Summary to Song of the Blue Ocean by Carl Safina
In Carl Safina’s writings of Song for the Blue Ocean, he reflects on his and others take on what is currently going on to the salmon across the Northwest. As you can clearly see from his writing he truly admires this animal and so do many of the people he introduces us to. He shares with us the ridicule’s many industries, whom are harming the salmon have laid plainly before us and we fall for without any second thought. He begins his work with a very descriptive story of a female salmon who has fulfilled her life’s purpose to spawn, and is now dying. As he ends that story and leaves us with a beautiful yet powerful quote he goes into talking about the life of a salmon. Salmon are born in freshwater rivers, and after a time, sometimes months or even years they head out to the ocean where they will make an amazing journey. “Some Pacific salmon’s range extends from central California up and around the Pacific Rim and down the Asian coast to Japan.” This is almost nothing to the long trip home many have to take, some even traveling up to thousand miles through the Columbia River and into the Rockies, and some travel even farther than that, and do not forsake that some of them have traveled already possibly thousands of miles just to reach freshwater. Fish that spawn in freshwater but spend most of their lives in the sea are called anadromous. They do this because of the security that the streams have for their eggs, but being as food is limited they must go feast in the everlasting buffet in the ocean, although recent times have made their ability to breed in freshwater rivers more of a weakness than a strength. Because human expansion and industrial growth many of the rivers and streams where the salmon were plenty have been forsaken by them, already being that only one in three thousand salmon survive to their whole life until they spawn this is a devastating toll. The author introduces us to Paul Engelmeyer who he claims is a, “rural conservationist