![]() Now this resilient silver fish is facing a new, possibly insurmountable challenge. Overfishing in the oceans and rivers cuts into population numbers, too. Since European contact, a third of the 1,400 distinct salmon populations along the west coast have gone extinct. Yet these evolutionary feats are not serving them well in the modern age. Salmon cross barriers that other animals can’t, transforming physiologically as they move between fresh and salt water and back again on a mind-blowingly epic migration. But a general pattern holds true: born and reared in fresh water, salmon migrate to the ocean via rivers and estuaries, grow to adulthood in salt water, and return to spawn and die in their home creek. The details differ, because every population evolved to flourish in a hyper-specific waterway, like the Robertson River. The five houses of Pacific salmon-coho, chinook, chum, pink, and sockeye-cover a lot of real estate over their lives. They’ve survived earthquakes, exploding volcanoes, and drastic swings in temperature, largely thanks to a complex life history. Salmon have a tumultuous history in the Pacific Northwest. Juvenile salmon collected from disconnected pools on the streambed are ready to be released. Bernhardt reckons that until the rain started falling again in the autumn, she moved 26,000 fry down the river. The summer of 2019 broke decades of drought records. Then the warmer months arrive, and that security evaporates. The wet, rainy winters and snowy mountains of the Pacific Northwest tend to lull locals into a false sense of water security. The local paper mill pumped water in from adjoining Cowichan Lake to keep the river flowing-a local politician called it “mechanical life support.” Using the 2016 Water Sustainability Act for the first time, the provincial government issued a Fish Population Protection Order that prohibited farmers from drawing water out of dangerously low rivers to irrigate forage crops, such as hay and corn. ![]() While coho flourish in the meandering back eddies of the Robertson, the rushing Cowichan supports a once mighty, now declining chinook salmon stronghold. The Robertson River was not the only waterway that went dry on Vancouver Island that summer. A nearby hatchery, run by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), operates a similar program and tacitly endorses impromptu salvaging done by people like Bernhardt. Her response was instinctive-“my motivation is simply the need: a being needs help, help it”-but she was practicing an obscure, growing branch of conservation called fish salvage: transferring a fish from unsafe to safe habitat. She found it impossible to relax at home knowing that, a few kilometers away, an animal might be dying. The rest of that day and the rest of the summer, she moved coho into the lake using a net and bucket. ![]() She rowed back home, grabbed a fishing net, and returned to the river. “It’s just a terrible waste,” says Bernhardt, her voice heavy with sadness.īefore heading to Robertson Creek to save juvenile salmon from shrinking pools of water, Brenda Bernhardt heads to the forest behind her house, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, to dedicate that time to something in the natural world. But that journey never happens if the puddles dry completely, leaving the fry flopping on land, or if the stress of a shrinking, warming puddle kills them first. Two years later, adult coho migrate back to their birthplace, following the scent of the Robertson River through the ocean, bay, and lakes, to spawn and die in the gravel, their bodies feeding their progeny, as well as the river and the forest. Juvenile coho spend a year in the Robertson River putting on weight and muscle before migrating to the Pacific Ocean: they swim north from the river into a little lake called Bear, hang a quick left into the much larger Cowichan Lake, then make a righthand turn into the Cowichan River and follow its flow southeast for over 50 kilometers to Cowichan Bay and beyond. Here and there she discovered dozens of disconnected puddles, each teeming with coho salmon only a few weeks old and no bigger than the palm of her hand. She wandered up the wide, dry gravel riverbed lined with second-growth evergreen trees. ![]() “And I thought, ‘Oh, gosh, look, the river is really low.’” Bernhardt climbed out of her rowboat to investigate. I don’t know what the dogs are looking at,” she says, her laughter deep and boisterous, even over the phone. They were on their way to check out “an eagle’s nest that we always look at. Bernhardt, a retired veterinarian, had her two dogs, Ellie and Cody, with her. It was the first day of May 2019, and the spring had been unseasonably warm. This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.īrenda Bernhardt was rowing in a lake near her home on Vancouver Island in British Columbia when she paused at the mouth of the Robertson River, noticing that it had run dry.
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