Looking for a novel adventure? Snorkelling with thousands of Pacific salmon in Vancouver Island's Campbell River is guaranteed to add a little excitement to your life…if you catch the drift.
BY MATHIEU LAMARRE
The West has enthralled me as far back as I can remember. The Lone Ranger, Once Upon a Time in the West, shots of the Calgary stampede in the yellowing pages of an old National Geographic. I was forever imagining myself out on the plains, galloping alongside a herd of bison or rounding up some wild horses to take back to the corral.
But it wasn't until the summer of my 35th year that I finally answered Horace Greeley's immortal call, "Go West, young man!" Gathering the horsepower to ride off into the sunset, I set out to visit Canada's westernmost province for the first time. I quickly learned that in another sense, it's also Canada's most Eastern province. Perhaps I'd been too long in the saddle, figuratively speaking, but I found that in British Columbia, chopsticks outnumber chaps and people prefer fish patties to steer burgers.
Befuddled but nevertheless determined to play John Wayne, I contacted Paradise Found Adventure Tours, an outfitter in the tranquil town of Campbell River. Their recommendation for adventure-starved city slickers: an afternoon of snorkelling with 80,000 salmon in full-throttle migration. My inner Clint Eastwood champed at the bit.
A minibus transported our group of 10 to the shores of the crystalline river, which flows amid pine-scented forests. Doubt stirred within me as we were instructed to don full-body wetsuits - akin to putting on weird, uncomfortably humid rubber jeans - plus mask, snorkel and bizarrely colourful, enormously long fins. But, ever the optimist, I decided to overlook this unorthodox beginning, took a deep breath and threw myself into the river.
And that's where I finally caught the drift of the whole exercise. Instead of riding a horse, I was riding the river itself. And the creatures flying past below me were not bison or mustangs, but thousands of Pacific salmon, huge fish up to a metre in length.
Unique Tour
Spawning season, which runs from July to October, draws five salmon species and two trout species to Vancouver Island rivers. For nearly 50 years now, local snorkellers have braved the cold rushing waters to recover lures and artificial flies lost in the riverbed. Paradise Found came into being in 1997, when Catherine Temple and Jamie Turko hit upon the idea of making this activity into an ecotour that's the only one of its kind in the world: snorkelling with salmon.
Swept along by the current, the snorkellers attempt to follow the frenetic course charted by the fish, which are heading in the opposite direction. The water temperature is a chilly 14° C, so you're inclined to move around a lot, partly to stay warm and partly to get closer to the fish instead of simply floating along like a felled log.
On the other hand, getting souvenir snapshots of yourself among the salmon is tricky because it calls for holding still. To the fish, the unidentified floating objects travelling past overhead are of no interest. Unless, that is, someone has ignored the advice to remove all rings and earrings, which are surprisingly attractive lures to salmon.
"We work with the inspectors at Fisheries and Oceans Canada to make sure our presence doesn't affect the natural spawning process," Turko said during the preliminary briefing. "But the sport has been so successful and is becoming so popular that we're thinking about establishing our own limits on the number of participants," Temple added. "We've also started offering related activities like trekking and whale watching, and we're looking at snorkelling with sea lions in the Strait of Georgia." Clearly these are environmentally aware entrepreneurs who plan to carefully manage their new tourism resource.
Snorkelling with salmon can't really be compared to a rodeo-on-water because the run is down the bottom few kilometres of the Campbell River, where the water is generally very - although when you're underwater, the current along the rocky riverbed can seem impressively fast. The most danger you'll encounter comes in the shallow areas, where the guides remind you to keep your arms stretched out in front of your body so that you'll float right over the rocks. Periodically, you find yourself waving at fishermen on the riverbank who have no way of knowing, as you do, just how many salmon and trout are streaming past right under their noses.
Towards the end of the outing, in the deep-water tidal pools at the mouth of the estuary, we observed giant Chinook and Tyee salmon - at more than 30 kilos apiece, the Clydesdales of the river. I tried to dive down to mingle with these magnificent specimens, but without weights, a rubber-clad tenderfoot doesn't stand much of a chance.
Instead, I surfaced and swam to the riverbank, as exhausted as an old outlaw who wants only to remove his dusty shirt, sit in the sun and regale his friends with the details of his latest adventure… and then set out again as soon as possible on another wild ride. "Go West, young man!" Just remember to take a towel and bathing suit.
source: Canadian Tourism Commision
This reproduction is not represented as an official version of the materials reproduced, nor has it been made in affiliation with or with the endorsement of the Canadian Tourism Commission.
Click here for more adventures in Canada
Click here for more information on British Columbia
BY MATHIEU LAMARRE
The West has enthralled me as far back as I can remember. The Lone Ranger, Once Upon a Time in the West, shots of the Calgary stampede in the yellowing pages of an old National Geographic. I was forever imagining myself out on the plains, galloping alongside a herd of bison or rounding up some wild horses to take back to the corral.
But it wasn't until the summer of my 35th year that I finally answered Horace Greeley's immortal call, "Go West, young man!" Gathering the horsepower to ride off into the sunset, I set out to visit Canada's westernmost province for the first time. I quickly learned that in another sense, it's also Canada's most Eastern province. Perhaps I'd been too long in the saddle, figuratively speaking, but I found that in British Columbia, chopsticks outnumber chaps and people prefer fish patties to steer burgers.
Befuddled but nevertheless determined to play John Wayne, I contacted Paradise Found Adventure Tours, an outfitter in the tranquil town of Campbell River. Their recommendation for adventure-starved city slickers: an afternoon of snorkelling with 80,000 salmon in full-throttle migration. My inner Clint Eastwood champed at the bit.
A minibus transported our group of 10 to the shores of the crystalline river, which flows amid pine-scented forests. Doubt stirred within me as we were instructed to don full-body wetsuits - akin to putting on weird, uncomfortably humid rubber jeans - plus mask, snorkel and bizarrely colourful, enormously long fins. But, ever the optimist, I decided to overlook this unorthodox beginning, took a deep breath and threw myself into the river.
And that's where I finally caught the drift of the whole exercise. Instead of riding a horse, I was riding the river itself. And the creatures flying past below me were not bison or mustangs, but thousands of Pacific salmon, huge fish up to a metre in length.
Unique Tour
Spawning season, which runs from July to October, draws five salmon species and two trout species to Vancouver Island rivers. For nearly 50 years now, local snorkellers have braved the cold rushing waters to recover lures and artificial flies lost in the riverbed. Paradise Found came into being in 1997, when Catherine Temple and Jamie Turko hit upon the idea of making this activity into an ecotour that's the only one of its kind in the world: snorkelling with salmon.
Swept along by the current, the snorkellers attempt to follow the frenetic course charted by the fish, which are heading in the opposite direction. The water temperature is a chilly 14° C, so you're inclined to move around a lot, partly to stay warm and partly to get closer to the fish instead of simply floating along like a felled log.
On the other hand, getting souvenir snapshots of yourself among the salmon is tricky because it calls for holding still. To the fish, the unidentified floating objects travelling past overhead are of no interest. Unless, that is, someone has ignored the advice to remove all rings and earrings, which are surprisingly attractive lures to salmon.
"We work with the inspectors at Fisheries and Oceans Canada to make sure our presence doesn't affect the natural spawning process," Turko said during the preliminary briefing. "But the sport has been so successful and is becoming so popular that we're thinking about establishing our own limits on the number of participants," Temple added. "We've also started offering related activities like trekking and whale watching, and we're looking at snorkelling with sea lions in the Strait of Georgia." Clearly these are environmentally aware entrepreneurs who plan to carefully manage their new tourism resource.
Snorkelling with salmon can't really be compared to a rodeo-on-water because the run is down the bottom few kilometres of the Campbell River, where the water is generally very - although when you're underwater, the current along the rocky riverbed can seem impressively fast. The most danger you'll encounter comes in the shallow areas, where the guides remind you to keep your arms stretched out in front of your body so that you'll float right over the rocks. Periodically, you find yourself waving at fishermen on the riverbank who have no way of knowing, as you do, just how many salmon and trout are streaming past right under their noses.
Towards the end of the outing, in the deep-water tidal pools at the mouth of the estuary, we observed giant Chinook and Tyee salmon - at more than 30 kilos apiece, the Clydesdales of the river. I tried to dive down to mingle with these magnificent specimens, but without weights, a rubber-clad tenderfoot doesn't stand much of a chance.
Instead, I surfaced and swam to the riverbank, as exhausted as an old outlaw who wants only to remove his dusty shirt, sit in the sun and regale his friends with the details of his latest adventure… and then set out again as soon as possible on another wild ride. "Go West, young man!" Just remember to take a towel and bathing suit.
source: Canadian Tourism Commision
This reproduction is not represented as an official version of the materials reproduced, nor has it been made in affiliation with or with the endorsement of the Canadian Tourism Commission.
Click here for more adventures in Canada
Click here for more information on British Columbia
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