Photographer River Bruce watched as myriad predators of water, salmon, met flying carnivores on Oct. 3, 2020. Seizing the opportunity, the gulls scavenged by pecking the eyes out of fish that ventured into shallow waters.

Pulaski, New York, is home to a world-class salmon fishery: the Salmon River. Anglers travel from around the world to fish the public and private portions of this river every fall when salmon spawn.

Jim Root prepares his fly rod Oct 17 at the Douglaston Salmon Run in Pulaski, N.Y.

Sportsmen gather at the Salmon River to catch chinook, atlantic and king salmon, Sept 25, 2020 in the public waters of the Salmon River in Pulaski, N.Y.

Jim Root, Sportsman Channel TV host, catches a Chinook salmon at the Douglaston Salmon Run, Pulaski, New York, Oct. 17, 2020.

Steve Gogulski, retired Marine Corps master sgt., catches a chinook salmon with a snag technique that requires him to hook the fish in its gills, Sept. 25, 2020.

Steve Gogulski, retired Marine Corps master sgt., spends his retirment hunting and fishing with the people he met while serving. On Sept. 15, 2020, he poses with an Atlantic salmon – his dinner.

Dying effort: From the Atlantic Ocean and through the fresh waters of New York, a female chinook salmon swims upstream filled with life, but ready to die. A successful journey requires hundreds of miles against the current while avoiding the hooks of sportsmen and the claws of wildlife. At the journey’s end, she releases up to 17 thousand eggs, buries them and dies shortly after. Her decaying body provides hatchlings with their first nutrients and a taste of the future. Captured: Sept, 25, 2020

A gull pecks the eyes out of a chinook salmon, after the fish swam into shallow water on Oct. 17, 2020. Salmon were spawning and swiming upstream through the Salmon River in Pulaski, N.Y.