THE GREAT SALMON RUN

      The great salmon run in 2025 continued every day through July into August in Brook's River in Katmai National Park in southern Alaska, a region of spruce forests, lakes and rivers.  Through live cameras and our home computer screen, I saw hordes of sockeye salmon by the many thousands shimmy upstream through rocky shallows and leap up a ten-foot waterfall on Brook's River.  One could see how many salmon there were in that river by the fishes' dorsal fins poking above the water.  

     These salmon recently exited the Pacific Ocean and were struggling upstream through a fast current to their birth places where they will spawn, as did their parents.  The most dramatic parts of their migration are their leaping up waterfalls to continue on.  Several salmon at once briefly become airborne and flop into the waterfall where they attempt to swim up it to the river above.  Although they are streamlined and have powerful muscles, it seems that many salmon have to make several tries before succeeding.  

     Meanwhile, several magnificent brown bears at once were all along Brook's River where they try to catch numbers of salmon.  Some bears station themselves motionless at the top of the falls, while others wade all along the river and catch the large fish there.  Some bears even dive under water to nab salmon.  Many of the bears fished alone, but mothers with cubs also fished, while trying to stay away from the big male bears.  Some of the young, inexperienced bears scavenged the remains of salmon left on the shorelines by their expert relatives.  Every time I watched Brook's River and its sockeye salmon, I saw at least a few bears eating salmon.  The sockeye were abundant and many of the persistent bears were quite successful in catching salmon, leaving many piles of deep-orange salmon remains along the river.  Already, the bears are putting on fat to survive the coming winter.  And most of the salmon escape the toothed jaws of the bears and continue upstream to spawn. 

     Several kinds of interesting birds and mammals congregate along Brook's River to scavenge sockeye remains left behind by brown bears, who were catching many of the large fish.  Those scavengers add more interest to the river.  Several big, elegant glaucous-winged gulls, and a few short-billed gulls, scavenge many sockeye remains from the shallows, shorelines and boulders in the river.  And, sometimes, a few majestic bald eagles, or a small group of common ravens or a handsome, lone gray wolf, or two, come to the river to scavenge salmon carcasses, adding more thrills to watching that Alaskan river on my computer screen.                

     Interestingly, as I was viewing the great salmon run and all the creatures dependent on it for food, I often saw little flocks of adult and young common mergansers on the river, and an occasional group of Barrow's goldeneyes there as well.  Both these diving duck species hatch young in tree cavities and abandoned flicker and pileated woodpecker holes in trees, which is why they were along Brook's River.  Mergansers dive under water from the surface to catch small fish.  They might have been scavenging bits of salmon as well.    

     Every year a great sockeye salmon run happens on Brook's River.  And I am glad to be able to observe it, even though I do so by our computer screen.    

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