'New salmon run:' Planes now fly in fish as Yukon chinook decline

Salmon no longer collect in the nets along theTeslin River where the Tlingit people have harvested them for
thousands of years. Now, they come from the sky.

"It's the new salmon run," Duane Aucoin, member of the TeslinTlingit Council, said recently.

"For the past few years, we've been flying in salmon. A lot ofour young kids, they think that's normal 'Oh, the plane's flyingover. The salmon are here.'

"It is funny, but it's also sad."

Aucoin and his people live on the tail end of one of Earth'sgreat animal odysseys. The run of chinook salmon up the watershed ofthe Yukon River is the longest and largest in the world.

It's a flexing of migratory muscle that pushes fish 3,000kilometres from the Bering Sea, across Alaska, through Yukon andinto the northern reaches of British Columbia in their need toreturn to the creeks where they spawned so they can do the same.

• On mobile? View map here

Up to 150,000 chinook the richest and tastiest salmon species returned to the Canadian side of the Yukon and its tributaries asrecently as 15 years ago.

This year will see about half that, said federal biologistMary-Ellen Jarvis. Worse, the river's productivity has sunk like a
stone.

"Historically, we would get four fish back for every spawner,"she said. "Now, we're getting one."

• PHOTOS |Salmon at the source: Kwanlin Dn monitor Chinook spawning area

'Salmon bigger than me'

The seven- or eight-year-old salmon Aucoin remembers seeing inhis childhood are gone.

"I experienced my grandmother being in the boat and pulling insalmon bigger than me."

First Nations along the river are severely restricting theircatches.

The Council of Yukon First Nations estimates aboriginal fishersused to haul in 8,000 chinooks every year during the run. This year,it'll be closer to 1,000.

Aucoin's community used to take about 1,000. The band council hasordered that this year's harvest will be no more than 40.

The gap has left a hole in First Nations culture that no onequite knows how to fill. "They are a central part of beingTlingit," Aucoin said.

Memories of fish camps

For centuries, Tlingit families would gather about this time ofyear at their traditional spots along the river during the salmonrun to spend weeks catching, cleaning, preparing and preserving fishfor the long winter ahead.

"It was really good," recalled Tlingit elder Madeleine Jackson.

"Lots of fish hanging up. You'd see all the salmon and the eggs.That was a treat for everybody. Mom and dad would show us kids howto take care of fish, how to cut it and look after it, say that'swhat you've got to do and you've got to teach your children thattoo.

"The excitement," she recalled with a smile.

"Get up early in the morning to run net and you see all thesalmon in the net. Oh boy! There's our winter food."

Fish would be dried, fried, canned, smoked, half-smoked, bakedand boiled. Everything from eggs to eyes was used.

"We ate the whole bloody thing outside the fish head," recalledPeter Johnston, grand chief of the council.

But it was more than about food.

'So many teachings that took place'

"Fish camps were such an important part of our culture," Aucoinsaid. "That's where the families and clans would gather.

"There were so many teachings that took place not just abouthow to set a net and how to run a net and how to harvest salmon anddry it. Sitting around the campfire with your grandparents and youraunts and your uncles, how many stories were told and how manyteachings were passed to future generations at fish camp.

"It's not just the salmon that we're missing. We're missing thewhole salmon camp experience."

The camps are the main reason the Teslin are harvesting those 40salmon. The two camps the band has authorized will be the first in15 years.

"The youth will once again experience what it means to be atfish camp ... and also hear the teachings of being around the fireat night. That's something I think the salmon will completelyunderstand, that we're taking just 40 of them to honour them andcontinue on these traditions."

'To us, salmon are people'

Different bands are handling the situation differently.

While Teslin has all but banned the fishery, the Selkirk FirstNation is allowing a harvest, but limiting it to 40 fish per camp.

"There's different situations for different people," said PeterJohnston, grand chief of the Council of Yukon First Nations."First Nations are taking different approaches and you have torespect what they're doing."

There's pressure to keep some kind of fishery alive over fears oflosing it altogether, said Johnston.

"If we're not making those numbers, government looks back at usand says, 'Well, you're only consuming 40 fish. Realistically, doyou need the numbers in the past?'

"You can understand why certain nations are hard on the factthey want to consume not only for traditional processes but to keepthe numbers up."

Johnston said everybody supports the need to conserve thesalmon.

They're just too important to lose, said Aucoin.

"To us, salmon are people. We don't mean a people just like us,but we believe the salmon are a people who live in the ocean andreturn every year and they share their life with us. Not just withus, but with the bears, the wolves, the eagles, the forests.

"They're such an integral part of all of our lives, that's whyso much respect is shown them."

• MORE NORTH NEWS |The Maud floats again: Norwegians bring long-sunken ship to surface