Every year Vancouver resident Stephen Ottridge takes hamburgers or steak to his street’s annual summer block party.

This year, against the backdrop of what looks to be the biggest sockeye salmon run in almost a century in the nearby Fraser River, he arrived with a salmon large enough to fill the whole barbecue.

“There is a cornucopia of salmon this year, so we decided to treat the block to some,” Ottridge said from the city on Canada’s Pacific Coast, where marine experts are both puzzled and delighted by the unexpected glut of the bright-red, succulent fish.