Salmon: The Brave Migraters

The brave migraters, Salmon, were born in fresh water, but they spent most of their life in the ocean. To get to the ocean, they need to migrate along the current, where bears might be waiting for a tasty meal. However, these salmon are hard to catch. They are fast and strong, so they might slip out of a bear’s claws with their speed.

In the ocean, the juveniles will feed and grow, sucking up nutrition and healthy substances, preparing to mate and to spawn.

After that, they will face the rough journey of migrating back to their home area, where they were born. They use their “superpowers” to find the way home – usually done with their nose and spacial reference from magnetic forces. When they go back, they may have to travel nearly 2,000 miles to get to where they were born, going 34 miles a day for 60 days. Going upstream is a very difficult thing, for you are going backwards with the current, but you need to go forward.

While going upstream, they might face severe obstacles like waterfalls, in which they need to propel themselves upwards with powerful tail flips to leap onto. However, sometimes this results in injuries, making them tired and hurt. If you look at a salmon after the migration, most of the time you will find scars on their body. People call them “migration scars”. After going on a long journey without any food, salmon rely on the fat they stored in the ocean. If they didn’t fatten up enough, they might feel that they don’t have enough energy.

After migrating back to their birth place, salmon need to produce new babies. The female creates a nest in the gravel and lays her eggs, then the male fertilizes and covers the eggs. The salmon usually die after that because they don’t have enough energy to do anything else.

The life of a salmon is incredible, beyond words, and their dedication and efforts during the “salmon run” always motivate me when I’m facing challenges.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_run