Doing Right by the Fish

By Amy Gulick, Safina Center Senior Fellow

Gratitude

Caption: Amy Gulick, photographer/author of The Salmon Way, opens her new exhibit at the Seattle Aquarium.

What is your relationship with salmon? And what kind of a question is that to ask someone—what is your relationship with salmon? Well, it’s the question that compelled me to venture to Alaska and show up at the homes, boats, and fish camps of complete strangers. I was intrigued that there is still a place in this world where the lives of people and salmon are linked, and I wanted to know what the lives of people are like who have relationships with these remarkable fish. So after several years of asking this question to Alaskans from all walks of life all over the state, I came back with the stories and photographs that you’ll find in my book, The Salmon Way: An Alaska State of Mind. (www.thesalmonway.org) An exhibit based on my book is now on display at the Seattle Aquarium through the summer. (https://www.seattleaquarium.org/exhibits/salmon-way) At the recent exhibit opening, in partnership with Alaska conservation organization SalmonState and my book publisher Braided River, we asked three special guests to talk about their relationships with salmon.

Michelle Ravenmoon, Dena’ina Athabascan from the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, shared a story of how her people ensure that the salmon come back. “Every spring we harvest the first wild green, a wild celery called ggis. The outside of the plant isn’t edible and has a strong smell. We peel this, throw it into the water, and say a prayer to the salmon. ‘Look at us, we’re starving; we’re eating plants, please come home and feed us.’ The peelings go out into the ocean and leave a smell so the salmon know which way to go.”

Linda Behnken, a commercial fisherwoman from Sitka, Alaska, shared a story of her two young sons rescuing baby salmon. “We were walking along a salmon stream just as the young salmon fry were emerging from the gravel bed. The stream was blocked and the fry were trapped with nowhere to go. My sons were alarmed that the baby salmon were going to die if they couldn’t get into the main channel of the stream, and so they frantically began to dig a passage allowing the fish to escape. As we watched them swim downstream, my sons, with tears in their eyes, asked, ‘What will happen to the salmon? Will they come back?’ I told them that the salmon will always come back as long as we take care of them.”

Tom Douglas, a beloved Seattle chef who advocates for wild salmon, shared his salmon journey. “I grew up Catholic eating bad canned salmon on Fridays. I didn’t know anything then about salmon except that I didn’t like to eat it. But as I pursued my passions for cooking and began opening and operating restaurants, I learned just how incredible and delicious wild salmon are. And how crucial it is that we protect the fish and their habitat. Alaska is the last best place for wild Pacific salmon.”

Gift

The Salmon Way exhibit on display through summer celebrates the relationships that wild Pacific salmon make possible for people in Alaska.

For those of us who live in Pacific salmon country, and for people everywhere who eat wild Pacific salmon, how do we live in relationship with these remarkable fish? We would do well to learn from and follow the lead of Indigenous peoples throughout salmon country whose cultures have been built, nourished, and sustained by salmon since time immemorial. We can start by acknowledging that salmon are a gift—to the land, water, animals, plants, and people. We give thanks for this gift and give back by taking care of salmon and their habitat. We live in relationship with salmon by seeing them as the gift that they are, not treating them solely as resources for the taking.

And for those of us who live in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, or northern California, we are all one nation under salmon. The needs of salmon in Alaska may be different than those in the lower 48 or Canada, but regardless of whether salmon need to be protected, maintained, recovered, or restored, it is imperative that we unite and do right by the fish. We honor the salmon by ensuring that Alaska’s Bristol Bay never sees the likes of the Pebble Mine. We honor the salmon by dismantling the four dams on the lower Snake River in Washington state. And we honor the salmon by working together everywhere to fight for the fish, not over the fish. It’s the salmon way.

Amy Gulick, Safina Center Fellow, is the author/photographer of The Salmon Way: An Alaska State of Mind and Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska’s Tongass Rain Forest.

See: www.amygulick.com