An Introduction

While working with recovery of salmon and steelhead in the Northwest USA, I got more and more fascinated with the diversity that exists within this taxonomic group of fish. I also got first hand understanding of the peril that many salmon populations are in. But what hit me the most were the many cultural and social bonds that people and communities have to local species of salmonids. And I realized that every fish has a story–and that that story is inextricable from our own.

Eventually I knew that I had to explore and see more than just the species that I worked on on a daily basis. I needed to travel around the world and see these different fish. But most of all, I needed to tell the story of both fish and men. In 2010 I gave up my job with NMFS to go and live in Cairo, Egypt, for two months. Consequently, in March 2010 I found myself back home without a job and unsure what the next stage of my life should be. I knew I was not ready to go back to a cubicle, instead I wanted to do something to inspire conservation of biological diversity to protect our own wellbeing. While the rest of the conservation community have an affinity for exotic tropical places and animals, I felt a bigger threat to the biological diversity in temperate and sub-arctic areas. This I knew was a story that also needed to be told - and what would be better than to do it from the vantage point of salmon fishes? Thus I saw my chance to do something that I realized that I had unconsciously planned for a long time. Dreaming as much of meeting the people and communities that are threatened by the loss of their resource as seeing the different species themselves, I eventually launched the Great Salmon Tour project in 2010.

Using my own resources and with invaluable local help and support, I set out on travels to learn about subsistence fishery for Pacific salmon in Alaska, small boat coastal Chinook salmon fishery in California, research and local fish farming in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and taimen salmon conservation and Buddhism in Mongolia. Traveling through these beautiful but highly different areas, I met with and interviewed first nation tribal members, commercial salmon fishermen, scientists, entrepreneurs, nomads, and Buddhist monks. Each community and people being different from the other but all having in common that in some way they were connected to salmon fishes. I am working to put the material from these expeditions together for presentations in media, talks, and conferences. And, as this material is coming together to tell a story, it is clear that these first Great Salmon Tour expeditions were a tale about Fish and Men.