The Salmon's Life Cycle
This is one of the great mysteries of nature. These great silver fish
can live in both freshwater and sea water. They travel thousands of miles away from the place where they were hatched - and still find their way back to their parent stream in order to lay eggs. They travel
upstream, against the flow of a river, and have the ability to leap up to ten feet in the air to clear waterfalls. Salmon eggs are laid in the autumn in the gravel beds of fresh water streams and are left
to incubate during the winter. In February, tiny salmon know as "alevins" hatch out and live in the gravel on the riverbed. These alevins emerge from the gravel as "fry" in May.
Depending on their species, the fry either migrate to the sea immediately or continue to mature in the river for a year or more. Once the young salmon have matured in the river they are called
"fingerlings" or "smolts" and migrate downstream to the sea. When they are mature, up to six years later they turn and race back thousands of miles, finding their natal stream by smell.
They arrive just in time for the spawning, and the life cycle begins all over again. |
