Videos from Kamchatka
I shot the following videos at Lake Azabache and in Bistrinsky Nature Park in central Kamchatka during a mid-July trip with my colleague Igor Goldfarb.
Here you can see a spawning stream filled with sockeye salmon as they complete the final leg of their journey to the spawning grounds. When I took this video, these fish had already traveled from the ocean, up two rivers, across a lake, and up several miles of this stream. The white fish have already spawned, and are beginning to die. The media portrays post-spawn salmon mortality as a romantic sacrifice, but the truth is far more gruesome: after completing their “duty,” the salmon literally begin to fall apart. The upshot is that the nutrients the salmon bring to Kamchatka’s rivers feed entire villages, an enormous population of bears, and even fertilizes the surrounding forest.
This video shows two bears, a mother and a cub, that we encountered on the hike. They had been eating salmon by the river (just to the left) in the morning, and then spent the hot afternoon lying in the snow. Salmon are a key source of food for Kamchatka’s bears, and they travel every spring to the rivers to feed and to teach their young to fish. Note how the cub stands on his hind legs at 00:38 to get a better look at us, while the mother makes a low vocalization, similar to a dog’s bark.
Salmon are also a key food source for Kamchatka’s indigenous peoples, who have special subsistence fishing privileges. Here you can see a group of Even from the town of Anavgai prepare to set a net on the Tigil River in the Bistrinsky Nature Park. Before setting the net, they spent hours untangling and preparing it and choosing the proper location. After we caught the Chinook salmon pictured below, they immediately removed the net so as not to kill more than we needed.
Tags: communities, environment, Fisheries, Indigenous Life, Kamchatka, rivers, Russia, Russian Far East, Salmon
