Swimming with the Campbell River Salmon Run Part 1 of 2
Channel: Flossy Roxx
Date: 2021-08-14

After much ocean swimming this Summer I was given the opportunity to swim with Salmon for the first time.  A creature who inhabits both fresh and salt water, we were mesmerized. Come with us from Campbell River to the one of the clearest ocean dive spots I’ve seen all summer.

Led by a guide willing to haul in all our swimming gear, we headed up the trail first to a canyon where the river slowed and the water was over 60ft deep.

We wore our thick wetsuits to stay warm in the glacial river – it was only slightly warmed by the summer sun.  These suits are super buoyant making it a very relaxing swim upstream, I was surprised though, at how deep I could dive without the ocean’s saltiness keeping me bobbing at the surface.

The sunlight just dances on the river rocks, and the sound of water calms the mind, washing away world’s cares.  Further up the river, the calm transitioned into bubbling power and rushing ferocity.  We found an eddy to sneak up a little further so we could ride the current, body surfing the rapids around and again. 

The fresh cold river is not only the home of the salmon spawn, it’s also the habitat of lots of large fresh water crayfish. I managed to pick up both this dead one and a live one which wasn’t too happy about it!

Our next stop was a little further down the river just before a little weir, a shallower stronger current where the salmon amassed before they made their jumps up the next few rapids. 
We had been waiting in great anticipation to be in the river surrounded by masses of fish. I think in this anticipation we forgot that fish are not blind, and we look like large dark moving creatures in the water, similar to a number of other predators that come to feed on salmon. As we floated down the river we did indeed see lots of fish, which on a moving camera is hard to capture, and after a little they must have moved down a little waiting till we left to move on their journey up the river.

Leading up to this trip I had expected my footage to look more like this, beautiful shots of salmon swimming lazily in front of my camera but this is definitely not filmed by a person being tumbled rapidly downstream!  Some of the fish we saw REALLY large, and some were even showing signs of disintegration – starting to complete the cycle of nature that they were fighting their way up stream to do.  
I tried my best to capture all these although the detail was almost impossible to film while moving so fast, and the large fish I saw probably NOT the actual size of a Tuna, but you can hear how excited I was about it!

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Freediving with Salmon Crayfish Campbell River Salmon Run Mako Wetsuit Snorkeling River Fish Beautiful British Columbia Vancouver Island Out doors hiking forest Salmon Fishing