Foxsea
Well-Known Member
The fish travel hundreds of thousands of kilometres through the ocean and then fight the current swimming upstream to spawn — and die — in the same fresh water where they hatched.
The juvenile salmon then make the same journey in reverse to find the ocean foraging grounds of their forebears.
"Given that the animals have never been there before, how do they find their way?" asks Nathan Putman, a biologist at the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University and lead author of a new study that may have the answer.
It's been a widely held belief that ocean current delivers the salmon to these spots, but Putman and his colleagues found that doesn't appear to be the case.
"While this can certainly help in some situations, more recent studies suggest that it isn't entirely reliable," he says in an email.
A study by the same researchers last year on B.C. salmon in the Fraser River suggested adults used the magnetic field to find home.
more at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/young-salmon-navigate-with-built-in-magnetic-compass-1.2525934
The juvenile salmon then make the same journey in reverse to find the ocean foraging grounds of their forebears.
"Given that the animals have never been there before, how do they find their way?" asks Nathan Putman, a biologist at the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University and lead author of a new study that may have the answer.
It's been a widely held belief that ocean current delivers the salmon to these spots, but Putman and his colleagues found that doesn't appear to be the case.
"While this can certainly help in some situations, more recent studies suggest that it isn't entirely reliable," he says in an email.
A study by the same researchers last year on B.C. salmon in the Fraser River suggested adults used the magnetic field to find home.
more at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/young-salmon-navigate-with-built-in-magnetic-compass-1.2525934