WEBVTT - Ep. 217: Mark Kurlansky on Saving Salmon 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:13.320 This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:18.360 bog bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:22.600 can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:26.160 the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:29.440 Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:36.320 where you stand with on X All right, everybody, not 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:39.320 not that we have guests, not that we ever have 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:43.959 unspecial guests, Like I don't want former guests who are 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:48.600 listening to to feel broken hearted and beaten down when 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:51.599 I say that we have a special guest, because they right, 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:53.920 no one wants to hear that. But but it's it's 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:57.680 like in the specialness of all our guests, there's there's 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:00.400 one that is rising up a little special right now 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:04.679 where we have on author Mark Kurlansky. And I'm sure 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:10.319 like everybody out there is familiar with some of his books. 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:15.240 Um in my world for sure, UM being familiar with 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:20.120 Mark's book cod and his book Salt, which seemed to 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:22.840 make its way, you know, onto every coffee table and 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:28.320 bookshelf from the country. Also the author of The Big Oyster, 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:32.160 A World Without Fish, And we're here today to talk 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:36.240 about Mark's new book Salmon and about salmon in general. So, uh, 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:38.760 welcome Mark, Thank thanks for joining us. And we're still 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:42.959 in like our COVID nineteen recording situation where much too 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:44.800 you know much to my shore grin, we are not 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:49.000 in the same room together. Mark is is hold up 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:53.440 in Manhattan. But thanks for joining us. Mark. It's my pleasure. 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:56.320 Be nice to be in Montana right now. But what 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:59.960 can I do? No, I think relative to many other 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:02.480 places in the country, we have it pretty good right now, 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:05.440 even though we are still under you know, stay at 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:08.560 home orders by the government. But um, it's it's a 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:11.919 pretty good place to pretty decent place to do that. Ah. 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:15.720 I caught this. This is one on one of my 0:02:15.760 --> 0:02:19.800 top questions and were we already talked about it. This 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:23.399 is what we're setting up our equipment. Uh, you're a fisherman. 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:30.119 Explain your Explain your fishing life a little bit to people. Well, um, yeah, 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:35.680 I've I've always been a fisherman. Uh for small time. 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:38.440 When I was young, I was a commercial fisherman. Oh 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:44.200 oh really okay, Yeah, Well I'm from New England and um, 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:47.000 when I was getting out of high school, I thought 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:51.440 what could be better than too? You know chish on 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:56.400 commercial boats and uh and and I actually did love it, 0:02:56.480 --> 0:02:59.320 but I was young. It gets to be just to 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:02.880 be less by as you get older. But I've also 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:07.080 always been a sports fisherman. I I I started off 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:12.880 like most New England kids who don't have a lot 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:17.840 of money. Um, serf casting for stripers and blues, which 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:20.560 you know, if you ever serf cast, and what what 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:23.600 that does is it it gets you obsessed with the 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:26.799 art of casting. And once you become obsessed with the 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:29.560 art of casting, you inevitably go to fly fishing. It. 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:34.040 Nowadays fly fishing is most of the time, is the 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:36.240 only fishing I do. Every once in a while, I 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:42.280 go to the ocean. Your book on on salm and um, 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:45.280 I hate. I don't want to say this. I hope 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:48.680 people listen to the whole interview because I don't want 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:50.400 to start out on a sour note. But your your 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:57.000 your book Hunt Salmon One's up. You provide a pretty 0:03:57.040 --> 0:04:03.240 doom view on what the future of these creatures is. Uh. 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:10.960 And you you catalog this centuries long collapse that's that's 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:15.440 ongoing today, that this collapse of salmon stocks and salmon fisheries. 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:19.360 You know, around the world where salmon can be found. 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:22.200 But I find that right away, and starting to go 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:25.039 through your book, I noticed that you would now and 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:31.800 then speak fondly or empathetically of commercial fishermen, and you 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:35.160 even give some recipes and talk about cooking salmon and 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:37.920 eating salmon. And I got to wonder if you were 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:42.000 writing a book about the collapse of the elephant somehow, 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:46.080 it seems that you would not put elephant recipes in 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:50.799 that book. Well, can you explain how those things can coexist? Yeah, 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:59.120 because there there there isn't a sustainable um elephant hunting system. Uh, 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:05.640 there is, your say, emmen um. Salmon is actually uh 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:08.600 one of the easier fish to regulate a fishery for 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:11.159 because they're very predictable and we know what they're doing 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.359 and when they're doing it um. And really all you 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:18.800 have to do is count the number of fish that 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:21.520 go up a river to spawn, which you can do 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:24.039 from a tower or from an airplane. I mean you 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.400 can just see them. And when enough fish have spawned, 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:29.880 then you tell the fisherman okay for a certain about 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:34.680 number of hours, now you can fish. And this works 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:37.240 quite well in a few places where there's still a 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:43.480 healthy salmon runs. But you know, the reason I decided 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:47.039 to do this book was because in n seven I 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:51.520 came out with my book on cob and this was 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:57.520 as the northern stock in the Grand Banks was collapsing 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:01.880 and people were really the first time seriously thinking about 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:08.279 the problems of overfishing and regulating commercial fisheries. Um I 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:10.680 mean the general public, use fishermen. I mean, when I 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:13.160 was on commercial boats in the nineteen sixties, it was 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:17.080 all fishermen talked about. But now by the end of 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:20.400 the people who were thinking about it. And that's what 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:25.160 my book was about. And since then I've been monitoring 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:28.640 fisheries and what's going on, and it's become clear to 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:36.080 me that over fishing and regulating fisheries is a minor problem. 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:38.440 It's one of the smaller problems. In fact, if you 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.120 could find a fishery where that was the only problem, 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:43.760 it would be wonderful, it would be so relatively easy 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:48.520 to fix. But the problems are far more complex than that. 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:52.479 And I thought that salmon was the perfect way to 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:56.760 make that point, because being an anadromous fish living both 0:06:56.800 --> 0:06:59.880 in freshwater and in the ocean, it gets hit by 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:04.440 everything that we do wrong. So the problem is not 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:09.120 that we're eating fish or fishing them commercially. Um, the 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.760 fact is there's places like most of the areas of 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:16.440 Atlantic salmon, there is no commercial fishery anymore, and the 0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:20.160 fish are still becoming rarer and rare. So, I mean, 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:25.560 what's going on? You know, there's deforestation, there's building dams, 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:31.120 there's pollution, there's bad farming practices, there's urban sprawl, and 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:37.800 there's climate change, and climate change and climate change huge problem. 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:41.920 And so basically, if you want to save the salmon, 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:44.880 all you really have to do is save the earth 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:49.720 and then it'll be saved. Yeah. And the intro at 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:52.679 the end of the book as a prologue that starts 0:07:52.680 --> 0:07:57.160 out with a couple uh you know, biography biographies or 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:02.440 more like character portrait of a couple of different commercial 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:08.320 salmon fisherman and then you you end the prologue by remarking, 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:12.720 how you know there still live It's remarkable that we 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:15.920 still have a commercial fishery for salmon. And you say 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:17.760 that this isn't a book about over fishing. You know, 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:19.240 it's like a like a very it feels like an 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:21.720 very important and a very important point you want to 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:24.760 make UM. But you go into like what it would 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:31.560 take to save salmon, and you list some things that 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:40.199 seems so uh impossible that it left me wondering, um, 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:42.959 if we had some wiggle room in there, because the 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:46.719 things that we would need to do, frankly are very 0:08:46.840 --> 0:08:51.120 very hard to picture us pulling that together. And so 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:56.800 it left me wondering, is there a plan B that 0:08:56.880 --> 0:08:59.679 we can be open to and maybe maybe we can 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:01.760 return into that or you can tackle that one now, 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:05.880 or we can get to it as our conversation moves on. Well, look, 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:10.160 if we can all pull together because we're being attacked 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:15.200 by a pandemic and close down the economy and start 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:20.760 from zero and rebuild, UM, then we could do that 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:24.560 because of climate change. Also, climate change is a far 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:28.320 greater threat than a pandemic. In fact, a pandemic is 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:32.200 just one of the threats of climate change. UM. I 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:36.400 sometimes wonder why we have failed to get that message across. 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:39.720 But we really have to do drastic things. But when 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:44.840 I look at the whole history of salmon, and you know, 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:48.400 going back to ancient times, and there were a lot 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:53.520 of talks about UM blocking rivers. Blocking rivers is one 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:55.920 of the huge issues and even in the Middle Ages 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:59.800 there were ordinances against blocking rivers, and the Magna Carta 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.400 specifies that the King of England cannot block a salmon river. 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:12.520 Um and the problem of overnetting and and damning we're 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:19.040 huge problems. But in the nineteenth century, uh, along came 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:22.800 the Industrial Revolution, and I mean, if you look at Britain, 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:27.560 I mean they built all of these uh mills which 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:30.960 they powered by dams that blocked rivers, and then the 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:36.080 mills dumped their pollution into the rivers, and soon the 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:42.960 rivers of Britain were completely dead. And then in New England, people, 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:47.360 uh many of British origin, did the exact same thing. 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:52.480 And then you know, it was largely New Englanders who 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:55.480 went out west and got this great idea of how 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:59.640 to build this Pacific Northwest by blocking the rivers and 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:04.440 having hydroelectric dams and producing more energy than anybody else 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:10.640 had to build this economic powerhouse. So I was researching 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:14.079 all of this, and I was thinking, why isn't anybody 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:18.960 learning anything? And then I realized, because they're not trying 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:24.440 to learn anything. Uh. They regarded these things that they 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:28.480 did as tremendous successes. They did make Britain the greatest 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.760 industrial power in the world. They did make New England 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:35.920 the greatest industrial force in North America, and they did 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:39.880 take the Pacific Northwest, which had very little economic activity, 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:44.319 and build a huge economy based on electricity from hydro 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:48.840 electric games. These are great successes um that are destroying 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:54.080 the planet. And so what's really happening here is that 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:58.240 we need to rethink our whole idea of economic development. 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:03.160 To develop in a eonomy does not necessarily mean that 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:06.920 you have to destroy the earth. Uh. You have to 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:11.560 look for ways of developing that are not destructive, um, 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.199 and we need to do that fairly quickly. I mean 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:22.160 the the Europeans who came to America and looked at 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:30.320 the Native Americans whose lives depended on salmon, uh, wondered 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:33.880 why they're salmon stocks weren't getting depleted like the white 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:38.040 people's were. And they came up with a couple of 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:42.360 ideas that they didn't have enough fishing skills over fish, 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:46.600 and that they only used this for you know, sustainable 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:49.600 ability for food, they didn't use it for commerce. And 0:12:49.640 --> 0:12:53.800 this was completely wrong. They had economies, they they have 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:57.400 built villages, they traded between them salmon was an important 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:01.920 commodity of trade, and they were brilliant salmon fisherman. If 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:04.840 you read the journals of Lewis and Clark and Mackenzie 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:08.120 and any of the early explorers, you know if they 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:10.920 if they wanted salmon, they had to find an Indian 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:12.960 because the Indians were the ones who knew how to 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:19.839 catch them. So it was such a flourishing salmon industry. Why, um, 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:23.160 why didn't they destroy the salmon stocks like we did, 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:29.040 Because the founding principle of developing their economy was that 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:32.720 you can't destroy the habitat. You have to maintain the river. 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:35.160 You have to treat the river respectfully, you have to 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:39.959 treat the salmon respectfully. And I submit that we need 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:43.880 to change their thinking. I know you make that well. 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:46.160 I want to return to that, manx. I actually have 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:48.240 a question about that coming up down the list here, 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:51.040 But first I want to lay a little more groundwork 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:54.160 for people, um and touch on something you already touched 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:57.280 on where you I want to connect to thoughts of 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:03.960 years one about that the survival of salmon is absolutely 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:08.000 tied to the survival of the planet. And also can 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:11.800 you touch more on anagrem like explain to people what 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:15.840 that means, why that makes the fish special, and why 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:19.360 it makes them all that much more vulnerable. And you 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:22.280 talked to you in your book about the cost the 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:29.760 anagremy uh entails like why it's a risky life strategy. Yeah, 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:33.320 you know. I said in the book that the purpose 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:37.640 of the book was not to say, you know that 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:39.760 this is an incredible animal and it would be really 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:44.400 sad if we lost it. However, it is an incredible animal, 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:46.200 and it would be really sad if we lost it. 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:50.960 I think salmon is one of the most remarkable animals 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:55.480 in the animal kingdom. Um a fish that can jump 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:58.120 eleven feet in the air. I mean think about that. 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.760 That would be like a human being jumping fifty ft. 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:06.200 It can accelerate as fast as an automobile. Um. They 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:09.680 they born in rivers, and they get to the size 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:15.800 of herring, and they go out to sea and they 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:20.040 eat so much, they hunt so much that they increase 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:25.640 their size by there's thousands of miles away now and 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:29.240 at a certain point, UM, it's like a bell goes off, 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:33.640 time to spawn, time to reproduce the species, and they 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:36.240 find the river in which they were born, which is 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:40.720 now thousands of miles away, and not only that, but 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:43.600 in that river they find the exact spot in the 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:47.440 river where they were born. And Hey, Mark, I want 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:49.760 to just interject. Can you speak just a little sidebar 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:52.440 about how like all the different ideas of how they 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:57.680 think that salmon are able to do that. Yeah, they're 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:01.160 not absolutely certain how they find them of it. Um. 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:04.120 There is a lot of theories, and they're pretty sure 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:05.960 that once they get in the river, they find the 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:09.560 right spot through smell, and they can identify that it's 0:16:09.640 --> 0:16:13.320 the right river by the smell. But they can't smell 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:15.640 the river from thousands of miles at sea. So how 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:21.800 do they get there? Um? Some theorize that they use uh, 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:27.440 stellar solar navigation. Some think that they they're able to 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:32.480 lock into electric electro magnetic fields. They seem to have 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:37.920 some magnetic materials along the stripe in the center of 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:44.320 their body, the lateral stripe there. And uh, it's not 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:49.280 completely certain they're they're they're still trying to figure it out. Um, 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:53.160 but it's uh, it's an ability that all salmon have. 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:59.120 And occasionally salmon won't go back to the river. It's 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:02.000 earth will spawn somewhere else. And this is a good 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:08.240 thing because it they find new rivers and they developed 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:12.119 new rivers. At the moment, they're developing some rivers in 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:15.320 the north slope of Alaska that are not no longer 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:20.639 iced over because of climate change. UM. The one of 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:24.359 the remarkable features of salmon is that they completely adapt 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:29.400 to the river they come from, so that UM their 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:36.639 DNA is completely focused on that particular river, which is 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:39.280 why hatcheries, if they try to do eggs from a 0:17:39.320 --> 0:17:42.399 different river, it won't do well in that river because 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:48.399 it's a it's a specific subspecies UM. And if you 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:52.040 look at two salmon of the same species and two 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:55.760 different rivers, they would look the same. But the DNA 0:17:56.040 --> 0:18:01.399 is actually more different than yours and mine UM. And 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:05.159 when it becomes it's not clear to me at what 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:07.359 point this is or how this has decided, but when 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:10.320 the DNA becomes too much different than they are a 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:15.640 different species. So there's seven species in the Pacific and 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:20.879 which is one genus, and there's only one species in 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:25.600 the Atlantic, which is a separate genus UM. But river 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:28.919 to river, they're all they're all different, and they have 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:31.919 different skills. You know, if you're from a river that 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:37.320 has big waterfalls. You're a great jumper, you know, if 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:42.280 you're stronger, if you have faster currents. I mean, I've 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:47.560 seen I've seen salmon making their way in rivers that 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:50.440 are so where the current is so strong that they're 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:55.200 really just gaining a centimeter at a time. But they're unstoppable. 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:58.639 They never give up. I've seen them jump waterfalls and 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:00.639 not make it over the top, all down on the 0:19:00.720 --> 0:19:02.840 rocks and kind of shake it off and jump up 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:09.159 again and keep trying until they get it. Um incredible determination. 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:15.840 And once they enter the river they stop eating. And 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:20.280 this is nature solving a problem because you know, salmon 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:22.280 eats so much at sea, then if it goes back 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:25.680 in the river and continues eating like that, the river 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:27.840 will be destroyed. They'll eat out the whole river, they'll 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:30.160 eat out the baby salmon, they'll eat out everything there 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:32.960 is to eat. And so instead they just stop eating 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:36.400 when they arrived in the river, which raises all kinds 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:40.160 of interesting questions for people who fly fish for salmon 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:43.840 and rivers. Why do they take the fly the whole 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:48.800 other subject of debate because they're not eating um, which 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:54.439 is why salmon flies don't look like food. Uh, you know, 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:57.560 like you if you're fishing for a trout, use a 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:00.600 fly that looks like something that they eat. But you 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:03.240 can do all sorts of weird, crazy things for salmon 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:08.840 flies because they're not looking for food. Um. They completely 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:14.520 changed their bodies. They changed from a silver skin. They 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:19.560 developed a spawning look. The males, Uh, they become bright 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:23.600 red and get humps on their backs and hook noses 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:26.840 and all sorts of weird things. Become this very strange 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:31.440 looking animal. Um. And it takes a tremendous amount of 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:35.040 energy to do that. The the red and the skin 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:38.600 is the pigment from the flesh when salmon. After salmon 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:42.159 has spawned, they're like an Albano. There's no pigment in 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:47.640 the flesh is white. Um. So they use everything they've 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:50.720 got to get there, and their last energy is spawning 0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:54.719 and then they've done what they had to do when 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:58.639 they roll over and die. Yeah, it's it's like the 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:05.760 story was written by um. You know what what we're 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:10.240 talking about. How salmon are all are uh all created equal? 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:14.320 You make this interesting point where you know, looking at him, 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:17.640 if you're just like a passive observer, a casual observer, 0:21:18.880 --> 0:21:21.520 you look at salmon from two different river systems, and 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:23.480 and think like, oh, you know, it's a soak I 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:25.600 or it's a king what the hell's the difference? But 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:29.320 you point out how Bristol Bay. I think you're talking 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:33.440 about fairly recent market trends were you're talking about commercial 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:37.879 fishermen in Bristol Bay, they'll sell their soaki salmon for 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:41.040 about a dollar a pound, and they'll sell their king 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:46.199 salmon for about fifty cents a pound Copper River. The 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:50.440 sakis sold the same species of fish, but asaki that's 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:53.520 gonna head up the Copper River might go for two 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:56.720 dollars and fifty cents a pound as opposed to a 0:21:56.760 --> 0:22:01.320 dollar a pound in Bristol Bay. And then a salmon 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:05.119 headed up the Copper might fetch around two fifty pound 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:09.360 as opposed to fifty cents a pound in Bristol Bay. 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:13.000 And you point out that at those rates, it's plausible 0:22:13.040 --> 0:22:17.360 to catch a king salmon that is worth to that 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:22.320 fisherman about two bucks. How do you begin to explain, like, like, 0:22:22.920 --> 0:22:29.119 how do you explain those priced discrepancies? Um? Yeah, you know. 0:22:29.240 --> 0:22:32.720 And also another question is how do you explain the 0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:36.600 discrepancy between what the fisherman is being paid and what 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:40.240 you're paying, what they're paying at the pike market. Yeah, 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:43.240 that's definitely another that's that's true of a lot of 0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:45.440 a lot of fish. What do you hear what they're 0:22:45.480 --> 0:22:47.840 getting for it and what what people are paying for 0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:50.160 it in restaurants, you realize that someone's making an awful 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:53.680 lot of money somewhere, right. But the reason why I 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:58.560 chose these two particular fisheries to go out on, I mean, 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:00.760 I can't help myself. I just said, any excuse to 0:23:00.760 --> 0:23:04.679 go out in a commercial fishery, I go. But the 0:23:04.720 --> 0:23:09.199 one that I did in Bristol bay Um was a 0:23:10.520 --> 0:23:13.000 you know, there were set dators there. They're guild letters 0:23:13.040 --> 0:23:17.119 in both cases, but set Ators is a very low 0:23:17.480 --> 0:23:21.919 investment kind of fishery. They go out in these aluminum 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:27.520 skips and they hauling the fish. They they don't take 0:23:27.600 --> 0:23:30.800 good care of. And the guy I went with, Allie 0:23:30.840 --> 0:23:36.200 Olsen uh using Montana sheep share. I don't know. You've 0:23:36.240 --> 0:23:39.000 probably seen these guys at work. It's a it's a 0:23:39.040 --> 0:23:42.919 tough it's a tough job in itself. They discovered that 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:45.120 in the off season there was money to be made 0:23:45.119 --> 0:23:47.800 in Bristol Bay. So he gets a bunch of young 0:23:47.800 --> 0:23:50.639 guys from around Montana to go up with him. And 0:23:50.680 --> 0:23:53.439 these guys have never been on a boat before, and 0:23:53.480 --> 0:23:56.399 they're they're lost that they don't know what a bo is, 0:23:56.440 --> 0:24:00.440 what a stirred is. Um they call a line or 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:05.880 rope um. But they earned a few thousand dollars, which 0:24:06.040 --> 0:24:08.320 you know, they earned enough money for a down payment 0:24:08.359 --> 0:24:11.720 and a simple home in Montana, which they could never 0:24:11.760 --> 0:24:15.919 do with what they were doing in Montana. But they 0:24:16.000 --> 0:24:20.239 go out, and you go out for like fifteen hours. Uh, 0:24:21.080 --> 0:24:25.000 I mean, the the regulators will say, you know there's 0:24:25.000 --> 0:24:27.639 an opening in it's fifteen hours or it's twenty hours, 0:24:27.640 --> 0:24:30.760 whatever it is. You fish the whole time. Um. And 0:24:30.800 --> 0:24:36.040 it's Alaska in the summertime, so there's no nighttime. And 0:24:36.200 --> 0:24:38.359 you know, they're yanking these things out of the nets 0:24:38.400 --> 0:24:40.600 and throwing them on the deck and they're stepping on 0:24:40.680 --> 0:24:43.440 him and kicking him and stuff, and take him over 0:24:43.480 --> 0:24:46.960 to the tender and throw them into these canvas bags 0:24:47.000 --> 0:24:51.040 and they take them away. Completely different from the fishery 0:24:51.440 --> 0:24:53.640 that I went to. The drift net fishery I went 0:24:53.680 --> 0:24:58.000 to in uh Cortinville, Alaska, which is the Copper River 0:24:58.119 --> 0:25:01.600 salmon which they catch out in open ocean in the 0:25:01.600 --> 0:25:07.679 Gulf of Alaska. UM. When the regulators have found that 0:25:07.880 --> 0:25:11.680 enough salmon have made it into the Copper River to spawn, 0:25:12.280 --> 0:25:16.840 you know, they'll get an opener for fifteen hours or something. Um. 0:25:16.880 --> 0:25:21.560 But these are like real um. Well they're small ships, 0:25:21.640 --> 0:25:26.199 you know, they're they're one person operations about thirty ft 0:25:26.840 --> 0:25:33.959 spooling and spoiling the front and um. They fish these 0:25:33.960 --> 0:25:36.000 things with great care. They take them out of the 0:25:36.040 --> 0:25:39.880 net and they bleed them and the gills as they 0:25:39.920 --> 0:25:42.560 take them out, and they slide them into an ice hold. 0:25:43.440 --> 0:25:46.959 Nowadays some are using holds with a slush instead of 0:25:46.960 --> 0:25:50.560 ice because it's surrounds it better and they take really 0:25:50.560 --> 0:25:52.959 good care of it. And that's the difference in price. 0:25:54.480 --> 0:25:57.359 And there's also an issue that you spoke about about 0:25:57.359 --> 0:26:02.200 the condition of the fish that's entering the river. Yeah. Yeah, well, 0:26:02.240 --> 0:26:06.560 I mean as I said that fishing different rivers are different. 0:26:07.359 --> 0:26:11.400 And a river like the Copper River, which is a big, 0:26:11.480 --> 0:26:18.440 tough long river, uh, it has big tough fish. Um. 0:26:18.520 --> 0:26:20.560 The more the fish has to go through to get 0:26:20.560 --> 0:26:23.520 to the spawning ground, the higher quality of fishing is 0:26:24.200 --> 0:26:28.200 a lot of the Bristol Bay rivers are are fairly 0:26:28.240 --> 0:26:31.639 small rivers and uh don't have to go through a 0:26:31.680 --> 0:26:33.639 lot once they get into Bristol Bay to get up 0:26:33.680 --> 0:26:38.399 to their spawning grounds, and so they're not they're not 0:26:38.480 --> 0:26:44.760 as big or as strong as fat and uh, I 0:26:44.760 --> 0:26:50.080 mean there's a there's different quality of fish in different rivers. 0:26:50.600 --> 0:26:53.240 Did you, Mark, did you taste test those two fish? 0:26:53.280 --> 0:26:57.639 Could you tell? You don't have to? I did, but 0:26:57.720 --> 0:27:01.639 you don't. You could look at them until you like that. Um, 0:27:02.920 --> 0:27:06.200 but just like the amount of fat coming off them. Yeah, 0:27:06.440 --> 0:27:08.800 just you know the whole way that they look. You 0:27:08.840 --> 0:27:13.920 know that. I mean, Copper River salmon are beautiful. Um. 0:27:14.080 --> 0:27:16.320 Also you know, I have to say in fairness that 0:27:16.400 --> 0:27:23.919