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PHOTO COURTESY OF REBECCA REISBICK
The Romance of Salmon
Winner of the student category of the 2009 Oregon Quarterly Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest.
Their glittering flashes, shining leaps, and epic journeys have come to symbolize the long-awaited arrival that will bring life to Northwest rivers. For thousands of years salmon have brought sustenance to coastal populations and enriched our streams and rivers. However, for me, salmon are more than a symbol of nature’s bounty and the vitality of the Northwest. I grew up on a small commercial fishing boat called the High Hope, a vessel owned and operated by my parents. We spent our summers following the salmon up and down the Pacific Coast and harvesting their sleek, silver bodies to sell to restaurants and specialty markets. Home was a forty-seven-foot salmon troller on which my parents and I lived during the four-month season, and my backyard was the Pacific Ocean. Over the years I developed an ever-deepening respect and admiration for the salmon—our livelihood and our stability.
My first summer aboard the boat was 1991. I was only eight months old. Instead of staying home and waiting for my father to come back from a season of fishing, my mother packed up the baby supplies and took me along on what would become the first of many summer adventures. My parents were told that raising a child on the boat would never work; but my mother always had the time to come in from catching fish to read me a story or make a peanut butter sandwich.
In the following years more changes occurred—toddler-proof railings were erected, a sandbox was placed on the back deck, boxes of movies, toys, and crafts were packed under my direct and even tyrannical supervision. Later came the pets: a dog, rabbits, gerbils, a guinea pig, even frogs. All found themselves packed into cages and tanks that could be strapped down at the advent of poor weather. The dog was afraid, the gerbils got seasick, and the guinea pig tipped over if the weather got too rough. Through all of that, they didn’t seem to mind.
My school days came all too quickly and these brought yet more changes. It was tough enough to have a child on the boat, but to teach the child too? Some things were just too much. Soon, along with the toys, pets, and movies, there were added boxes of books. I read history, fiction, fantasy, mysteries—all with the discrimination of a precocious literary critic. Books were one thing, but math, now that was another. Still to this day I hold that it can make one seasick to think too hard about algebra.
Spending my summers on a fishing boat gave me the childish bragging rights for the best summer vacations. I remember standing, hands on hips, challenging my playground acquaintances to prove me wrong as I told fabulous tales about all the strange sea creatures I had seen and the fierce storms I had weathered. I had never seen pirates, but hey, it could happen. Sunny days found me on the back deck “helping,” as I termed it. “What are the fish eating?” I would want to know. I laughed and hung over the side of the boat as I waved at porpoises. I lived for the excitement of a rare catch: slimy hagfish, gleaming mackerel, even sharks with the sandpapery feel of their skin. I watched squid glide and dart in buckets of water. I giggled as I wrapped chubby fingers around writhing anchovies. Who needed a backyard? I had the Pacific Ocean.
I’m not sure when playing with fish changed to working, and I suppose that some days I still wish that instead of methodically running one of the lines of gear we tow behind the boat I could once again be chasing after a silver mackerel as it flops across the deck. But I have come to enjoy working on the boat. I will be the first to say that I do not like my job when the seas are rough and the wind whips salt spray and rain against my face as I try desperately both to stand up and to run the gear to bring up the flashing salmon; but there are days when the weather quiets to a glassy calm, the sun reflects its brilliance against the blue of the water, and the salmon bite as if they desire only to leap aboard the boat—I promise you that there is nothing more perfect or more beautiful.
This summer is my last in high school and I don’t know how many more seasons I’ll spend on the boat; even so, I find that I cannot imagine a summer when I will not wake to the hum of the High Hope’s engine each morning. I find it hard to imagine a summer without fantastic sunsets setting the ocean on fire and burning forever in my memory. I even think of those gray, storm-tossed days with some romantic nostalgia. But most of all I will miss the vitality of the salmon; I will miss the perfect, beautiful silver of their bodies, the power with which they move through the water, and even the frantic joyful splashes of those that get away.
Because of all of this I have come to a great appreciation of the salmon. Salmon have migrated from the oceans to the streams for thousands of years; they have provided nourishment for the people and animals of the Northwest. Man has fished for the salmon, and still the salmon remains; man has built dams, and yet the salmon perseveres in its migration; man has destroyed habitat and built fish farms, and yet the salmon still returns faithfully each year. The lingering salmon populations are held in a delicate ecological balance, the scales are weighted with countless environmental factors against the salmon’s tenacity. We must therefore understand that while the salmon is a valuable natural resource it is also a vital symbol of the Northwest, epitomizing determination, perseverance, and the will to survive.
I have come to understand that the ocean’s bounty is not unending and in recent years we have seen the salmon populations shrink. Our seasons have been shortened and many fishermen now struggle to catch enough fish to make a living. Salmon are a natural resource, but they also must be protected. We must fish responsibly and we must protect our rivers and streams so the salmon will remain a Northwest symbol for years to come.
Rebecca Reisbick lives in Olympia, Washington, when she’s not on her family’s fishing boat. After being homeschooled by her mother, she attended South Puget Sound Community College for the last two years of high school. Rebecca plans to attend Western Washington University in the fall and to continue spending her summers working on her parents’ fishing boat—for now. This was the winner of the student category of the 2009 Oregon Quarterly Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest. For information about the essay contest go to OregonQuarterly.com.
