souls who take to time to figure out what it is saying. I would love to have such a sign at every salmon river and stream.

The third question is whether or not I catch and eat the fish (or, more commonly, if they can fish here). If you search “salmon” online, what mostly comes up are methods of cooking these noble creatures, a reminder that salmon and other fish are still viewed as a food item. Balcomb’s book introduced at the top of this blog presents a pretty strong case for revising our understanding and maybe even questioning whether or not we should be eating so many of them.

I tell them that the fishing season in the Dosewallips is from the beginning of June to the end of August, and it is catch and release. This would be rainbow trout and steelhead fishing. Once mature salmon come up to spawn (beginning in September), they are protected; no fishing allowed. Salmon is my favorite food, but I only eat the wild Alaskan variety.

Fish biologists tend to look at salmon, not as individuals, but as members of a population with similar genetic material. In this view, the salmon which come up Rocky Brook every year are different genetically from those that might come up the nearby Quilcene or Duckabush rivers. Biologists are monitoring this population or gene pool, one which has evolved over hundreds and even thousands of generations to become intimately in tune with its “home” stream.

This makes me wonder, how long have salmon been coming up the Dosewallips and Rocky Brook?

Answering this question means looking at what I call Long Time … of which I will write in the next blog (expected to appear around August 1).

Dennis Lloyd Kuklok
Rocky Brook, June, 2023
Blog Number 16