Pink Salmon in Gold Creek 9-5-11

Pink salmon, *Oncorhynchus gorbuscha*, spawn every two years on odd years in the Dungeness watershed. This year's run is the biggest we've seen in the past eight. My good friend John Gussman recorded a lot of it on HD video. His work is yet to be released, since he is still incorporating it into various projects. His wife, Catherine Hickey, provided me her raw video files, which John would not be using since they're not HD. I hastily compiled these into a video.

The lack of editing reflects a lack of time, as well as a desire to keep it real & raw—and the usual sloth & indolence. The video is about 11 minutes. At about 9:30 you'll see a male fertilizing eggs.

I made several trips up to Gold Creek in the past weeks (a couple of them with John & Cath) and shot video too, but I don't have a submersible rig like they both have. I got some mundane surface footage of males incessantly battling over females, while said females slid by & moved on upstream. Hapless males—too busy fighting to notice the females had found a productive use of the dwindling time. If I get some time away from fighting other males I may compile/edit & post what I shot too.

Thank you Cath!

Category:

Education

Tags:

• salmon
• spawning
• Gold Creek
• Dungeness River
• Olympic Peninsula

[skoehler05]

@stoneyshawn22 --Hey thanks for your comment! I was glad to see we had a god run this year!

[stoneyshawn22]

Nice footage Mr. Koehler. Was reading up on Gold Creek and this video came up on google. I was once a student of yours which I'm sure you've long forgotten.