Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bog bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are
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Speaker 1: where you stand with on X All right, everybody, not
Speaker 1: not that we have guests, not that we ever have
Speaker 1: unspecial guests, Like I don't want former guests who are
Speaker 1: listening to to feel broken hearted and beaten down when
Speaker 1: I say that we have a special guest, because they right,
Speaker 1: no one wants to hear that. But but it's it's
Speaker 1: like in the specialness of all our guests, there's there's
Speaker 1: one that is rising up a little special right now
Speaker 1: where we have on author Mark Kurlansky. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: like everybody out there is familiar with some of his books.
Speaker 1: Um in my world for sure, UM being familiar with
Speaker 1: Mark's book cod and his book Salt, which seemed to
Speaker 1: make its way, you know, onto every coffee table and
Speaker 1: bookshelf from the country. Also the author of The Big Oyster,
Speaker 1: A World Without Fish, And we're here today to talk
Speaker 1: about Mark's new book Salmon and about salmon in general. So, uh,
Speaker 1: welcome Mark, Thank thanks for joining us. And we're still
Speaker 1: in like our COVID nineteen recording situation where much too
Speaker 1: you know much to my shore grin, we are not
Speaker 1: in the same room together. Mark is is hold up
Speaker 1: in Manhattan. But thanks for joining us. Mark. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Be nice to be in Montana right now. But what
Speaker 1: can I do? No, I think relative to many other
Speaker 1: places in the country, we have it pretty good right now,
Speaker 1: even though we are still under you know, stay at
Speaker 1: home orders by the government. But um, it's it's a
Speaker 1: pretty good place to pretty decent place to do that. Ah.
Speaker 1: I caught this. This is one on one of my
Speaker 1: top questions and were we already talked about it. This
Speaker 1: is what we're setting up our equipment. Uh, you're a fisherman.
Speaker 1: Explain your Explain your fishing life a little bit to people. Well, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I've always been a fisherman. Uh for small time.
Speaker 1: When I was young, I was a commercial fisherman. Oh
Speaker 1: oh really okay, Yeah, Well I'm from New England and um,
Speaker 1: when I was getting out of high school, I thought
Speaker 1: what could be better than too? You know chish on
Speaker 1: commercial boats and uh and and I actually did love it,
Speaker 1: but I was young. It gets to be just to
Speaker 1: be less by as you get older. But I've also
Speaker 1: always been a sports fisherman. I I I started off
Speaker 1: like most New England kids who don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of money. Um, serf casting for stripers and blues, which
Speaker 1: you know, if you ever serf cast, and what what
Speaker 1: that does is it it gets you obsessed with the
Speaker 1: art of casting. And once you become obsessed with the
Speaker 1: art of casting, you inevitably go to fly fishing. It.
Speaker 1: Nowadays fly fishing is most of the time, is the
Speaker 1: only fishing I do. Every once in a while, I
Speaker 1: go to the ocean. Your book on on salm and um,
Speaker 1: I hate. I don't want to say this. I hope
Speaker 1: people listen to the whole interview because I don't want
Speaker 1: to start out on a sour note. But your your
Speaker 1: your book Hunt Salmon One's up. You provide a pretty
Speaker 1: doom view on what the future of these creatures is. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you you catalog this centuries long collapse that's that's
Speaker 1: ongoing today, that this collapse of salmon stocks and salmon fisheries.
Speaker 1: You know, around the world where salmon can be found.
Speaker 1: But I find that right away, and starting to go
Speaker 1: through your book, I noticed that you would now and
Speaker 1: then speak fondly or empathetically of commercial fishermen, and you
Speaker 1: even give some recipes and talk about cooking salmon and
Speaker 1: eating salmon. And I got to wonder if you were
Speaker 1: writing a book about the collapse of the elephant somehow,
Speaker 1: it seems that you would not put elephant recipes in
Speaker 1: that book. Well, can you explain how those things can coexist? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there there there isn't a sustainable um elephant hunting system. Uh,
Speaker 1: there is, your say, emmen um. Salmon is actually uh
Speaker 1: one of the easier fish to regulate a fishery for
Speaker 1: because they're very predictable and we know what they're doing
Speaker 1: and when they're doing it um. And really all you
Speaker 1: have to do is count the number of fish that
Speaker 1: go up a river to spawn, which you can do
Speaker 1: from a tower or from an airplane. I mean you
Speaker 1: can just see them. And when enough fish have spawned,
Speaker 1: then you tell the fisherman okay for a certain about
Speaker 1: number of hours, now you can fish. And this works
Speaker 1: quite well in a few places where there's still a
Speaker 1: healthy salmon runs. But you know, the reason I decided
Speaker 1: to do this book was because in n seven I
Speaker 1: came out with my book on cob and this was
Speaker 1: as the northern stock in the Grand Banks was collapsing
Speaker 1: and people were really the first time seriously thinking about
Speaker 1: the problems of overfishing and regulating commercial fisheries. Um I
Speaker 1: mean the general public, use fishermen. I mean, when I
Speaker 1: was on commercial boats in the nineteen sixties, it was
Speaker 1: all fishermen talked about. But now by the end of
Speaker 1: the people who were thinking about it. And that's what
Speaker 1: my book was about. And since then I've been monitoring
Speaker 1: fisheries and what's going on, and it's become clear to
Speaker 1: me that over fishing and regulating fisheries is a minor problem.
Speaker 1: It's one of the smaller problems. In fact, if you
Speaker 1: could find a fishery where that was the only problem,
Speaker 1: it would be wonderful, it would be so relatively easy
Speaker 1: to fix. But the problems are far more complex than that.
Speaker 1: And I thought that salmon was the perfect way to
Speaker 1: make that point, because being an anadromous fish living both
Speaker 1: in freshwater and in the ocean, it gets hit by
Speaker 1: everything that we do wrong. So the problem is not
Speaker 1: that we're eating fish or fishing them commercially. Um, the
Speaker 1: fact is there's places like most of the areas of
Speaker 1: Atlantic salmon, there is no commercial fishery anymore, and the
Speaker 1: fish are still becoming rarer and rare. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: what's going on? You know, there's deforestation, there's building dams,
Speaker 1: there's pollution, there's bad farming practices, there's urban sprawl, and
Speaker 1: there's climate change, and climate change and climate change huge problem.
Speaker 1: And so basically, if you want to save the salmon,
Speaker 1: all you really have to do is save the earth
Speaker 1: and then it'll be saved. Yeah. And the intro at
Speaker 1: the end of the book as a prologue that starts
Speaker 1: out with a couple uh you know, biography biographies or
Speaker 1: more like character portrait of a couple of different commercial
Speaker 1: salmon fisherman and then you you end the prologue by remarking,
Speaker 1: how you know there still live It's remarkable that we
Speaker 1: still have a commercial fishery for salmon. And you say
Speaker 1: that this isn't a book about over fishing. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like a like a very it feels like an
Speaker 1: very important and a very important point you want to
Speaker 1: make UM. But you go into like what it would
Speaker 1: take to save salmon, and you list some things that
Speaker 1: seems so uh impossible that it left me wondering, um,
Speaker 1: if we had some wiggle room in there, because the
Speaker 1: things that we would need to do, frankly are very
Speaker 1: very hard to picture us pulling that together. And so
Speaker 1: it left me wondering, is there a plan B that
Speaker 1: we can be open to and maybe maybe we can
Speaker 1: return into that or you can tackle that one now,
Speaker 1: or we can get to it as our conversation moves on. Well, look,
Speaker 1: if we can all pull together because we're being attacked
Speaker 1: by a pandemic and close down the economy and start
Speaker 1: from zero and rebuild, UM, then we could do that
Speaker 1: because of climate change. Also, climate change is a far
Speaker 1: greater threat than a pandemic. In fact, a pandemic is
Speaker 1: just one of the threats of climate change. UM. I
Speaker 1: sometimes wonder why we have failed to get that message across.
Speaker 1: But we really have to do drastic things. But when
Speaker 1: I look at the whole history of salmon, and you know,
Speaker 1: going back to ancient times, and there were a lot
Speaker 1: of talks about UM blocking rivers. Blocking rivers is one
Speaker 1: of the huge issues and even in the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: there were ordinances against blocking rivers, and the Magna Carta
Speaker 1: specifies that the King of England cannot block a salmon river.
Speaker 1: Um and the problem of overnetting and and damning we're
Speaker 1: huge problems. But in the nineteenth century, uh, along came
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution, and I mean, if you look at Britain,
Speaker 1: I mean they built all of these uh mills which
Speaker 1: they powered by dams that blocked rivers, and then the
Speaker 1: mills dumped their pollution into the rivers, and soon the
Speaker 1: rivers of Britain were completely dead. And then in New England, people,
Speaker 1: uh many of British origin, did the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: And then you know, it was largely New Englanders who
Speaker 1: went out west and got this great idea of how
Speaker 1: to build this Pacific Northwest by blocking the rivers and
Speaker 1: having hydroelectric dams and producing more energy than anybody else
Speaker 1: had to build this economic powerhouse. So I was researching
Speaker 1: all of this, and I was thinking, why isn't anybody
Speaker 1: learning anything? And then I realized, because they're not trying
Speaker 1: to learn anything. Uh. They regarded these things that they
Speaker 1: did as tremendous successes. They did make Britain the greatest
Speaker 1: industrial power in the world. They did make New England
Speaker 1: the greatest industrial force in North America, and they did
Speaker 1: take the Pacific Northwest, which had very little economic activity,
Speaker 1: and build a huge economy based on electricity from hydro
Speaker 1: electric games. These are great successes um that are destroying
Speaker 1: the planet. And so what's really happening here is that
Speaker 1: we need to rethink our whole idea of economic development.
Speaker 1: To develop in a eonomy does not necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: you have to destroy the earth. Uh. You have to
Speaker 1: look for ways of developing that are not destructive, um,
Speaker 1: and we need to do that fairly quickly. I mean
Speaker 1: the the Europeans who came to America and looked at
Speaker 1: the Native Americans whose lives depended on salmon, uh, wondered
Speaker 1: why they're salmon stocks weren't getting depleted like the white
Speaker 1: people's were. And they came up with a couple of
Speaker 1: ideas that they didn't have enough fishing skills over fish,
Speaker 1: and that they only used this for you know, sustainable
Speaker 1: ability for food, they didn't use it for commerce. And
Speaker 1: this was completely wrong. They had economies, they they have
Speaker 1: built villages, they traded between them salmon was an important
Speaker 1: commodity of trade, and they were brilliant salmon fisherman. If
Speaker 1: you read the journals of Lewis and Clark and Mackenzie
Speaker 1: and any of the early explorers, you know if they
Speaker 1: if they wanted salmon, they had to find an Indian
Speaker 1: because the Indians were the ones who knew how to
Speaker 1: catch them. So it was such a flourishing salmon industry. Why, um,
Speaker 1: why didn't they destroy the salmon stocks like we did,
Speaker 1: Because the founding principle of developing their economy was that
Speaker 1: you can't destroy the habitat. You have to maintain the river.
Speaker 1: You have to treat the river respectfully, you have to
Speaker 1: treat the salmon respectfully. And I submit that we need
Speaker 1: to change their thinking. I know you make that well.
Speaker 1: I want to return to that, manx. I actually have
Speaker 1: a question about that coming up down the list here,
Speaker 1: But first I want to lay a little more groundwork
Speaker 1: for people, um and touch on something you already touched
Speaker 1: on where you I want to connect to thoughts of
Speaker 1: years one about that the survival of salmon is absolutely
Speaker 1: tied to the survival of the planet. And also can
Speaker 1: you touch more on anagrem like explain to people what
Speaker 1: that means, why that makes the fish special, and why
Speaker 1: it makes them all that much more vulnerable. And you
Speaker 1: talked to you in your book about the cost the
Speaker 1: anagremy uh entails like why it's a risky life strategy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I said in the book that the purpose
Speaker 1: of the book was not to say, you know that
Speaker 1: this is an incredible animal and it would be really
Speaker 1: sad if we lost it. However, it is an incredible animal,
Speaker 1: and it would be really sad if we lost it.
Speaker 1: I think salmon is one of the most remarkable animals
Speaker 1: in the animal kingdom. Um a fish that can jump
Speaker 1: eleven feet in the air. I mean think about that.
Speaker 1: That would be like a human being jumping fifty ft.
Speaker 1: It can accelerate as fast as an automobile. Um. They
Speaker 1: they born in rivers, and they get to the size
Speaker 1: of herring, and they go out to sea and they
Speaker 1: eat so much, they hunt so much that they increase
Speaker 1: their size by there's thousands of miles away now and
Speaker 1: at a certain point, UM, it's like a bell goes off,
Speaker 1: time to spawn, time to reproduce the species, and they
Speaker 1: find the river in which they were born, which is
Speaker 1: now thousands of miles away, and not only that, but
Speaker 1: in that river they find the exact spot in the
Speaker 1: river where they were born. And Hey, Mark, I want
Speaker 1: to just interject. Can you speak just a little sidebar
Speaker 1: about how like all the different ideas of how they
Speaker 1: think that salmon are able to do that. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: not absolutely certain how they find them of it. Um.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of theories, and they're pretty sure
Speaker 1: that once they get in the river, they find the
Speaker 1: right spot through smell, and they can identify that it's
Speaker 1: the right river by the smell. But they can't smell
Speaker 1: the river from thousands of miles at sea. So how
Speaker 1: do they get there? Um? Some theorize that they use uh,
Speaker 1: stellar solar navigation. Some think that they they're able to
Speaker 1: lock into electric electro magnetic fields. They seem to have
Speaker 1: some magnetic materials along the stripe in the center of
Speaker 1: their body, the lateral stripe there. And uh, it's not
Speaker 1: completely certain they're they're they're still trying to figure it out. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's uh, it's an ability that all salmon have.
Speaker 1: And occasionally salmon won't go back to the river. It's
Speaker 1: earth will spawn somewhere else. And this is a good
Speaker 1: thing because it they find new rivers and they developed
Speaker 1: new rivers. At the moment, they're developing some rivers in
Speaker 1: the north slope of Alaska that are not no longer
Speaker 1: iced over because of climate change. UM. The one of
Speaker 1: the remarkable features of salmon is that they completely adapt
Speaker 1: to the river they come from, so that UM their
Speaker 1: DNA is completely focused on that particular river, which is
Speaker 1: why hatcheries, if they try to do eggs from a
Speaker 1: different river, it won't do well in that river because
Speaker 1: it's a it's a specific subspecies UM. And if you
Speaker 1: look at two salmon of the same species and two
Speaker 1: different rivers, they would look the same. But the DNA
Speaker 1: is actually more different than yours and mine UM. And
Speaker 1: when it becomes it's not clear to me at what
Speaker 1: point this is or how this has decided, but when
Speaker 1: the DNA becomes too much different than they are a
Speaker 1: different species. So there's seven species in the Pacific and
Speaker 1: which is one genus, and there's only one species in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, which is a separate genus UM. But river
Speaker 1: to river, they're all they're all different, and they have
Speaker 1: different skills. You know, if you're from a river that
Speaker 1: has big waterfalls. You're a great jumper, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're stronger, if you have faster currents. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: seen I've seen salmon making their way in rivers that
Speaker 1: are so where the current is so strong that they're
Speaker 1: really just gaining a centimeter at a time. But they're unstoppable.
Speaker 1: They never give up. I've seen them jump waterfalls and
Speaker 1: not make it over the top, all down on the
Speaker 1: rocks and kind of shake it off and jump up
Speaker 1: again and keep trying until they get it. Um incredible determination.
Speaker 1: And once they enter the river they stop eating. And
Speaker 1: this is nature solving a problem because you know, salmon
Speaker 1: eats so much at sea, then if it goes back
Speaker 1: in the river and continues eating like that, the river
Speaker 1: will be destroyed. They'll eat out the whole river, they'll
Speaker 1: eat out the baby salmon, they'll eat out everything there
Speaker 1: is to eat. And so instead they just stop eating
Speaker 1: when they arrived in the river, which raises all kinds
Speaker 1: of interesting questions for people who fly fish for salmon
Speaker 1: and rivers. Why do they take the fly the whole
Speaker 1: other subject of debate because they're not eating um, which
Speaker 1: is why salmon flies don't look like food. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like you if you're fishing for a trout, use a
Speaker 1: fly that looks like something that they eat. But you
Speaker 1: can do all sorts of weird, crazy things for salmon
Speaker 1: flies because they're not looking for food. Um. They completely
Speaker 1: changed their bodies. They changed from a silver skin. They
Speaker 1: developed a spawning look. The males, Uh, they become bright
Speaker 1: red and get humps on their backs and hook noses
Speaker 1: and all sorts of weird things. Become this very strange
Speaker 1: looking animal. Um. And it takes a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: energy to do that. The the red and the skin
Speaker 1: is the pigment from the flesh when salmon. After salmon
Speaker 1: has spawned, they're like an Albano. There's no pigment in
Speaker 1: the flesh is white. Um. So they use everything they've
Speaker 1: got to get there, and their last energy is spawning
Speaker 1: and then they've done what they had to do when
Speaker 1: they roll over and die. Yeah, it's it's like the
Speaker 1: story was written by um. You know what what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. How salmon are all are uh all created equal?
Speaker 1: You make this interesting point where you know, looking at him,
Speaker 1: if you're just like a passive observer, a casual observer,
Speaker 1: you look at salmon from two different river systems, and
Speaker 1: and think like, oh, you know, it's a soak I
Speaker 1: or it's a king what the hell's the difference? But
Speaker 1: you point out how Bristol Bay. I think you're talking
Speaker 1: about fairly recent market trends were you're talking about commercial
Speaker 1: fishermen in Bristol Bay, they'll sell their soaki salmon for
Speaker 1: about a dollar a pound, and they'll sell their king
Speaker 1: salmon for about fifty cents a pound Copper River. The
Speaker 1: sakis sold the same species of fish, but asaki that's
Speaker 1: gonna head up the Copper River might go for two
Speaker 1: dollars and fifty cents a pound as opposed to a
Speaker 1: dollar a pound in Bristol Bay. And then a salmon
Speaker 1: headed up the Copper might fetch around two fifty pound
Speaker 1: as opposed to fifty cents a pound in Bristol Bay.
Speaker 1: And you point out that at those rates, it's plausible
Speaker 1: to catch a king salmon that is worth to that
Speaker 1: fisherman about two bucks. How do you begin to explain, like, like,
Speaker 1: how do you explain those priced discrepancies? Um? Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: And also another question is how do you explain the
Speaker 1: discrepancy between what the fisherman is being paid and what
Speaker 1: you're paying, what they're paying at the pike market. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely another that's that's true of a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of fish. What do you hear what they're
Speaker 1: getting for it and what what people are paying for
Speaker 1: it in restaurants, you realize that someone's making an awful
Speaker 1: lot of money somewhere, right. But the reason why I
Speaker 1: chose these two particular fisheries to go out on, I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't help myself. I just said, any excuse to
Speaker 1: go out in a commercial fishery, I go. But the
Speaker 1: one that I did in Bristol bay Um was a
Speaker 1: you know, there were set dators there. They're guild letters
Speaker 1: in both cases, but set Ators is a very low
Speaker 1: investment kind of fishery. They go out in these aluminum
Speaker 1: skips and they hauling the fish. They they don't take
Speaker 1: good care of. And the guy I went with, Allie
Speaker 1: Olsen uh using Montana sheep share. I don't know. You've
Speaker 1: probably seen these guys at work. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: tough it's a tough job in itself. They discovered that
Speaker 1: in the off season there was money to be made
Speaker 1: in Bristol Bay. So he gets a bunch of young
Speaker 1: guys from around Montana to go up with him. And
Speaker 1: these guys have never been on a boat before, and
Speaker 1: they're they're lost that they don't know what a bo is,
Speaker 1: what a stirred is. Um they call a line or
Speaker 1: rope um. But they earned a few thousand dollars, which
Speaker 1: you know, they earned enough money for a down payment
Speaker 1: and a simple home in Montana, which they could never
Speaker 1: do with what they were doing in Montana. But they
Speaker 1: go out, and you go out for like fifteen hours. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, the the regulators will say, you know there's
Speaker 1: an opening in it's fifteen hours or it's twenty hours,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. You fish the whole time. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's Alaska in the summertime, so there's no nighttime. And
Speaker 1: you know, they're yanking these things out of the nets
Speaker 1: and throwing them on the deck and they're stepping on
Speaker 1: him and kicking him and stuff, and take him over
Speaker 1: to the tender and throw them into these canvas bags
Speaker 1: and they take them away. Completely different from the fishery
Speaker 1: that I went to. The drift net fishery I went
Speaker 1: to in uh Cortinville, Alaska, which is the Copper River
Speaker 1: salmon which they catch out in open ocean in the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Alaska. UM. When the regulators have found that
Speaker 1: enough salmon have made it into the Copper River to spawn,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll get an opener for fifteen hours or something. Um.
Speaker 1: But these are like real um. Well they're small ships,
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're one person operations about thirty ft
Speaker 1: spooling and spoiling the front and um. They fish these
Speaker 1: things with great care. They take them out of the
Speaker 1: net and they bleed them and the gills as they
Speaker 1: take them out, and they slide them into an ice hold.
Speaker 1: Nowadays some are using holds with a slush instead of
Speaker 1: ice because it's surrounds it better and they take really
Speaker 1: good care of it. And that's the difference in price.
Speaker 1: And there's also an issue that you spoke about about
Speaker 1: the condition of the fish that's entering the river. Yeah. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean as I said that fishing different rivers are different.
Speaker 1: And a river like the Copper River, which is a big,
Speaker 1: tough long river, uh, it has big tough fish. Um.
Speaker 1: The more the fish has to go through to get
Speaker 1: to the spawning ground, the higher quality of fishing is
Speaker 1: a lot of the Bristol Bay rivers are are fairly
Speaker 1: small rivers and uh don't have to go through a
Speaker 1: lot once they get into Bristol Bay to get up
Speaker 1: to their spawning grounds, and so they're not they're not
Speaker 1: as big or as strong as fat and uh, I
Speaker 1: mean there's a there's different quality of fish in different rivers.
Speaker 1: Did you, Mark, did you taste test those two fish?
Speaker 1: Could you tell? You don't have to? I did, but
Speaker 1: you don't. You could look at them until you like that. Um,
Speaker 1: but just like the amount of fat coming off them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just you know the whole way that they look. You
Speaker 1: know that. I mean, Copper River salmon are beautiful. Um.
Speaker 1: Also you know, I have to say in fairness that
Speaker 1: the Copper River people are brilliant marketers. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: I remember I I got nowhere on this, but I
Speaker 1: I have roots in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and I was trying
Speaker 1: to convince Gloucester fishermen to go out to Cordova and
Speaker 1: just check out how the Copper River fishery has done,
Speaker 1: how they market their fish. You know, they've managed to
Speaker 1: create in people's heads the idea that that's a species
Speaker 1: of fish. Yes, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And it has a
Speaker 1: little to do with the fact that it's the first
Speaker 1: round in Alaska, so it opens the season. But it's
Speaker 1: also and it also has to do the fact that
Speaker 1: they guarantee the quality that is fished really carefully. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's also just plain old marketing. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of American readers, you know, when
Speaker 1: when they're gonna tuck into a book about salmon, I
Speaker 1: think they're expecting, um to see a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: about Alaska, Right, But you also spend time discussing salmon
Speaker 1: fisheries and the history of salmon in Japan, the history
Speaker 1: of salmon in Europe. Uh, can you give a snapshot
Speaker 1: of of of salmon as a global resource, like like
Speaker 1: who has them? Who don't? Yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: northern fish, and they're also in the Southern hemisphere. But
Speaker 1: they're not supposed to be. They're fake. They were planted
Speaker 1: in the places like New Zealand and Australia and Chile.
Speaker 1: Um not there by nature. By nature, they're a northern
Speaker 1: they're uniquely all salmon are uniquely Northern hemisphere. Um. A
Speaker 1: salmon cannot live in water that is over sixty eight degrees.
Speaker 1: You can't live in it and can't reproduce in it,
Speaker 1: So that dictates uh going rivers that are fairly far
Speaker 1: north UM. And also it's one of the problems about
Speaker 1: climate change. UM. The Pacific salmon are um from California
Speaker 1: to Alaska and uh uh in northern Japan, Kaida and
Speaker 1: uh in Pacific Russia, the kom Chaka, the com Chaca Peninsula,
Speaker 1: the kom Chaca Peninsula and Alaska are the two healthiest
Speaker 1: salmon runs in the world. And the reason for that
Speaker 1: one of these two places have in common. They're hardly
Speaker 1: any people. Uh, short growing seasons, so there's almost no
Speaker 1: agricult here UM. So the rivers are just undisturbed and wild. UM.
Speaker 1: That's interesting is you know the thing we've talked about,
Speaker 1: an observation I've had about wildlife conservation UM. That and
Speaker 1: if you go back in American history a bit, you
Speaker 1: see that we had wilderness and wild things sort of
Speaker 1: in spite of our best efforts to get rid of it,
Speaker 1: Like we just it took us a while of conquered all, right,
Speaker 1: Like we sort of had the appetite and intention to
Speaker 1: go get it all, we just hadn't gotten around to
Speaker 1: it and eventually got around to it, and now we
Speaker 1: have oftentimes the wild things that we have and the
Speaker 1: wildlife that we have is now because we've made a
Speaker 1: very conscious decision to have and we understand that it's
Speaker 1: costly to have it, but we insist on having it
Speaker 1: and we make sacrifices to have it. Is Russia, you
Speaker 1: hear about the salmon in the brown bears and in
Speaker 1: in Russia and Siberia. Are they still in the phase
Speaker 1: of they just have it because they haven't gotten around
Speaker 1: to killing it off yet, or are they sacrificing for
Speaker 1: it now? The um and there is serious commercial fishing
Speaker 1: going on in the Kumbchotka and other parts of Russia.
Speaker 1: And also the area is very rich in oil, and
Speaker 1: so far they've stayed away from the Kumbchatka, but there
Speaker 1: are some areas near there that we're very good salmon
Speaker 1: places but have been damaged by oil and mineral exploration. UM.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, it's just it's a remote you know. It's like,
Speaker 1: why don't we all move to Alaska? I don't know,
Speaker 1: we don't. That's what saves Alaska. I think they like
Speaker 1: it that way. How are the runs in Japan are
Speaker 1: there good salmon runs in Japan. There are so there
Speaker 1: are some good in the in in the north, mainly
Speaker 1: in Hakaida, which is the northernmost island. Like you can
Speaker 1: walk out and stand on the bank and look out,
Speaker 1: and there's a bunch of salmon spawning there in the
Speaker 1: in the in the uh uh in cities, you can
Speaker 1: see the salmon spawning in the rivers there. Uh And
Speaker 1: they have a unique species called messiou or sometimes in
Speaker 1: English called cherry salmon, because it runs around the time
Speaker 1: of cherry blossoms. What's it most what? What's what's it
Speaker 1: most closely related to of our specific salmon? Oh? I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's um maybe like a saki or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's a it's a very um. It's
Speaker 1: a very good eating salmon um and um uh kind
Speaker 1: of a unique species. It shows up a little bit
Speaker 1: in other places in Asia, a little bit in the
Speaker 1: com Chotka and a little bit in Korea, but it's
Speaker 1: mainly a Japanese species. Um. There's uh. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of problems in the Japanese salmon fishery, like something like
Speaker 1: of the wild salmon in Japan have some hatchery DNA
Speaker 1: in them. That's not good. When you were when you
Speaker 1: were mapping your book out and trying to think of
Speaker 1: what areas to write about and what salmon to pay
Speaker 1: attention to. I'm asking this as just a person that
Speaker 1: grew up as a kid in the Great Lakes. Did
Speaker 1: you have what were your considerations around talking about your
Speaker 1: reluctancies or ambitions to talk about the make believe salmon? Like,
Speaker 1: you know, we have several species of salmon and the
Speaker 1: Great Lakes that wemoved there. Do you do you feel
Speaker 1: that it's it's irrelevant to the conversation. Does it inform
Speaker 1: I do? I do feel that it's irrelevant. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: Um it doesn't speak to the preservation of wild runs.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like farm salmon. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things you can say pro and con about
Speaker 1: farm salmon, but one thing that's clear is it has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with whether salmon while salmon will survive.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a completely different thing. Um well,
Speaker 1: except that it does have something to do with while
Speaker 1: salmon surviving because it could possibly make them not survived.
Speaker 1: Correct the part the part, Yeah, Okay, we're getting into that.
Speaker 1: An hour later, let's wait a second. That's wait because
Speaker 1: what I didn't talk I do have that question here
Speaker 1: and answer your original question about places. Um, I didn't
Speaker 1: get around to talking about Atlantic salmon um, which is
Speaker 1: uh New England and Maritime Canada and Newfoundland and uh
Speaker 1: Iceland and Britain and Ireland and Norway and part of
Speaker 1: Russia used to be a lot more. You know, it
Speaker 1: used to be Poland and France. And that's what I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe that Spain used to have salmon. Yeah, northern,
Speaker 1: northern they were in Spain, um Alicia um. Yeah. Franco um,
Speaker 1: who I absolutely loathed because I'm showing my age, but
Speaker 1: I actually covered Franco as a reporter and he was
Speaker 1: a monster. He's a dedicated fly fisherman. Oh he was. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is a good way of disproving the claim.
Speaker 1: You know, the fly fisherman, good people, really good people,
Speaker 1: fly fisherman. Franka was a fly fisherman, and you know,
Speaker 1: the way he ran Spain. He could do whatever he
Speaker 1: wanted and so he uh he tried to preserve northern rivers,
Speaker 1: which is where the salmon were, because he wanted to
Speaker 1: fish in them. Um. Well to be honest, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of UM, that's a strong conservation incentive for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Yes, And I don't, I don't, I
Speaker 1: don't discount it right right, Well it um, you know
Speaker 1: it is uh, it's what's made a lot of fishermen
Speaker 1: and hunters, um, environmentalists. It's good that works. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: take it. I'll take it right right. Um. But the
Speaker 1: thing that struck me with Atlantic salmon A few things struck.
Speaker 1: But first of all, Atlantic salmon, and if you've never
Speaker 1: fished for it is really something else, something spectacular. It's um,
Speaker 1: it's just this furious wild animal on your line there,
Speaker 1: leaping and charging from one side of the river to
Speaker 1: the other, and just an unbelievable fish. Um. And so
Speaker 1: you know, sports fishing for wild salmon has always been
Speaker 1: extremely popular and really at the roots of fly fishing. Um.
Speaker 1: But New England has almost no salmon. You know. I
Speaker 1: was I was born and raised in Hartford by the
Speaker 1: Connecticut River. The Connecticut River used to be one of
Speaker 1: the great salmon was of North America. And nobody mentioned
Speaker 1: that when I was growing up. I had no idea.
Speaker 1: Seven was never talked about, seven was never eaten. You
Speaker 1: know in New England. Now you get it, but you
Speaker 1: know it used to be if you went into a
Speaker 1: fish market in New England or a famous seafood restaurant
Speaker 1: or something, there was no salmon. Um because salmon wasn't
Speaker 1: a local fish. But salmon was a local fish in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth and seventeenth century. Um. And the only place
Speaker 1: where it's left now is in Maine. Um. They're trying
Speaker 1: to bring back the panob Scott River. Um. They tried
Speaker 1: to bring me back the Connecticut River and failed. And Um.
Speaker 1: What's been happening in New England, which I have also
Speaker 1: found in Ireland and Scotland and Norway and all the
Speaker 1: Atlantic salmon places. There's almost no commercial fishing anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: And yet the stock keeps declining. And they tell me
Speaker 1: they're all going to see and just not many are
Speaker 1: coming back, and fewer and fewer returns every year. And
Speaker 1: the reason for this is climate change. The reason is
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide, which it turns out loves water. So about
Speaker 1: a third of the carbon dioxide that's produced on land
Speaker 1: ends up in the ocean, and it impacts on the
Speaker 1: hydrogen content of the ocean, and that impacts on the
Speaker 1: ability of certain small animals to grow like zooplankton and
Speaker 1: capelin little fish that salmon and cod feed on and um,
Speaker 1: so they're smaller, so there's less to eat. So the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Ocean uh is having less and less carrying capacity.
Speaker 1: It's losing it's a ability to feed the animals that
Speaker 1: live in the ocean. That is the scariest thing I've
Speaker 1: ever learned. I mean, my god, if if the ocean
Speaker 1: can no longer provide enough food for fish, we're sunk. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's climate change. When you can you sketch for
Speaker 1: people a little bit, Well, let me approach this a
Speaker 1: different way. If you're doing a book about the demise
Speaker 1: of something, you have an obligation to show where it
Speaker 1: began and how things looked when it began, because you
Speaker 1: can't understand. Yeah, like any movie about the fall of
Speaker 1: someone needs to show someone at their height or else.
Speaker 1: The whole story it's kind of pointless. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think that like when you get into something like um,
Speaker 1: you know, like Buffalo, there's all these stories that that
Speaker 1: were still familiar with of herds that took days to pass,
Speaker 1: and you know, the clouds of them that look like
Speaker 1: shadows from clouds moving across the landscape and no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: what are how good was it with salmon? I mean
Speaker 1: you could you could just pick a spot that you
Speaker 1: happen to take a shine to during your research. But
Speaker 1: is there a way to show people like how good
Speaker 1: it was somewhere? Well, yeah, and a lot of places,
Speaker 1: I mean in in uh the Columbia River in northern
Speaker 1: California and New England, um, and all over Europe, I
Speaker 1: mean all over Europe, the Rhine River. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: salmon were so prevalent that you just saw them. You
Speaker 1: people in Paris in the sixteenth century you could see
Speaker 1: salmon leaping in the scent um. That's how they got
Speaker 1: their name is Roman soldiers marching through France. Uh would
Speaker 1: see these fish that were always leaping out of the water.
Speaker 1: And uh that's what samo means is leaper. Huh. So
Speaker 1: they were, they were just they were a common site
Speaker 1: in in rivers. To what to what extent did indigenous
Speaker 1: peoples rely on on salmon in in North America? Who
Speaker 1: were the salmon cultures, Well, the the cultures of New
Speaker 1: England and Maritime Canada and um, you know, Alaska and
Speaker 1: British Columbia. Uh, Idaho and Washington and um Oregon in
Speaker 1: northern California. These were all cultures that were centered on
Speaker 1: salmon um and you you can still see what that
Speaker 1: means if you visit Indigenous people in Alaska in the summertime,
Speaker 1: when they're at their summer camp, uh, putting up their
Speaker 1: food supply for the rest of the year, you know,
Speaker 1: smoking catching salmon and smoking it, having a supply for
Speaker 1: the year. I mean to a Native American, Uh, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what seems dumber the idea of fly fishing. Generally,
Speaker 1: they don't think much of or worse than that catching release.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not knocking catching release. I think it's
Speaker 1: a good idea, But to to to a Native American,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're gonna release it, why catch it?
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a good argument. Why why
Speaker 1: why messled it? Right? The purpose of fishing is to
Speaker 1: catch a fish. I mean, that's that's the odd thing
Speaker 1: about fly fishing. The purpose of fly fishing is to
Speaker 1: make it as impossible as you can to catch a
Speaker 1: fish so that you can feel really good about it
Speaker 1: when you get it. Can you talk about the first
Speaker 1: caught saying that the first caught salmon ceremonies, Like what
Speaker 1: what that is? Yeah, And it's an interesting thing that
Speaker 1: almost actually every salmon culture, I mean in in in Pacific, Russia,
Speaker 1: and the original indigenous people in Japan and all the
Speaker 1: indigenous North Americans, all these people had a ceremony for
Speaker 1: the first salmon of the season that was caught. Um.
Speaker 1: And the idea of this uh ceremony was to thank
Speaker 1: them for coming back. Um. Because in in their culture, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in our modern scientific culture, you know, the
Speaker 1: fish are born in the river and they get to
Speaker 1: a bigger size and they go out to the ocean,
Speaker 1: then they come back to spawn. But in their in
Speaker 1: their culture, the salmon come in. Why did they come in?
Speaker 1: They come in so that we can have a few
Speaker 1: to eat, and then they go back out again, and
Speaker 1: then next year they come in again, and we have
Speaker 1: to thank them for that. Um. Now, in fact, we
Speaker 1: know that it's actually not the same salmon coming in,
Speaker 1: that there are different generations, but that was the original
Speaker 1: way of looking at it. And you have to thank
Speaker 1: them for coming back. If you don't thank them for
Speaker 1: coming back next year, they won't come. Can you, uh
Speaker 1: explain what a stock is of salmon. Like in your
Speaker 1: book you say that of salmon stocks are headed towards extinction.
Speaker 1: You don't mean you don't mean of the salmon species.
Speaker 1: What is the stock? It's a subspecies. As I was
Speaker 1: saying before, there's the salmon are slightly different in every river.
Speaker 1: So that's uh. You know, like Copper River is a stock.
Speaker 1: They're saki or kings, but they're they're a stock. Um
Speaker 1: it's uh. I mean this is true of other fish too,
Speaker 1: but with with salmon, it's I identified usually by river.
Speaker 1: How many stocks have we lost so far? Uh? I
Speaker 1: mean can you even say? No? I I can't accept that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it depends where you're talking about. I mean in
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest we've we've lost over half. In
Speaker 1: in New England. In New England we've lost most. But
Speaker 1: it globally? Was it fair to say that have we
Speaker 1: globally lost hundreds of stocks of salmon? Probably? But um,
Speaker 1: look some good news some of us coming back um
Speaker 1: as rivers are getting cleaned up. Uh. Uh. Famine has
Speaker 1: come back into a lot of rivers, especially in Europe. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's they've out at it in the Thames. Um and
Speaker 1: a lot of British rivers that were thought of as
Speaker 1: dead are almost dead have come back. Rivers and France
Speaker 1: are coming back. Um you know. But part of the
Speaker 1: problem is what scientists called shifting baselines. So you have
Speaker 1: a you have a stock and it's in real it's
Speaker 1: and it's in really bad shape, and you sound the alarm,
Speaker 1: and you struggle for years and years, and you get
Speaker 1: the river cleaned up, maybe you take down some dams,
Speaker 1: you get the river working again, and now you have
Speaker 1: like maybe a quarter as many fish as you had
Speaker 1: before all of this trouble started. And it's pronounced the success,
Speaker 1: but it's really not a success, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: we really need to do is to get back to
Speaker 1: uh centuries ago. And so the problem is that our
Speaker 1: goal needs to be things that we no longer remember,
Speaker 1: things that we only know from stories and myths, that
Speaker 1: no one's ever seen. You you describe yourself as an
Speaker 1: environmental writer. Have you always looked at have you as
Speaker 1: regarded yourself as an environmental writer? Or is that a
Speaker 1: new way of describing yourself? Uh? Well, I do a
Speaker 1: lot of things, but I have always, from time to time,
Speaker 1: uh done environmental writing, starting when I was a newspaper
Speaker 1: Record Reporter, and I covered nuclear energy issues opposition to
Speaker 1: nuclear energy, and um, I've always uh covered environmental issues
Speaker 1: from from time to time. Somebody an interview went to
Speaker 1: and somebody said, uh so, uh you think that the
Speaker 1: uh the the environment is really uh um, it's it's
Speaker 1: something that you really like. Huh, Yes I do, I said.
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, you know, I like air. Uh. I
Speaker 1: was gonna ask you more about, um, sort of what
Speaker 1: your obligations if you're an environmental writer. I was going
Speaker 1: to ask you about your obligations. But you just brought
Speaker 1: up something that I want to distract ourselves with for
Speaker 1: a second. Uh used to write an opposition to nuclear power.
Speaker 1: It's to me, it's becoming um. To me, it's again
Speaker 1: becoming increasingly seductive. Uh huh. But you know, here's here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Oh god, I'm talking like Joe Biden. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Well, then you'll have to you'll have to
Speaker 1: say something that doesn't make any sense after um. The
Speaker 1: the hydroelectric industry, damns. Their whole argument is, well, this
Speaker 1: is better than fossil fuel or nuclear energy. And I
Speaker 1: think that's a false argument. Um damns are destroying rivers
Speaker 1: destroying rivers is going to unravel the natural order and
Speaker 1: unravel the planet. So it's it's not an option either.
Speaker 1: So why do we pretend you know that you can't
Speaker 1: produce energy without being destructive. I mean, there are alternative
Speaker 1: energies and they're becoming, um bigger and bigger, more successful.
Speaker 1: I think have you ever seen it? Have you ever
Speaker 1: been visited a big wind farm? You think that? I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, it's horrible. Oh you mean that if they're
Speaker 1: not a nice thing. No, No, they're horrible. They're horrible
Speaker 1: for a while, they're horrible for wildlife. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: massive development. I think you have to cover all of
Speaker 1: England with solar to power England, or seventy of the
Speaker 1: landscape or some staggering statistic I can't remember what it is. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you you do a combination of these things.
Speaker 1: And you know the lesson there with wind power is
Speaker 1: that you try not to do um large installations. Um.
Speaker 1: That's good, you keep it, keep the scale down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. We'll have to have you on again today
Speaker 1: because I want someone to convince me that I kind
Speaker 1: of want someone to convince me that nuclear doesn't need
Speaker 1: to be revisited. But it's it's like I said, it's
Speaker 1: to me, it's increasingly seductive. Listen, this is this is
Speaker 1: my My whole attitude about environmentalism is that I think
Speaker 1: that environmentalist spend too much time talking about stopping things
Speaker 1: instead of fixing things. That. Yeah, um, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: They get, they get a reputation. So there are some
Speaker 1: real problems with nuclear energy. If you want to have
Speaker 1: nuclear energy, you have to solve those problems. It's just
Speaker 1: like the same thing with fish farming. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't say that there should not be farm fish. I
Speaker 1: did say that at one point actually in my COG book,
Speaker 1: but I've changed my mind on that. I've spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time talking at fish farmers. I do believe
Speaker 1: that they are sincerely interested in finding solutions to these problems,
Speaker 1: and you have to fix it because it's a worthwhile
Speaker 1: contribution if you fix it. Um. I sometimes wonder, you
Speaker 1: know the pebble mine, you know, with the pebble mine.
Speaker 1: I got a whole question coming up about that. I
Speaker 1: just had a conversation about that with the last two
Speaker 1: days with surprising individuals. But yes, well aware of pebble
Speaker 1: mind Okay, So I've been opposing the pebble mind for years.
Speaker 1: But you know, it occurs to me that we may
Speaker 1: have the wrong approach here. Maybe we shouldn't say you
Speaker 1: can't have this mind. Maybe we should say, if you're
Speaker 1: going to have this mind, you have to do it
Speaker 1: in a way that you don't put Bristol Bay at risk.
Speaker 1: You have to fix your way of doing things. Well,
Speaker 1: they would just come and tell you that they already
Speaker 1: have and that there is no risk. Well you know
Speaker 1: that that's now you're talking about the problem of reality. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but um, yeah, and all the things that happened when
Speaker 1: you try to be reasonable people who don't want to
Speaker 1: be reasonable, and it uh, fish farmers actually do want
Speaker 1: to be reasonable. But I think it's always I think
Speaker 1: it's always worth a try. I think, Um. The guy
Speaker 1: I dedicate this book too or I Are Slender, came
Speaker 1: from a commercial fishing family and it was a brilliant fundraiser,
Speaker 1: and he went around the world raising money for fund
Speaker 1: and then he would go to commercial salmon fishing fisherman
Speaker 1: and he didn't say, you know, you're doing something terrible,
Speaker 1: You're destroying things. You gotta stop. He said, how are
Speaker 1: you fishing? Let me see your gnats, let me And
Speaker 1: he took a real interest in what they were doing
Speaker 1: because he was interested in commercial fishing. It was his background.
Speaker 1: And then he would talk to them and then at
Speaker 1: some point he'd say, okay, how much money? Did want
Speaker 1: to stop fishing? And it mostly worked a few there
Speaker 1: were a few people already never talked out of fishing,
Speaker 1: but it it mostly worked. And this guy, I loved
Speaker 1: this man and he was to me, he was a model.
Speaker 1: Or he died while I was working on the book.
Speaker 1: He was a model of what an environmentalist should be.
Speaker 1: I would like to take you know, young environmentalists and
Speaker 1: introduced them to Worry and have them talk to them about,
Speaker 1: you know, how you get things done, because you don't
Speaker 1: always get things done by antagonizing everybody. And you know,
Speaker 1: the CEO of Marine Harvest in Scotland, one of the
Speaker 1: big fishing fish farming outfits, said to me, you know
Speaker 1: I talked to environmentalists and I hear them out. And
Speaker 1: I know he did, because I know I know a
Speaker 1: number of environmentalists that he's talked to. But he said,
Speaker 1: you know, if I talked to somebody and they say
Speaker 1: fish farming has to be stopped. They don't have anything
Speaker 1: to say to them. And you know that's the problem.
Speaker 1: It's a real dialogue stopper. You're evil. You have to go.
Speaker 1: Where does the dialogue go from there? The reason earlier
Speaker 1: before I got off on asked you about nuclear energy,
Speaker 1: I was asking about self identifying. By the way, for
Speaker 1: the record, I did not necessarily a pose nuclear energy.
Speaker 1: I wrote about people who opposed nuclear Okay, that's that's
Speaker 1: a that's an important distinction. Um. The reason I brought
Speaker 1: up being an environmental writer is I if there's a
Speaker 1: I don't mean this, I'm not directing this at you.
Speaker 1: But if someone identifies first and foremost as an environmental
Speaker 1: writer and then they write about a subject like let's say,
Speaker 1: I don't know they're writing about wild horses, or they're
Speaker 1: writing about predators that they're writing about salmon um, I'll
Speaker 1: often wonder is their subject is the subject they've chosen
Speaker 1: to focus in on, is it a is it a
Speaker 1: sort of proxy for something else that they're getting at,
Speaker 1: or is the interest really on the thing they're focused on.
Speaker 1: Because I'll often find some writers will no matter what
Speaker 1: subject they're taking, I know where they'll fall on it,
Speaker 1: and I know what parts of it I'll accentuate because
Speaker 1: I know that they're not actually talking about the thing
Speaker 1: they're talking about. They're talking about the other thing, and
Speaker 1: they're using the thing as a tool to raise a
Speaker 1: broader point. I I usually do that. I'm almost never
Speaker 1: talking about the thing I seem to be talking about,
Speaker 1: and you're open about it. Yeah. Yeah, I wrote a
Speaker 1: book about baseball in the Dominican Republic and uh, both
Speaker 1: the Eastern Stars, and it really wasn't about baseball at all.
Speaker 1: It was about the US relationship with the Dominican Republican. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got you. Yeah. Do you do you feel that
Speaker 1: when you if you if you care, if you're a writer,
Speaker 1: like you have a certain amount of power as a writer,
Speaker 1: especially when you have an audience, and you have an audience,
Speaker 1: UM and your purpose driven writer? Right, you want to
Speaker 1: like like you want to affect change, you'd like to
Speaker 1: affect change. Do you feel that you need to be um?
Speaker 1: Do you ever feel a poll about being hyperbolic and
Speaker 1: when you're sounding the alarm because of overselling a problem,
Speaker 1: because it's more likely to create and to drive an
Speaker 1: impetus for change, Or do its party. You feel that, Man,
Speaker 1: I need to be absolutely frank and truthful because I
Speaker 1: have to deliver truth or you trying to drive action.
Speaker 1: And if you need to fudge truth to drive action,
Speaker 1: that's okay. No, I'm not into fudging truth. I think
Speaker 1: that you know, if you do that, you know, you
Speaker 1: can rally a lot of people. But you know at
Speaker 1: a certain point they're gonna say, wait a minute, this
Speaker 1: guy's I don't no nonsense. I can't believe anything he says. Um.
Speaker 1: I I so the best I can. I try. I
Speaker 1: try to be truthful and I and I try to
Speaker 1: be reasonable. And this book, uh, probably more than any
Speaker 1: other book, is making some fairly bold statements. And to
Speaker 1: be honest, it is because I am absolutely panicked about
Speaker 1: what climate change is doing. Uh. It's uh the impact
Speaker 1: it's going to have, what it's going to do to
Speaker 1: our lives and to our children's lives is just so huge. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're confronted with people who are not
Speaker 1: facing up to that, and so you know, sometimes you
Speaker 1: just have to scream, yeah, you say, I think that,
Speaker 1: like you acknowledge some things. I guess you don't do
Speaker 1: what I was asking if you ever feel necessary to
Speaker 1: do because you acknowledge some things where you talk about
Speaker 1: how you cite these years in the in the past
Speaker 1: decade where there were record runs of sacks like these
Speaker 1: phenomenal sac I runs, and that those phenomenal ski runs
Speaker 1: insided with the hottest years we had on record. And
Speaker 1: I think other people might look and say, well, how
Speaker 1: could salmon in Alaska suffer from warming temperatures if we
Speaker 1: used to have these massive salmon runs in California the
Speaker 1: Sunshine State. Um. I think that people can look at
Speaker 1: all this and probably talk themselves out of there seeming
Speaker 1: to be a problem we're having, like king salmon runs
Speaker 1: go down, but we're having these records pink salmon runs
Speaker 1: in some areas, Like like how can you know? How
Speaker 1: can it all? How does it fit together in a
Speaker 1: way where people can't look at it and think that
Speaker 1: we're okay after all? You know, if you if you
Speaker 1: talk to scientists, I mean real scientists, which I love
Speaker 1: to do and politicians and government people hate to do.
Speaker 1: The thing about real scientists is that they give you
Speaker 1: no absolute I mean, try talking to some epidemiologists about
Speaker 1: the coronavirus. For example. You know that there's things we know,
Speaker 1: there's things we don't know this, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: the most common answer you ever get from a scientist
Speaker 1: is maybe you know yeah. Yeah. My brothers, my brothers
Speaker 1: are both scientists, and I'll often ask them, like about
Speaker 1: their research. I'll ask him, what do you hope happens? Yeah? Right.
Speaker 1: They take that as an insulting question, what do you
Speaker 1: what do I hope happens? Right? Right, So it's it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's very uh, it's very complicated. And um. You
Speaker 1: know one thing I can tell you though about you know,
Speaker 1: warm years and good Alaskan salmon runs is last year
Speaker 1: there was a great Alaskan salmon run and it was
Speaker 1: about the warmest year on record that Alaska ever had,
Speaker 1: and you know what, a lot of those salmon died. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there was a good return, but a lot of fatality, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: fatality before spawning. Yeah, if if the if the water
Speaker 1: temperature goes above sixty eight degrees, they will not spawn.
Speaker 1: They can't spawn, they can't live, which the salmon species
Speaker 1: seems to be the most dire you mean, in the
Speaker 1: most difficulty. Yeah, like like is it like our king's
Speaker 1: kind of the most screwed right now in the Pacific.
Speaker 1: Not not I was. I was gonna say Atlantic salmon,
Speaker 1: there's about a million and a half Atlantic salmon left
Speaker 1: in the world. How can that be true? Man? And
Speaker 1: you know when you think about sixty sixty million running
Speaker 1: into Bristol Bay every June July, uh, one and a
Speaker 1: half million total Atlantic salmon, it's there's are people. There's
Speaker 1: more people in the Pugets you know, there's more people
Speaker 1: around Puget Sound in their Atlantic salmon left in the world.
Speaker 1: There were more farm salmon in a good farm uh
Speaker 1: salmon farming operation than there are wild salmon in the
Speaker 1: in the world Atlantic man, thus depressing that part of
Speaker 1: So they're they're the ones that are really in the
Speaker 1: in in the deepest trouble. Uh. As for other ones.
Speaker 1: It depends where you're talking about. But by and large,
Speaker 1: king are not doing well. You know, chinook? Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it well understood? Um? You know, I know there's
Speaker 1: probably like there's like as you mentioned it as a
Speaker 1: litany of factors, But is it well understood where where
Speaker 1: someone's gonna say, yeah, yeah, there's a dozen things. But
Speaker 1: here's the real killer on King salmon, Like, here's the
Speaker 1: real problem with kings am and are kind of the
Speaker 1: main problem, like like what is it? Well, it depends
Speaker 1: where you're talking about. I mean in the Columbia River
Speaker 1: it's damns um. You know, the Columbia River system used
Speaker 1: to be a great um king habitat and most of
Speaker 1: it is blocked now. And then northern California also, I've
Speaker 1: actually got a question about that. Mark Um. I grew
Speaker 1: up on the banks of the Columbia in Vancouver. This
Speaker 1: is still the engineer. Ladies, gentlemen, he's quiet so far.
Speaker 1: The engineers better pay attention. He's been diligently. He's been
Speaker 1: diligently engineering till now. He's been saving, saving it up.
Speaker 1: I I grew up on the Glombia River and we
Speaker 1: took multiple field trips growing up to Bonneville, dam Um.
Speaker 1: I didn't learn anything about hydro electric power. But one
Speaker 1: thing they were always super excited to show us was
Speaker 1: the fish ladders. And they've got big windows you can
Speaker 1: look through at the ladders, and they they were always
Speaker 1: trying to convince us everything's fine. Look at all these
Speaker 1: uh these salmon are are doing great. So I fish ladders,
Speaker 1: what's the deal. I'm guessing they're not very effective based
Speaker 1: on what you're saying here. Well, Um, you know, some
Speaker 1: fish ladders are are better than others. Um, some don't
Speaker 1: work at all, and some work pretty well. It also
Speaker 1: depends on the damn. Um. Uh, I mean getting over
Speaker 1: the Bonneville Is that the one you said you were on. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty tough getting over talent these uh, these gravity
Speaker 1: damns you know in the Pacific Northwest, which are you know,
Speaker 1: these are the largest hunks of concrete in the world. Um,
Speaker 1: it's pretty tough getting over them. They some of them
Speaker 1: work to a certain degree. Uh, some of them are
Speaker 1: getting better. Some of them don't have them. A lot
Speaker 1: of damns don't have any ladders at all. Um. And
Speaker 1: then you know, nature has a kind of a nasty
Speaker 1: way of adopting to our inventions. So uh, most fish
Speaker 1: ladders you'll find lots of marine mammals hanging out there
Speaker 1: because that's a good place to get fish to eat. Uh,
Speaker 1: And they're just you know, they're just being set up
Speaker 1: for the slaughter there. It's surprised me in your in
Speaker 1: your book, it surprised me how you left the how
Speaker 1: you seem to leave the door open a little bit too.
Speaker 1: Two doing some control on marine mammals, lethal control on
Speaker 1: marine mammals. Yeah, you know, look, the thing is, now
Speaker 1: that we've thoroughly screwed up the natural order, we're trying
Speaker 1: to make it work again. You have to. And it
Speaker 1: turns out it's really complex case. You know that everything
Speaker 1: has unintended consequences and um uh it's just very hard
Speaker 1: to figure these things. Um. As someone who has been
Speaker 1: I mean I read about it this in my book,
Speaker 1: I know it. It's like, uh to be fishing for
Speaker 1: salmon commercially and and watch. You know, in one case
Speaker 1: it was like four seals just eat our entire net. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, you have to you have to find
Speaker 1: a balance. But in the balance, um, you know, everybody
Speaker 1: loses a little and and wins a little. I I
Speaker 1: I did some writing about uh wolves, the reintroduction of
Speaker 1: wolves m mainly in Idaho, and I did um. And
Speaker 1: I have a lot of friends who are cheap ranchers
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, so they hate these wolves and
Speaker 1: they're they're furious about this. But what I say to
Speaker 1: them shortly before they take away my drink and asked
Speaker 1: me to leave, is you know they're supposed to be there.
Speaker 1: You know, if you want to raise sheep in Idaho,
Speaker 1: you have to accept the fact that there is going
Speaker 1: to be a certain amount of fredation. What happened in
Speaker 1: this country, UM. You see it most in the West,
Speaker 1: but it was all over the country is that they
Speaker 1: just had this idea, let's identify the predators and kill
Speaker 1: them and then we'll be fine. And they did this
Speaker 1: at the request of the ranchers and the farmers, and
Speaker 1: they killed everything that was a predator, and it completely
Speaker 1: destroyed the balance of nature. Uh. And a lot of
Speaker 1: cases in the West. Uh, the idea is, can't we
Speaker 1: just be the predator, you know, so you know, you
Speaker 1: get rid of everything that prays on unlets and then
Speaker 1: you know, hunters can go out and they can shoot
Speaker 1: deer and elk for their hearts content. Um. But actually,
Speaker 1: you know, those herds are supposed to be controlled by
Speaker 1: wolves and bears and mountain lions. It's the way the
Speaker 1: thing is supposed to work. And you know, certain types
Speaker 1: of um, you know, like willows uh can't survive if
Speaker 1: there's if there's too many alkin, then the birds that
Speaker 1: live in the willows can't survive. So, you know, nature
Speaker 1: is a very complicated thing, and uh you have to
Speaker 1: do it very very carefully. I think that in some
Speaker 1: cases you can make arguments for some killing of marine mammals. Um,
Speaker 1: these arguments have to be made pretty pretty carefully, though.
Speaker 1: I was surprised to see that you have. I haven't
Speaker 1: found where you you double down on this, but you
Speaker 1: suggest that saving salmon would involve stopping the killing of bears.
Speaker 1: And I was curious, are in coastal areas that have
Speaker 1: salmon runs, have you seen evidence of over harvest of
Speaker 1: bears somehow impacting? No? I haven't even even in the
Speaker 1: So that was just like an add on thought. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they come chodka. Um statistically has the the largest brown
Speaker 1: bear population uh per square mile of any place in
Speaker 1: the world. I mean, it's just loaded with bears and
Speaker 1: you were out fishing and there they all are. Uh. Aldo,
Speaker 1: When I say over harvest you made shouldn't that we
Speaker 1: need to stop killing bears in order to save sam
Speaker 1: over harvesting the bears like our humans over harvesting bears
Speaker 1: to the detriment of salmon. Like, I don't understand that.
Speaker 1: I don't understand what what? What backs that up? Um?
Speaker 1: I say that, yeah, really, and the prologue and the prologue.
Speaker 1: I was just curious what that what the what the
Speaker 1: meant by that? Um? Well, I mean the the the
Speaker 1: the primary cause of the killing of bears is the
Speaker 1: destruction of their habitat. Um. Oh no, I got you.
Speaker 1: I don't think the bear hunting. So killing bears through
Speaker 1: habitat destruction, yea, eliminating them, because then that mean that
Speaker 1: that trickles down. Obviously, the sentence was about stopping the
Speaker 1: killing of many animals, including beavers, wolves, bears. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, um these are all different cases. Beavers would
Speaker 1: be the most drastic. I mean, beavers were were slaughtered
Speaker 1: for their pelts at one time. Yeah, we almost ran
Speaker 1: out of them, right right, which is not the case
Speaker 1: with bears. But you, you, you have to be extremely careful.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have to admit that I don't understand
Speaker 1: bear hunting. I don't know why anybody wants to shoot
Speaker 1: a bear. I could explain it to you someday. You
Speaker 1: I mean, do you do you eat it? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you like it? I do, well, I like it depends
Speaker 1: what they've been eating. I don't like them. You don't
Speaker 1: like the brown bears because they taste fishing because they've
Speaker 1: been eating salmon. I've never eaten one. Yeah you're talking
Speaker 1: about black bears. Yeah, well they're they're they're better because
Speaker 1: they eat berries. The ones that are eating berries are
Speaker 1: quite good. The ones on the coastal areas where they've
Speaker 1: been feeding on some you know, dead sea lion they
Speaker 1: found for a month, are a little bit touchy. So
Speaker 1: I I much prefer to go find the ones up
Speaker 1: in the higher elevations. But we don't need to. I
Speaker 1: don't want to spend too much time on that. But
Speaker 1: but this this whole thing about beavers and bears and wolves,
Speaker 1: um it was I was really talking about a historic thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: None of those are are huge practices now, um ah,
Speaker 1: the wolves would be if you let them. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: You have a chapter called the Problem with Solutions. I
Speaker 1: think I think that's right. The problem solutions tell me,
Speaker 1: Like I I could see someone saying, um, well, if
Speaker 1: we can produce them at hatcheries, why don't we just
Speaker 1: make millions and millions of salmon and turn them loose?
Speaker 1: And who the hell cares? That's what was said originally?
Speaker 1: Where does that fall part? In France when they first
Speaker 1: started doing hatcheries that's exactly what they did. They they
Speaker 1: petitioned the government. They said, look, we found this huge solution.
Speaker 1: You know how the salmon are all dying because of
Speaker 1: all these nets across the river and everything. Don't worry
Speaker 1: about it anymore. We can make more. Um, can you
Speaker 1: date that mark? Because that's what I like, really struck
Speaker 1: me is how long we've been at this hatchery thing.
Speaker 1: Not off the top of my head it stated in
Speaker 1: the book it's eighteenth century. They're trying they're early nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: I think they're trying to propagate salmon in the early Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: why does it not? Like why is it not? What's
Speaker 1: wrong with that? There? Is it? Is it effective? Or
Speaker 1: is it not effective? And if it's not, why is
Speaker 1: it not effective? Okay, complicated question? Um. I kind of
Speaker 1: fought with my publisher, Patagony about this because they were
Speaker 1: much more anti hatchery than I am. Um. The the
Speaker 1: problem with hatcheries there there's several problems. I mean, the
Speaker 1: problem the original problem was that the fish don't live,
Speaker 1: and that was because the the eggs didn't come from
Speaker 1: the river that the fish were being released it, so
Speaker 1: they weren't suited for that habitat but a bigger problem
Speaker 1: is that if you take a river like the Columbia
Speaker 1: or some of the polluted industrial rivers of England and Uh,
Speaker 1: you make a bunch of hatchery fish and you release
Speaker 1: them in those rivers, you will get nothing because the
Speaker 1: same things that destroyed the wild fish will destroy the
Speaker 1: hatchery fish. So you have to fix the habitat before
Speaker 1: you can before a hatchery can do any good. Another
Speaker 1: problem is that hatchery fish seems to me, and there's
Speaker 1: summer for debate about this, but they seem to be
Speaker 1: somewhat inferior fish and less survival skills, so when they
Speaker 1: mix with wild fish, they're sort of dumming down the species.
Speaker 1: That's why having of the Japanese wildfish have some hatchery
Speaker 1: DNA and it is caused for concern. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of hatchery, you know. You'll often see these stories about
Speaker 1: somebody who went to some salmon, some fish store, a
Speaker 1: bunch of fish stores, took a bunch of fish that
Speaker 1: were being sold as wild wild salmon, tested their DNA
Speaker 1: and found out they weren't wild. And then everybody says, oh, well,
Speaker 1: these guys are a bunch of crooks. Not necessarily a
Speaker 1: lot of fish that is a lot of salmon that
Speaker 1: is supposed to be wild has a lot of hatchery
Speaker 1: DNA in it because it's crossed with it with with
Speaker 1: hatchery fish. Um. That's why they they invent to this
Speaker 1: new phrase, um, wild cot. They're not going out on
Speaker 1: a limb. They're saying it was caught in the wild
Speaker 1: like a wildfish. We don't know what its DNA is
Speaker 1: because you know fish, commercial fisheries can't be testing the
Speaker 1: DNA of all the fish. You mentioned habitat and what's
Speaker 1: the like, what is it? Why is it the reluctance
Speaker 1: of people to over these centuries now to to not
Speaker 1: accept the habitat. It's probably the main problem because it's
Speaker 1: costly to fix, and it sometimes means changing your economic activities.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're if the habitat is being destroyed
Speaker 1: by a dam that's providing your electricity, or its being
Speaker 1: destroyed by a factory that's uh, you know, creating wealth
Speaker 1: and jobs. Um, people aren't gonna want to mess with it. Um.
Speaker 1: That's getting back to my idea that you just have
Speaker 1: to change your whole concept of economic development. What was
Speaker 1: the what was the heyday of damn building? Like what
Speaker 1: years the depression that the New Deal. You know, Rosell
Speaker 1: put this out as a wonderful thing. And what he
Speaker 1: got three sang a song to the you know, the
Speaker 1: damn building on the Columbia. I mean, would he got
Speaker 1: three the man of the people, Wasn't this great? They're
Speaker 1: building damaged to block the Columbia. Man, it would have
Speaker 1: seemed that he would have been a pro samon guy.
Speaker 1: But so he probably would be today. Well, the reason
Speaker 1: I'm asking that question is I thing I've always been
Speaker 1: curious about. Um, A lot of things that happened in
Speaker 1: history we now like to sit and look and think about, Oh,
Speaker 1: they were so stupid, right, they were so rapacious and horrible, right,
Speaker 1: But it was the people that were doing these things
Speaker 1: were it was us, right, it was awesome. It was
Speaker 1: us in earlier form when they were getting there, when
Speaker 1: they were building those day ms. Do you know, was
Speaker 1: it well understood what this would do? What was someone saying,
Speaker 1: you know, um, I'm all for it. Let's let's generate
Speaker 1: tons of electricity, Let's become a dominant power, will come
Speaker 1: a dominant military power because we can smell aluminum and
Speaker 1: build an air force and on and on. But this
Speaker 1: means salmon or screwed. Did someone say that? Wasn't known?
Speaker 1: Someone said that, and those are the people that we
Speaker 1: call Indians. The native tribe said that a lot like
Speaker 1: they looked and said, I just have a feeling that
Speaker 1: when you block this river off, it will mean that
Speaker 1: these fish can't go up there anymore. This is this
Speaker 1: is not you know, high tech science to realize that
Speaker 1: if you have a fish that has to run the
Speaker 1: river and you block the river, you're going to destroy
Speaker 1: the fish. Right, Yeah, but what was the conversation, Well,
Speaker 1: you know it, it's going back to what I was
Speaker 1: saying before that. The conversation was, we're developing the economy.
Speaker 1: It's the depression and we're creating jobs, you know, and
Speaker 1: like tough ship. It was like tough shot to the right.
Speaker 1: We're making we're we're making New England a prosperous place,
Speaker 1: you know, where we're Britain is going to dominate the
Speaker 1: industrial revolution. But it was but you feel I mean,
Speaker 1: came like saying the same thing. But you feel that
Speaker 1: someone that it was in the it was it was
Speaker 1: part of the calculus. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's
Speaker 1: uh like when someone starts smoking, right, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think they say like I'm gonna start. I don't
Speaker 1: think they really conceptualize that. They're not like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take up smoking. I do realize that this will mean
Speaker 1: i will die younger of lung cancer, but I'm committed.
Speaker 1: Do you think they're not doing it that way? But
Speaker 1: how could people have not have done it that way
Speaker 1: with salmon? Do you know there's a Republican congressman in
Speaker 1: Indiana I can't think of his name who said that,
Speaker 1: you know, people are going to have to um uh
Speaker 1: die from the Corona virus and that's just you know,
Speaker 1: that's just what we have to do to get the
Speaker 1: economy moving. It doesn't surprise me that someone would say that,
Speaker 1: because I think people have similar conversations about you know,
Speaker 1: I think you could say the same thing, like people
Speaker 1: have an appetite for alcohol, um and people want to
Speaker 1: be able to drink alcohol, but we lose I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is fifty people to alcohol related deaths
Speaker 1: every year, and we accept that because some of us
Speaker 1: it's really important for us to have a beer at night,
Speaker 1: or it's really important for us to go out and
Speaker 1: have a glass of wine. So we will take the
Speaker 1: fact that we will have massive amounts of highway fatalities
Speaker 1: from alcohol, we will have massive amounts of domestic violence
Speaker 1: from alcohol. Uh, and we will have child neglect because
Speaker 1: of alcohol and financial destitute for people because of alcohol.
Speaker 1: Because when I go home at night, I like to
Speaker 1: have a cold beer. So sure we do that all
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, it's no different. Well, it is kind
Speaker 1: of explain how it's explain to me how it's different
Speaker 1: when you go home and have your beer. That's really
Speaker 1: not causing somebody to beat the wife. No, but we're
Speaker 1: taking a thing that we know, like I have alcohol,
Speaker 1: and you have to deal with you have to deal
Speaker 1: with you have to deal with alcohol and people's ability
Speaker 1: to use it in a better way. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: we've pretty successfully proven that banning alcohol doesn't work. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and I don't know that banning travel works. Um,
Speaker 1: it works, but I think that banning cards. Think how
Speaker 1: many lives who would say exactly exactly, But I can't
Speaker 1: get behind it. Let's go, let's get back to salmon.
Speaker 1: At the at the end of your book, this is
Speaker 1: a buddy mine who he guy work with, Sam Longren.
Speaker 1: He knew we're gonna be talking and and he had
Speaker 1: there's a sentence you talked, you used in your book
Speaker 1: cod that he wanted me to ask you about where
Speaker 1: he says that you wrote about how most fishermen cannot
Speaker 1: stop fishing, like acknowledging that it's like this, it's a compulsion.
Speaker 1: It's like a compulsive behavior. Yeah, it's because if you
Speaker 1: are a commercial fisherman, um, that is a life that
Speaker 1: you love and there's no substitute for it. There's nothing
Speaker 1: else you can do. What does a commercial fisherman do
Speaker 1: instead of fishing? There's there's there's there's nothing else like it,
Speaker 1: um and and and it's a it's a fisherman's entire identity.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that identity? I mean so much so,
Speaker 1: so much so. The fisherman you know, had they have
Speaker 1: trouble relating to people who who who don't fish. I
Speaker 1: mean that I tell you you know how it has
Speaker 1: changed my whole relationship as a journalist with fisheries. The
Speaker 1: fact that they know that I've actually worked on commercial boats,
Speaker 1: they accepted they'll be more likely to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Right when my Cord book came out, it came out
Speaker 1: at the same time as Sebastian Younger is a perfect storm.
Speaker 1: And we did a TV show together in Rhode Island,
Speaker 1: and then we were kind of walking out to the
Speaker 1: parking lot and and he was saying to me, you know,
Speaker 1: when I saw her in the book, I just couldn't
Speaker 1: get anybody to take me on their boats. Well, how
Speaker 1: did you get people to take him on their boats?
Speaker 1: And um, you know, he just he's a nice guy.
Speaker 1: You know, he looked like a rich guy in this
Speaker 1: very fancy car. What could I say to him? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, that's true, man, um a way that
Speaker 1: and I think we all do it where like even
Speaker 1: if you imagine as a writer, when you're talking to
Speaker 1: someone who might get your antenna might be up. You know,
Speaker 1: you're not sure about them, what their motivations are. But
Speaker 1: then they say some little thing that reveals some intimacy
Speaker 1: with your industry, some intimacy with your craft, right, you do,
Speaker 1: your guard goes down, right, But it's it's also I mean,
Speaker 1: I I think it's true that I do have an
Speaker 1: understanding and an empathy for commercial fishermen that a lot
Speaker 1: of writers don't have. I mean, I think that this,
Speaker 1: I think that over fishing is sometimes a problem, but
Speaker 1: it is it is pounced on much more than it
Speaker 1: should be because these are marginalized blue collar workers. Uh,
Speaker 1: and people don't really understand them or what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And it's so easy to say, oh, you know, here's
Speaker 1: the problem these guys, and and you know, to call
Speaker 1: a fisherman greedy is so absurd. I mean, take a
Speaker 1: look at what they have. How greedy could they be? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're so greedy? You want to just work your ass
Speaker 1: off all the time to every year, worry about whether
Speaker 1: or not you're gonna make a living, right, and the
Speaker 1: next thing you know, you're gonna want to have a
Speaker 1: house to live in, you know, all while you're covered
Speaker 1: in fish line, right. I think that people think of
Speaker 1: like hatcheries and fish farming often in the same sentence.
Speaker 1: You know, I imagine a lot of people don't even
Speaker 1: really understand what the difference is. But explain for people
Speaker 1: like what fish farming is and the term that people
Speaker 1: use like sea cattle or sea grazing. I can't remember
Speaker 1: what would expression and and and how fish farming impacts salmon.
Speaker 1: I said sea cattle, but I'm they have made that up. Okay, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the difference between farming and and hatcheries that
Speaker 1: hatcheries are trying to work with the wild stocks. Farming
Speaker 1: is something completely separate. Farming is a way of producing
Speaker 1: an alternative UH product. That's I mean the the It
Speaker 1: was started in the nineties seventies in Norway by guys
Speaker 1: who thought they were coming up with a UM low
Speaker 1: cost sustainable product UM. And the first problem with it
Speaker 1: is that it's not so sustainable if you're feeding them wildfish.
Speaker 1: So you know, they take factory trawlers worse kind of fishing.
Speaker 1: They scoop up all the stuff grinded up into meal
Speaker 1: to feed the salmon and the farm. Then when you
Speaker 1: eat a farm salmon, you're killing more wildfish than if
Speaker 1: you just stayed a wildfish. UM. Fish farmers have have
Speaker 1: been trying to deal with They they they they've lowered
Speaker 1: the percentage of fish in the food. It's down to
Speaker 1: about and there's all kinds of really kind of high
Speaker 1: tech experiments soldier fly and all sorts of ways of
Speaker 1: trying to get other protein to do this differently. UM.
Speaker 1: The problem is that the consumer UH tends to find
Speaker 1: that the more actual fishes in the feed, the better
Speaker 1: they like. To fish. Uh. So this is something they're
Speaker 1: working on that that they've improved, but they've got a
Speaker 1: ways to go. That's an interesting thing about fish farming.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I haven't given a lot of
Speaker 1: thought to it until recently around an issue around Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Um like just like bait, like fishing bait and fish
Speaker 1: feed that you think, if it's farmed, it must not
Speaker 1: be killing fish, right, But to hear about the quantities
Speaker 1: of fish it takes to feed the fish, that's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's right. So they're they're trying to lower that. And
Speaker 1: then they have the problem of escapes. Um. And you
Speaker 1: know that's just the problem that uh, some of the
Speaker 1: farm salmon get out of the nets, either by accident
Speaker 1: or sometimes they'll just hop out. I've been a fish farms.
Speaker 1: A salmon just leaps out and somebody says, oh, grabs
Speaker 1: the net and throws him back in. But um, almost
Speaker 1: all farm fishes atlantic salmon. So if if atlantic salmon
Speaker 1: escape in the Atlantic, they will cross breed with wild
Speaker 1: Atlantic salmon. This is very bad because you know, in farming,
Speaker 1: you eliminate, um, a natural selection, you replace it with
Speaker 1: a human selection. It's like cows. You know, cows don't
Speaker 1: have anything natural about them. Everything's been chosen by by
Speaker 1: by farmers and biologists. You know, they're talking about don't
Speaker 1: feed the cow GMO food the cows gmo menetically modified
Speaker 1: cow um. And same thing with salmon. So you know,
Speaker 1: they have chosen their genes that they have bread these
Speaker 1: salmon um for one thing, one thing, only to to
Speaker 1: grow very quickly so that it just you know, less
Speaker 1: expense raising them to market size. They have no skills,
Speaker 1: they have no you know, they can't find the river
Speaker 1: the earth. They have no river their birth, but couldn't
Speaker 1: if they did. They have you know, no, none of
Speaker 1: all these extraordinary abilities of wild salmon has They are
Speaker 1: They are are just a fast growing moron. You know.
Speaker 1: So now they're getting out and they're breeding. How do
Speaker 1: how does the breeding happen if they can't find the river? Uh, well,
Speaker 1: they can find a river, it's just not the river
Speaker 1: of their birth. They'll just go up a river and
Speaker 1: if there's a female there, you know, if there's a
Speaker 1: male and there's a female they're digging a red, they'll
Speaker 1: deposit their milt on it, or if it's a female
Speaker 1: will dig a red and a wild male will you know,
Speaker 1: they salmon. If they see a nest, they go for it.
Speaker 1: So they still do have the urge to run up
Speaker 1: a river at some point. Yeah, but it's just any river.
Speaker 1: And uh so this is going to dumb down wild
Speaker 1: Atlantic salmon. Now in the Pacific, most of the farm
Speaker 1: salmon are also Atlantic and it's a hard rule of
Speaker 1: biology that different genera don't cross breed. So an Atlantic
Speaker 1: salmon and a Pacific salmon are two separate genera, so
Speaker 1: they won't breed. So it's not really as big a
Speaker 1: risk as people get very excited when there's escapes of
Speaker 1: farm salmon in the Pacific, but um, most of the
Speaker 1: time they just disappear because it's gonna happen there. They're
Speaker 1: not going to cross breed with the wild. All they
Speaker 1: can do is set up their own Atlantic salmon. But
Speaker 1: since they're all dumb fish, uh, they're not going to
Speaker 1: compete with the wild populations and and they'll probably die out.
Speaker 1: But it's a huge problem in the Atlantic. Um. And
Speaker 1: then there's the problem of sea lice. Um. Sea lice
Speaker 1: is a crustacean that attacks salmon, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: these lights are traveling all over the ocean, they'll find
Speaker 1: a salmon or two. But then when you have this
Speaker 1: fish farm with a million salmon in one cage, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's like leaving honey out for the bears, you know,
Speaker 1: just all the lights will just gravitate to the farm
Speaker 1: and they won't limit themselves to the farm of Carson.
Speaker 1: There's any wild salmon there, they'll attack them also, so
Speaker 1: that there's a huge sea lice problem. Um, and you know,
Speaker 1: fish farmers are trying to deal with this. They found
Speaker 1: certain species of fish that eat sea lice and they've
Speaker 1: used them, but you know, they they used so many
Speaker 1: of them that they started over fishing them. They started
Speaker 1: to disappear. So what do they do, their fish farmers,
Speaker 1: They started farming these other species to eat. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: the fish they're using to eat lice off salmon are
Speaker 1: a fish that they were going out and catching. They
Speaker 1: were depleted the resource. They depleted it, and then they
Speaker 1: started farming him. But they don't see if we'll be
Speaker 1: able to come up with enough of them. They handle
Speaker 1: the lights just like some never end to it, man, right,
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of problems and and you know
Speaker 1: a lot of people like this idea of moving the
Speaker 1: fish farms inland, in in enclosed UH spaces so that
Speaker 1: there's no escaping and no sea lice can get into them,
Speaker 1: basically making a hatchery for well, it's more it's more
Speaker 1: confined than a hatchery in there there, you know, when
Speaker 1: they're raising them to full size. So what this means
Speaker 1: is it means tremendously increasing their carbon footprint because the
Speaker 1: original idea of farm salmon was that they used the
Speaker 1: energy of the current in the ocean. They didn't use
Speaker 1: any energy. Um. Now they're getting into all of the
Speaker 1: problems that environmentalists oppose in UH cattle farming, you know,
Speaker 1: the nutrient and yeah, oh that I found it funny
Speaker 1: that there's environmentalists who opposed cattle farming but want to
Speaker 1: bring UH salmon farming on land. UM. So I don't
Speaker 1: think that that's the solution. UM. Most fish farmers don't
Speaker 1: think that's the solution either, But you know, maybe there's
Speaker 1: some ideas in there that that work. I don't understand
Speaker 1: why they can't stop escapes. I mean just I don't know,
Speaker 1: make it higher walls on the on the pens or something.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a big there was a big escapement.
Speaker 1: And remember in Puget Sound when I was living there
Speaker 1: and it was it was I think it was storm related, yes,
Speaker 1: and they tried to get all the fishermen fired up
Speaker 1: to go catch them, and people were catching them like crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But you know when people got very excited, I heard
Speaker 1: people comparing it to the Exxon, Valdi's oil spell and
Speaker 1: all these things. But um, what happened to those fish?
Speaker 1: I mean the ones they didn't catch, they're gone. Nobody
Speaker 1: knows they died off. They just they can't farm salmon,
Speaker 1: can't make it. The only way they can make it
Speaker 1: is to reproduce with wild salmon, which they can't do
Speaker 1: in the Pacific. When when you were finishing your book?
Speaker 1: When when what was the pup date? What's the pup
Speaker 1: date of your book? It was Archer this year, so
Speaker 1: I just came out. So you finished it probably a
Speaker 1: year ago, maybe maybe more. Yeah, I don't remember when,
Speaker 1: uh when you got it done, did you? I'm sure
Speaker 1: you were happy to have finished a book, just because
Speaker 1: it's like as a writer and making a book, regardless
Speaker 1: of the subject and how you might impact that subject. Um,
Speaker 1: it just feels good to finish them, right, to get
Speaker 1: them out, But did you Actually it's actually my thirty
Speaker 1: third book. Um, and you know, my my response to
Speaker 1: finishing it was to start working on my thirty fourth board.
Speaker 1: But it when you finished it, were you just, um,
Speaker 1: knowing the enormity of the problem. You know, if you
Speaker 1: imagine ahead a hundred years, it just looks really bad
Speaker 1: for salmon, especially as you lay it out. When you
Speaker 1: finished it, did did you were you you know, like
Speaker 1: catatonic from the depression of it all or where you know,
Speaker 1: because I'm just not I'm not like that. I just, um,
Speaker 1: I I can't believe that we're just going to sit
Speaker 1: around and let the earth parish. I think that, um,
Speaker 1: we will get together and do things to fix these things.
Speaker 1: And that's why I write a book like this too,
Speaker 1: you know, promote this happening. And I think it can happen.
Speaker 1: And I you know, I have a daughter who's nineteen
Speaker 1: in college, and those kids are fantastic. Uh, they're so
Speaker 1: aware of environmental problems and and so so piste off.
Speaker 1: We've handled things and determined to do it better. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's hope for the world, and there
Speaker 1: are you know, programs that are taking down damns, and
Speaker 1: there's a tremendous number of rivers whose pollution has been
Speaker 1: cleaned up, and um now there is. We aren't without hope,
Speaker 1: you know. We just can't sit around and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it'll be fine, you know, we have to
Speaker 1: make it happen. Yeah, the things that we've restored we
Speaker 1: restored at great cost. Well, that's one of the problems
Speaker 1: is that tearing down damns, it turns out, is incredibly
Speaker 1: expensive and it comes with its own risks. Yes, and
Speaker 1: you really have to kind of rebuild the river after
Speaker 1: the dam comes down. It's not like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: kind of think in your mind. You take down the
Speaker 1: dam and then the water rushes out and you're back
Speaker 1: to what you had before, but so much changed because
Speaker 1: of the dam that you know you have to you
Speaker 1: have to get a gravel bottom on the river again,
Speaker 1: because salmona won't live on a river that doesn't have
Speaker 1: a gravel bottom if it all gets silted over because
Speaker 1: of this release from tearing down the dam, you have
Speaker 1: to do so think to fix the bottom. Ice live
Speaker 1: in a community, and I'd lived there for quite a
Speaker 1: while while there was a long a statewide and also
Speaker 1: very local you know, dialogue around removing a dam in
Speaker 1: town and um some of the people most adamantly opposed
Speaker 1: to removing the dam were the fisherman because there had
Speaker 1: been a lot of um mining upstream on this river
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of heavy metal and toxic
Speaker 1: sediment they had built up behind that damn where the
Speaker 1: dam was kind of an extinct damn. It was just
Speaker 1: the whole reservoir had filled in with toxic sediment and
Speaker 1: there was a bitter pill of the dam should come down,
Speaker 1: but we need to know that you're gonna stir this
Speaker 1: stuff up and a lot of this ship is gonna
Speaker 1: get sent down river. Well that's going back to what
Speaker 1: I was saying about Hatch. He's the first thing you
Speaker 1: have to do is restore the habitat of the river
Speaker 1: or all of us No good. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you take down the dam and then the the the
Speaker 1: salmon are going to swim up stream and spawn in
Speaker 1: the toxic area. No, that's not going to happen either. Uh.
Speaker 1: Every decision, every decision has a painful part to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mark,
Speaker 1: what's your like favorite bright spot that gives you hope
Speaker 1: after working on this project and knowing all so much
Speaker 1: about it, Like what what stands out as a success
Speaker 1: or a win right now? That give you a little hope? Well,
Speaker 1: and a number of things. I mean, these these projects
Speaker 1: taking down dams. There's a big one in California. There
Speaker 1: was the l Y in Washington, the penam Scott in Maine.
Speaker 1: These are huge things that are being done um and
Speaker 1: you know, the way in which they were done is
Speaker 1: very impressive. I mean, the Panamscott happened because a whole
Speaker 1: coalition of environmentalists and fishing people and state government and
Speaker 1: federal government and Native Americans and all these different groups
Speaker 1: got together to make this happen. And when I see
Speaker 1: something like that happened, I think, wow, you know we
Speaker 1: can do it. You know. Also there, you know, there
Speaker 1: was a pole. I love this. There was a poland
Speaker 1: you know, the Oregonian, the newspaper in Portland. So the
Speaker 1: Oregonian did this pole in which an overwhelming majority of
Speaker 1: people that they asked in Oregon said that they considered, um,
Speaker 1: saving salmon in the Columbia River more important than any
Speaker 1: economic activity for the river. That's interesting. I wonder if
Speaker 1: you had run that pole in other parts of that state.
Speaker 1: I think you'd have seen dramatically different results. Perhaps well yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you like you getting nowhere. Get nowhere in
Speaker 1: in Idaho because they've built their whole economy on being
Speaker 1: a seaport for grain um, which was made possible by
Speaker 1: damns Um, and so many people are economically hitched to
Speaker 1: that system that you know, it's basically when it comes
Speaker 1: down to, is them and some fly fishermen. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want people to think they can
Speaker 1: skip reading the book because of this conversation. So I
Speaker 1: need to point out to people that we have not
Speaker 1: covered the saber tooth salmon. Yes, but don't don't cover
Speaker 1: it an extinct bygone fish called the sabertooth salmon, And
Speaker 1: I'm not telling you if it's coming to your neighborhood
Speaker 1: or not. Hit people. Hit people with another thing or
Speaker 1: two that, uh, another titillating item or two that they'll
Speaker 1: encounter in your book when they go read the thing
Speaker 1: for real. Um, I mean the the the whole um saga,
Speaker 1: the Connecticut River, which I guess I'm partial too because
Speaker 1: I was born at it, but you know, the one
Speaker 1: of the greatest salmon rivers in North America. And they've
Speaker 1: spent billions trying to make it come back, and um,
Speaker 1: they cannot. They can. They can get the fish in
Speaker 1: the river, they can get them to spawn, and they
Speaker 1: can get the young to go out to sea, but
Speaker 1: then they don't return. And yet every once in a
Speaker 1: while somebody will be in some little tributary and find
Speaker 1: find a salmon. Really yeah, just wand and around. He's like,
Speaker 1: where is everybody? You know, I mentioned earlier going up
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes and we had our you know, are
Speaker 1: kind of make believe salmon there, but the you are
Speaker 1: now and then catch one up in a farmer's drainage ditch.
Speaker 1: And when you kind of like looked at a map,
Speaker 1: you'd realize the number of wrong turns that that fish
Speaker 1: had made. It just kept getting just kept getting worse
Speaker 1: and worse. Well, you know, it's like, you know, biology
Speaker 1: got off there because they weren't supposed to be there
Speaker 1: in the first place. But you can hardly blame him.
Speaker 1: He's like, dude, I'm a stranger around here. Man, I
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on. You can get a lot
Speaker 1: of recipes from the book, and you can get a
Speaker 1: lot of Native American recipes from Alaska that will absolutely
Speaker 1: horrify you. Yeah. But also on that is um, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's exhaustive, not exhausting, but exhaustive in that
Speaker 1: um just like how Native Americans caught fish, how they
Speaker 1: mechanics of it, so many did with it, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a really it's it's there's a
Speaker 1: lot there. It's it's well worth to read. We kind
Speaker 1: of focused here in this conversation on an element of
Speaker 1: the book, and it's a big element, and it's the
Speaker 1: driving force of what's there. But everything is very richly
Speaker 1: contextualized and every um, every part of this is poked
Speaker 1: and prodded and explained. And it's not just meant to
Speaker 1: It's not a book that's just meant to deliver this
Speaker 1: awful news to you, but it's meant to, uh paint
Speaker 1: this really like lush, elaborate portrait of a beautiful collection
Speaker 1: of animals. And so I would urge people to go
Speaker 1: out and check out the book Against Salmon by Mark Kurlanski,
Speaker 1: made available by Patagonia Books, which I which I it
Speaker 1: is not your that's not been your publisher in the past,
Speaker 1: So no, no, you can since we're all buying things
Speaker 1: online these days. So you can get it from Patagonia,
Speaker 1: or you can get it you know, you can get
Speaker 1: it from the Amazon, but you can get it from
Speaker 1: your local bookstore to people don't realize that most uh
Speaker 1: independent bookstores have their own online service that's pretty efficient
Speaker 1: and you know you can go online, take the bookstore
Speaker 1: you like and they'll horder and ship it to you.
Speaker 1: All right, Mark, thanks for coming on. Um, we'll plan
Speaker 1: one in the future. When your next book comes out.
Speaker 1: I'll tell people what your next book is. I don't
Speaker 1: want to blow it for you, but when that goes out,
Speaker 1: will okay if it's a lot, we can talk about
Speaker 1: in that to have it back on. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Thanks great talking to you guys. One