Kasilof River

It was impossible to spend a day on the Kasilof River without realizing that salmon are the center of this ecosystem. Nearly everything we watched depended on them.

We got an early start to float down the Kasilof River to photograph wildlife. We dropped in the water below Tustumena Lake along with many other boats. Almost all those boats were carrying fishermen. The sockeye salmon were swimming upriver and concentrate close to the gravel bars. The fishermen were lined up along the gravel bars, evenly spaced to allow for casting their fly rods, to attempt to catch one of the fish. Since spawning sockeye stop feeding once they enter freshwater, anglers are not enticing them to bite. Instead, they drift a bare hook through the schools, hoping it catches in the fish’s mouth as it moves upstream.

Once they successfully catch a fish, it is filleted and the remains returned to the environment. The entire waterway was lined with gulls and eagles awaiting their chance. The eagles usually waited for the gulls to grab the fish to steal it from them.

I particularly enjoyed seeing the different plumages of the juvenile bald eagles. Although juvenile bald eagles all eventually develop the iconic white head and tail of adulthood, each immature bird seems to wear its own unique patchwork of brown and white feathers along the way. Bald eagles don’t acquire their full adult plumage until they are about five years old, making it possible to see several different “teenage” looks at the same time.

There were a variety of ducks in the water and some loons, but my favorite were the merganser chicks. There were two mother mergansers each with a large group of ducklings in tow. The most dramatic moment came when one mother merganser rested on a gravel bar with her brood. A juvenile bald eagle suddenly swooped toward the family. In an instant the ducklings scrambled onto their mother’s back, and the eagle came away empty-taloned. Apparently scavenging salmon remains was an easier meal than catching alert ducklings.

There were numerous arctic terns, particularly around the places in the river with some rapids. They were also fishing but for smaller fish.

Despite the steady procession of boats and fishermen, the wildlife simply adapted. Eagles waited for opportunities, gulls patrolled the shorelines, terns hunted the shallows, and the mergansers protected their young. It reminded me that while people come to the Kasilof for the salmon, the river belongs to an entire community of wildlife that has been making the most of the annual salmon run long before we arrived.

Today’s gift was watching a juvenile bald eagle discover that an alert merganser mother is a much tougher opponent than a pile of salmon remains.