Salmon Life Cyle
This week I learned about the salmon life cycle and how their journey begins. Fish come upstream and lay their eggs in the creek or high on a river bed where the water is cool and constantly flowing. When the hatchlings are born they feed on their egg sack until their old enough to catch food they are called fry. Then they become fingerling and travel to deep pools of water covered by wood or branches that provide shade, food and shelter. Eventually maturing enough to migrate back into the ocean. They go through smoltering for their bodies to adjust to the ocean. The salmon then travel great lengths looking for food and maturing. They stay in the ocean for about three years before their bodies instincts tell them its time to spawn. Once they have spawned they have completed their journey and they die... Their hatchlings repeat the cycle time and time again.
One thing that amazes me about salmon is their ability to remember where they came from and how to get to their spawning grounds. I think that's very special in an animal species. One thing that I found very interesting is how the salmon sacrifice everything including their lives to have a chance at spawning.
I think people should be concerned if salmon stop showing up because that means there is something wrong with our water. As we know salmon have limiting factors to what environments' they can live in. If we have to many nutrients in water then oxygen levels decrease and the water becomes eutrophic then the salmon die. We also have to take into consideration overfishing of these species and decrease in food in the ocean could mean the waters are contaminated or food is becoming scares in the wild. Salmon are a great food supply to a lot of species.
If you would like to learn more about salmon check out this YouTube video.
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