Is that a bird or a fish?

Yesterday my spouse and I were going around Stanley Park on the Seawall when we saw things jumping out of the water just to the east of the Lions Gate Bridge. It looked a bit like white birds fishing, but after looking closely for a couple of minutes... it looked like fish! Yes! It's fish jumping out of the water!

We've never seen fish jumping out of the water! So a googling was called for.

I think those exuberantly jumping fish were Coho Salmon! From the scientific sites my googling found, it seems they are spawning right now, and the Burrard Inlet is one of the places where they do that!

I've seen films of salmon jumping out of the water to get up rocky streams, but the Burrard Inlet is a deep body of water. A cruise ship on its way up to Alaska went out of the inlet shortly after we saw the fish jumping in the same place. So there are no rocks for them to jump over out there. Are they just so jazzed to be going upstream that they are jumping happy? Are they trying to get rid of parasites that started letting go once the fresh water started hitting them? I've heard this is one of the reasons why whales breach (jump out of the water) - to get rid of unwanted parasites clinging to them.

It was a really cool thing to witness, fish jumping out of the water so close to where we live in a big city!