The cries and barks of seagulls and sea lions at the Chilkoot and Chilkat Rivers can be heard as the spring-time eulachon run begins to materialize.

On Monday, Sally McGuire, who lives on the banks of the Chilkoot River, said she’s seen sealions exploring the river for several days.

“Today there are a few in the daytime checking things out,” McGuire wrote to the CVN. “Also, some seagulls which are my favorite part of the run.  So far, we aren’t seeing signs of fish, but let us hope!”

Chilkoot Indian Association field technician Meredith Pochardt has been monitoring both rivers and on Monday told the CVN that eulachon were also spotted in the Taiya River near Skagway.

“When we went out there this morning, we saw a bunch of slicks in the water in Lutak. It seems like they’re moving in. There has been a lot of action for maybe a week now on the Chilkat.”

On Tuesday, she spotted the fish in the Chilkoot River.

“There’s a small school of eulachon under the bridge,” she said. “Maybe more moving in at high tide.”

On Wednesday morning, both McGuire and Pochardt saw a few fish in the Chilkoot.

“Very few this morning,” McGuire said. “It will be interesting to see if they come back.”

The run typically arrives sometime between April 18 and May 6 and lasts anywhere from a week to ten days.

“As the run comes in, we’re monitoring every day to see when the fish show up in the Chilkoot,” Pochardt said. “Once we see fish, we start gearing up the mark recapture crews. We wait for the fish to get established, part of Tlingit tradition is to let them get established, to let the ‘scouts’ get in and give it a day or two.”

Last year the run failed to materialize on the Chilkoot, but the Chilkat experienced a huge run based on local anecdotes and environmental DNA samples.

Eulachon are sensitive to environmental changes and are opportunistic, not tied to a specific river like salmon. They likely chose the high-volume Chilkat because water levels in the other rivers were low, Pochardt told the CVN in March, adding that a lot of factors, including human activity, influence where the fish run.

The 2020 and 2019 Chilkoot River returns were some of the biggest on record.

Scientists know very little about the ocean life of eulachon, and make assumptions based on what they know about herring. After the eulachon spawn, they swim back out to the ocean. The larvae hatch and are “at the whim of the ocean at that point,” Pochardt said.

The fish play a major role in Tlingit culture. Their oil is rendered and used as food and gave rise to the “Grease Trail,” the famous trade route from the Chilkat Valley to the Interior.

“The eulachon are endowed with lots of light,” former CIA fisheries specialist Ted Hart told the CVN last May. “They’re the people of the light. When Raven released the light, people were fishing for eulachon and they got scared and took off but the hooligan were left there and all that light went into the hooligan. Light can be a lot of things: good energy, physical light.”