Salmon on the Olympic Peninsula are here because of the
abundant snow and rain that feed our wild free flowing rivers.
At first there wasn’t any conservation and there were millions.
Then someone thought they needed help and invented fish management.
The stocks are divvied up between countries, territories,
states, tribes, international agreements, treaties, conservation boards,
sport and commercial fishing interests and many others.
Fish stocks still swimming in the ocean or even as eggs
in the rivers are traded like baseball cards in a free for all
that bows to monetary and political pressure.
This leads to poor policy with millions in taxes being spent to save salmon
so others can make money catching them or at least by holding the right to catch.
Some do return, yet they are still in decline.
It just shows that money, policy, and politics can go all the way down
to a fish egg still in the gravel of a wild river in a wild place,
not a human in sight, but it still belongs to someone…
If tuna is chicken of the sea, that makes salmon the cattle.