Breathing Currents olfactory installation will be presented in July 2025 at Bainbridge Island Land Trust’s annual fundraising event.
This olfactory installation explores our interconnection with all life on Earth, using the salmon’s journey as a reflection of our own existence.
Salmon know the scent of their home stream intimately. In their inhalation of water, they find home; in their exhalation, they return to the earth, completing a cycle of life and death.
Through three scents, I invite you to breathe their currents, to recognize that we breathe each other in, and that our identities dissolve into the greater web of life.
We are part of something much larger—forever connected, forever returning.
About the Trust
Bainbridge Island Land Trust is a private non-profit organization with a mission to conserve and steward the diverse natural environments of Bainbridge Island. Since 1989, the Trust has worked to protect and restore Bainbridge Island’s natural ecosystems—forests, wetlands, meadows, shorelines, streams, and more.
Salmon remember the smell of their birth stream.
That is how they find their way back.
What scents do they smell?
Explore three abstract interpretations of the scents they might encounter in their journey.
Little fish awake in a safe stream...
Scent Notes:
Fresh. Cologne. Happy.
Bright. Sunlight.
Morning.
Young fish explore the oceans...
Scent Notes:
Salty. Marine. Seaweed.
Confident. Strong
Daytime.
The adults pass on leaving their legacy...
Scent Notes:
Mulch. Earth. Moist.
Somber. Dark
Night.
Smell is the most primal of our senses. It transcends language, evokes memory, influences our feeling of well-being, and even helps with nutrition. The aromas we smell retronasally play an important part in perceiving the flavor of our food.
Through my perfumery practice and olfactive experiences, I explore how scents shape our understanding of the natural world—and how they might help us feel closer to our landscapes and ecosystems.
The habitats of salmon are fragile. Even small pollutants or climate-driven changes in water chemistry—can interfere with their ability to smell. In fact, Dr. Dittman’s other research showed how elevated carbon dioxide levels can impair a salmon’s ability to detect ‘danger scents’ in water. <Ref.1>
The Breathing Currents project is an abstract interpretation—so we can come closer to the salmon’s journey. To breathe in their world. To reflect on the deep interconnectedness of life on Earth. And to remind us to be stewards of their land.
I’ve lived across several continents. When I moved away from home, I often found myself longing for the familiar scents of the jungles, rivers, and mountains I grew up around in India. Sometimes I carried perfume oils or incense with me. I remember how, on dark winter nights in London, these bottled scents and their memories transported me back home.
That search for scent is what eventually led me to become a perfumer. In many ways, the salmon’s journey felt familiar.
Through scents, we belong.
We find home.
When I began reading about salmon for this project, I was fascinated by their sense of smell and how central it is to their survival. They remember the scent of the stream they were born in and form a kind of “imprint.” They navigate back to the same stream by remembering this imprint.
I had a lot of questions.
The fish are so young when they are born in freshwater rivers and streams. At what point are they "mature enough" to know smells? How do they smell? What do they smell? Do they really remember them? How?
Among the many scientists who have researched this subject is Dr. Andrew Dittman (https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/contact/andrew-dittman-phd).
He is a Research Fish Biologist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in the Environmental Physiology Program. For over 15 years, he has studied the olfactory physiology and behavior of fishes, particularly salmonids.
He was very kind and spent time with me on the phone answering my very non scientific questions.
Salmon go through several distinct life stages, starting as eggs, which hatch into tiny alevins. These grow into little fish, called fry, then change their colors to become smolts as they prepare to enter the ocean. As adults, some salmon species undergo dramatic physical changes before returning to spawn. Their sense of smell is key at all stages of their life.
Dr. Dittman and his team conducted a study about how olfactory imprinting in pink salmon happens at a very early stage. <Ref 2>
They introduced a scent—phenyl ethyl alcohol, or PEA—into the water just after the salmon hatched, while they were still under gravel. Two years later, in a Y shaped tank, the adult salmon consistently swam toward the arm of the tank with PEA. The fish remembered!
But what made the perfumer in me smile is that PEA smells like roses. It’s one of the most common materials used in perfumery and is a naturally-occurring compound that contributes to the fragrance of roses.
That salmon could smell roses—and by saying that I am taking a very, very wide poetic license—made my perfumer’s heart melt
Though the study of homing in salmon is still evolving, scientists believe that salmon detect extremely subtle cues in freshwater. Some of these are dissolved amino acids <Ref. 3> and other organic compounds. While they may not be the only markers <Ref. 4>, a stream might have a unique blend of these odorants, which act like a scent map.
Salmon don’t have noses, of course, but they detect chemosensory cues using an organ called the olfactory rosette, and a relatively large olfactory bulb.
Scent plays a strong role in all phases of the salmon’s lifecycle, and their olfactory organ undergoes changes throughout life. <Ref. 5>
When salmon imprint, they aren’t just “learning” the scents—the process involves their smell receptors tuning themselves to be extra responsive to the natal odor. <Ref.6>
It’s like being able to remember a new song and pick it out in a noisy restaurant.
Of course, humans can’t perceive these kinds of smells the way fish do. In fact, some of the smells of these amino acids could be quite off-putting to our noses—think fishy, sulfuric, or the smell of decaying matter.
But I wanted to create some sort of scent map for the lifecycle of salmon as they travel through fresh waters, oceans, and back again. I used my perfumer’s imagination to interpret these chemical cues into scents inspired by their journey.
How might a river smell to them when they are young and fresh? How different might the ocean appear to their “noses”? And when they come back to spawn and die, might it have a strong, dark, earthy pull?
I translated these ideas into scents that we, can relate to—without overwhelming our senses. I created accords with various aroma materials, offering a gentle, immersive experience of what it might mean to “smell like a salmon.”
In perfumery, an accord means a combination of scents which, when mixed together, combine to form a distinct fragrance.
I created three scent journeys (see details above): their birth in the river, their journey into the oceans, and then back again for spawning.
For people to experience these scents, I created a non-intrusive, convenient delivery mechanism using flasks and a hand pump: A soft hand pump pushes air through a tube into a glass flask holding tissue drenched in the accord. The scent rises through a funnel, allowing visitors to lean in and take a mindful whiff without spraying into the open air.
There’s no electricity or sprays—only a simple, tactile connection. The act of squeezing the bulb invites participation and makes the experience more interactive.
Postcard-sized cards next to each funnel explain the scent notes, while a display describes the project. I include an illustration of the salmon and their habitat as a visual cue. A curated playlist of underwater salmon footage from publicly available YouTube videos is being streamed on an iPad. A small speaker nearby provides ambient underwater sound. A QR code on the display frame is linked to this page on my website.
