Feb 19th, 2016: Kamchatka Salmon

[Snakeadelic]

I've watched most of the episodes Netflix has of the show "River Monsters", whose host we refer to as The Mad Angler, and it's got a lot to do with my personal opinion that swimming/playing in 'wild' water is all of the Hell no. A recent episode had him somewhere in far eastern Siberia, can't remember if it was Kamchatka or elsewhere, looking for what turned out to be the only sturgeon with a forward-facing mouth. The rest all have their mouth facing the riverbed, like a ray, but there's one species built like a regular fish and WOW scary.

Just as scary: when he discovered the only way to get anywhere near one without getting arrested because they've been overfished and trying to catch them is very, very illegal, he found a scientific team to catch up with who were allowed to catch & release the things. The river they were fishing in was one of many in the area to have experienced unusually warm temperatures in the water--up to 76 degrees Fahrenheit. The translator went on about how the scientists were saying they kept seeing this problem, because at that temperature most of the salmon trying to mass up to assault the tributaries were dead before they even started changing into their breeding forms.

Siberia's just a scary place. Couple of years ago I read (maybe even on this forum) about a research team in the taiga forests who encountered a vampire moth. Color me NOPE!