salmon’s journey to sea:

The salmon’s journey to sea and back to fresh water is very interesting.

The salmon travel hundreds, some times thousands, of miles (km) upstream over-coming numerous obstacles along the migration route – small waterfalls, fast-flowing streams, very shallow waters, and the numerous predators (= animals that kill and eat them)!! Several salmon die on the way! The natural obstacles, such as small waterfalls, rapids, shallow streams are overcome very easily, but the man-made obstacles, such as dams on rivers, diversions of rivers, and water pollution, make it very difficult for the salmon to overcome because these unnatural obstacles are not imprinted in their genes.  And if an adult does not reach its place of birth, it does not spawn (does not lay eggs), but just dies of exhaustion!!! A salmon can jump up to 12 feet high to cross an obstacle on the way!

Therefore, to make it easy for the salmon to overcome these man-made obstacles, the dam building engineers have come up with ‘fish ladders’ which are nothing but some steps with pools of water in them built on the sides of the dams so that the salmon jump into one step over the other (a small pool of water), and on to the other side of the dam!! In addition to the natural and man-made obstacles on the way to their breeding waters, salmon are eaten by several animals all along their migration route – birds, bears, and humans hunt them!  It is estimated that out of 8,000 young salmon (parr) only two live to the adult stage and lay eggs (only two breeding adult will survive)!!!

The adult salmon in the non-breeding season are very normal looking, but when they reach adult stage and are ready to spawn (to lay eggs), the males develop hook-shaped jaws and change to bright colours! After overcoming these many natural and man-made obstacles and escaping number of predators, the salmon fish reach their place of birth and lay eggs, but soon after they die!  From the time they start on their journey back to the fresh water body where they were born, the salmon fish stop eating – all through their journey they fight against the odds, and after laying the eggs (spawning) these brave fish die of exhaustion!!!

The salmon are a very popular food and game fish – they are fished for food and for fun in several parts of the world!!

Figures of Speech:

1. salmon (noun)  =  a pinkish orange colour

2. a hook well lost to catch a salmon (= it does not matter if you lose a hook while catching a salmon fish) [said to imply that one should prepare for small losses to get large gains]

3. it is not everyone to catch a salmon [said to mean that different people have different chances, luck, etc.]

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