Tom Reimchen

“The whole idea of the salmon forest being connected is that the nitrogen that salmon accumulate in the middle of the Pacific Ocean ultimately ends up in the canopy in these ancient forests, and spiders in the canopy still have that nitrogen from the middle of the ocean, it’s sort of, its eliminated the idea of the land and the sea being two separate things. I had no concept of this at all before.

I had been previously prepped for the marine-terrestrial connection 10 years earlier when I was studying stickleback at Drizzle Lake. We found that Red-throated loons do not feed their chicks fish from the lake but rather fly to the ocean about 15 times a day and bring marine fish back to the young in the lake. The adults brought from 500 to 1000 small marine fish to the lake each summer. We published this in 1984 and 1985. However, I did not think of the broader implications of this transfer at that time.

Working with the bears and salmon and insects, I really recognized the continuity of these ecosystems from the ocean through to the forest. In some ways it was a bit of an “Aha” moment, but it developed slowly over time, everytime I turned the corner, not sure whether my new set of measurements were going to be supportive or not. At the very beginning it could have gone in any direction. But then my confidence expanded that this was a real thing that was happening.”

—Dr. Tom Reimchen, Ecological Geneticist and Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria

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