Salmon Life

The sockeye run went up to Ship Lake.

Now the sockeye run is gone, extinct.

It’s unknown if there are any wild kings or silvers or pinks or chums, but now it’s primarily a hatchery fishery.

Over the years, it was dammed, straightened, channelized, all of the things that were done in the lower 48 that led to salmon loss.

We have juveniles dying in Alaska because the water is warming up.

Meagan pauses. She’s worried.

“We are doing all of the same things. It’s not on the same scale as everywhere else, but we have the capability to Ship Creek the entire state. If we don’t put out the intention that that’s not what we want, it could happen,” she said.

Discovering these realities in her backyard inspired Meagan to fight for salmon, to follow her passion for stewardship of what she calls Alaska’s iconic species.

“I think conserving salmon is really important. Salmon are a tough species; they can really put up with a lot of human impact and so when the salmon population starts to decline, or when the juveniles start to die, that’s going to be a shift in Alaska,” she said.

Growing up in the Midwest, Meagan has been fascinated with rivers and the fish that live there since she was a girl. Her family spent summer vacations sleeping next to a riverbed at night and floating down the river by day.

“We’re water people,” she said. “That’s what we always say. My family. We’re water people.”

One summer, while collecting research on a shrimp boat off the coast of Baja California, it hit her. Social implications matter.

We know what salmon need from their environment. But what do salmon need from us?

“Salmon have a people problem,” Liz Medicine Crow, President of First Alaskans Institute, said.

And that’s just it. While Meagan believes it’s important to understand salmon biology, she believes the real heart of caring for salmon as a species and preserving their natural rhythms is working on the social issues surrounding the fish.

Economics. Politics. Management. It all boils down to choices we make that impact salmon and could change their presence in Alaska for future generations. As a social scientist, Meagan admits her work can be fluid. “It’s not easy,” she said. “There are a lot of days where I joke with my colleagues—I’m ready to go and just count fish!—It’s easier than what I do, which is super complicated and messy and really challenging a lot of times.”

In the meantime, Meagan is busy raising a new generation of water people in her family – her two children, ages 4 and 7. They spend most of their water time at the edge of rivers, looking at bugs and dipping their toes in the shallows. Meagan and her husband hand the children rods and help them pull in their fish. This summer, they’ll take their first family Alaskan float trip, a vacation Meagan’s been dreaming about since she became a mother.

“They like the water, whether it’s the ocean or one of the rivers. I think I passed on the water gene. We’re breaking them in,” she said.

But Meagan thinks we need more salmon stories. More people need to hear about the changes that have happened at Ship Creek. And Alaskans need to come together.

“It’s going to take a lot of hard work and intention to sustain the salmon,” she said. “But, there are a lot of talented people in Alaska with the potential for collaboration to come up with some creative ideas and start to work toward salmon communities. That gives me hope.”