The salmon is an amazing creature that can grow up to four feet in length and weigh over sixty pounds. Salmon are typically anadromous: they hatch in the shallow gravel beds of freshwater headstreams and spend their juvenile years in rivers, lakes and freshwater wetlands, migrate to the ocean as adults and live like sea fish, then return to their freshwater birthplace to reproduce. Salmon have remarkable navigation skills. Relying on olfactory memory, salmon find their way from the sea to the river of their birth and swim upstream overcoming great obstacles to reach their natal spawning grounds. To lay her roe, the female salmon uses her tail (caudal fin), to create a low-pressure zone, lifting gravel to be swept downstream, excavating a shallow depression, called a redd. One or more males approach the female in her redd, depositing sperm, or milt, over the roe. The female then covers the eggs by disturbing the gravel at the upstream edge of the depression before moving on to make another redd. The female may make as many as seven redds before her supply of eggs is exhausted.
The salmon has long been at the heart of the culture and livelihood of coastal dwellers, which can be traced as far back as 5,000 years. The Pacific Northwest once sprawled with native inhabitants who ensured little degradation was caused by their actions to salmon habitats. As animists, the Indigenous people relied not only for salmon for food, but spiritual guidance. The role of the salmon spirit guided the people to respect ecological systems such as the rivers and tributaries the salmon used for spawning.
The population of wild salmon has declined markedly in recent decades. Researchers have reported widespread declines in the sizes of four species of wild Pacific salmon: Chinook, chum, coho, and sockeye. These declines have been occurring for over 40 years, and are thought to be associated with overharvesting, construction of dams, habitat degradation, water quality and climate change. The federal government has listed 28 population groups of salmon and steelhead on the West Coast as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. In recent decades, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on estuary and salmon restoration.
Drumming Ceremony Invites Salmon to Spawn
In 1979, John Beal, a Vietnam veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, dedicated his post-war life to restoring salmon habitat in the Duwamish River just south of Seattle, WA. It was a deal he made after doctors told him that his heart, damaged by a series of cardiac arrests, would hold out only for another few months. He thought he'd spend his last days doing something good and started hauling washing machines and trash out of the creek near his South Park home. Always stubborn, he surprised everyone by living another 27 years to age 56. John was responsible for bringing disparate agencies to the table to discuss cleanup strategies on the Duwamish River. With relentless tenacity, he single-handedly engineered the restoration of a trash-infested Duwamish Watershed.
In January of 1994, John enlisted the aid of a Choctaw elder to conduct a ceremony to call the salmon from the ocean to spawn in Hamm Creek, a tributary of the Duwamish River. Beal had spent twelve years restoring Hamm Creek, but few salmon had returned to the once-thriving spawning ground. Beginning at the mouth of the Duwamish River and moving upstream, the Choctaw elder used a drum to draw the salmon upriver to spawn. When asked why the fish come to the drum, the elder said that drum beats sound like the slap of the female salmon's tail as she scrapes out a shallow gravel nest.
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