Salmon : The journey home is always worth it!
I recently had a fin-tastic experience of seeing salmons in Juneau, Alaska. They were leaping and bounding like they were auditioning for the Olympics!
Did you know? The word “salmon” comes from the Latin word salmo or salire, which means “to leap”.
Salmon have a remarkable ability to find their way back to their home. Born in freshwater rivers, they spend most of their lives in the ocean. When it’s time to have babies, they travel thousands of miles from the ocean to their freshwater birthplace by tracing back the smell of the stream they were born in!!
Anadromous migration is the term for the behavior of fish that travel up rivers from the sea to breed.
Once they reach their birthplace, they create nests in the gravel, and lay their eggs. The males fertilize the eggs, and the cycle begins again! This is known as spawning.
Salmons undergo dramatic physical changes as they prepare to spawn. Female salmons change color to attract a spawning mate, and male salmon develop a hooked jaw during spawning called a kype. After spawning, adult salmon die and their bodies provide nourishment for bears and other wildlife.
A salmon run is an annual natural phenomenon where salmons migrate to their spawning grounds.
Imagine thousands of salmon leaping up a river, with bears waiting on the sidelines like hungry fans. The salmon run in Katmai National Park is undoubtedly one of the must-see experiences on my bucket list.
