Time and Place: The Sockeye of Adams River

This title is an acquisition.

Two million sockeye salmon are returning from the Pacific Ocean to the place of their birth in the Adams River of central British Columbia, Canada. After 3 years in salt water, they've come home to spawn and to die. Once this migration was an annual spectacle, integral to First Nation's culture. But construction accidents, logging, pollution and over-fishing have devastated the population and three of the four runs. Now this dominant run occurs only once every four years. The sockeye must go through amazing physical changes as they adapt to fresh water. Then they swim 500 kilometres in about 19 days through tremendous obstacles in the Fraser River System to get to the Adams River. When they congregate at the mouth of the river, they're exhausted. They have not eaten since they began this trip and they will not eat again. But their trial has just begun. They must avoid trout fishermen in the delta, who block their way and whose hooks tear their flesh. They must swim upriver through challenging rapids, even as they gasp for oxygen, their bodies decay and their life's energy drains away. Hundreds of thousands of tourists, who have come for the Salute to Sockeye Festival, gawk as females dig nests in the riverbed, fend off neighbours and unsuitable males, and pick their mates. The female lays her eggs, the male fertilizes them, and after standing guard as long as they can, they breathe their last breath and simply drift away in the current. Their bodies will decay and become food and fertilizer for local animals and plants, and sustenance for their own progeny when they hatch in the spring, and when the cycle begins again. This is the Time & Place of the Sockeye of the Adams River.