“From ‘Fisherman’s Fall’ by Roderick Haig-Brown, 1964

‘To some people, the thought that the salmon, all Pacific salmon of all species, die very soon after spawning is a depressing one. They see in it only decay and waste, a sort of pathetic frustration of life. This is a natural view, but it does not question deeply enough; the end of salmon is not death and corruption, but only fall, the autumn of their cycle.

As the winds stir and drift the dying leaves, so the waters drift and stir the dying salmon against the gray-brown gravels of the stream beds. But under those gravels life is strong and secret and protected in the buried eggs, the real life of the race.

In spring life will burst from the gravel as it bursts again from the trees, into the massive yield of the new cycle. Death is seldom more fleeting or more fertile than this.’”

Dr. Rick Taylor, Professor of Zoology; Director of the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC.