" It’s a good thing to remember in our daily life about
Sacrificial Life of Salmon "
Every four years, millions of sockeye salmon journey thousands
of miles from the ocean back to their native spawning grounds in Canada's
Fraser River. There, after eggs are laid, the parents die. Then the cycle
begins anew as the next generation of salmon makes its way down the river and
into the ocean.
Truly, an individual salmon’s story is a fascinating tale of
miraculous transformation, perilous adventure, enormous effort, and ultimate
sacrifice.
It’s a true story
which I am going to share with you. It is posted on line by Ms. Annie Reneau.
This stories is 100% credited to her.
Thank you , all readers.
Sayagyiseinmaung
Thank you , all readers.
Sayagyiseinmaung
Sam’s story
Sam’s story starts in the fresh waters of the Sammamish
river, where she hatches under a bed of gravel, along with thousands of her
siblings. The little salmon babies immediately head downstream, feeding on the
nutrient-rich insect larvae that line the riverbed. They’re headed for the
Pacific Ocean.
After they’ve taken their time swimming down the length of
the river, they arrive at Lake Washington, smack dab in the middle of Seattle.
Lake Washington leads straight into Puget Sound, but the two bodies of water
are separated by the Chittenden Locks.
The main purposes of the locks are ;
1) to keep the freshwater and saltwater separate, so as not
to mess with each ecosystem,
2) to keep the water level of Lake Washington stable at 20
to 22 feet above sea level, and
3) to move boats from one water level to the other.
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This is where
boats enter the lock.
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| This is the gate opening to let a boat out into the lake after the lock has been filled. Imagine the gate being closed and the water on the other side of it down about 20 feet. That’s what the lock is like before it’s filled. Trust me, it’s cool. |
So, it’s basically a dam, and the locks themselves are like
holding tanks/elevators for ships going through the channel. The boat enters
the lock, the gates close, and water is either pumped in or out of the lock
(depending on whether the boat is going into Lake Washington, which is higher,
or out to Puget Sound, which is lower) to the appropriate level.
Then the gates open on the other side, and the boat moves
on. It’s pretty fun to watch the ships go up and down. Quite a feat of
engineering.
Sam arrives at the locks as a smolt (a little teenage
salmon, basically). Miraculously, during her journey to the locks, her body has
undergone an amazing transition called smoltification, in which she changes from
a freshwater creature to a saltwater one. How bizarre and cool is that? (And
how fun of a word is smoltification?)
Since the locks are blocking her way to the sound, Sam
appears to be stuck in the lake at first. But no worries, the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers who built the locks took great care to make sure the salmon cycle
wouldn’t be disturbed. For the smolts heading to the sound, they have these
super fun slides to ride.
Sam gets to the spillway and the slide shoots her and her
smolt friends on through, tail first. No harm done. Whoosh! Welcome to Puget
Sound, Sam!
Sam will swim through the sound and spend the next several
years hanging out in the Pacific, growing larger and stronger and gathering up
all the rich nutrients from the ocean’s saltwater. She’ll have a few narrow
escapes with fishing nets and killer whales, but she’ll survive.
Then suddenly, one day, she’ll feel an overwhelming urge to
return to the Sammamish river where she was hatched. This longing for home will
lead her right back to the locks, where she will encounter another brilliant
feat of engineering: The Fish Ladder.
Now let me tell you, Sam is an excellent jumper. She can
fling herself a good ten feet out of the water, at least. But the 22 feet she’d
need to jump to clear the dam would be pretty impossible. And the chances of
her getting into a lock at just the right time is pretty small.
So the fish ladder gives her an easier (though certainly not
easy) way to ascend to the waters of Lake Washington. Each of the 21 steps of the
ladder goes up about a foot, and Sam can climb up at her own pace. Sometimes
she’ll wriggle her way up the small spill over the step, and sometimes she’s
jump right up out of the water from one step to another.
She swims and jumps upstream the whole way up the ladder.
But that’s okay. She’ll have an upstream swim for the remaining months of her
life. Not only that, she’ll do it without food. She stopped eating shortly
before arriving at the locks, and won’t eat again. Ever. She has a singular
goal – to get back to the riverbed to spawn her eggs. Nothing else matters.
So she climbs the ladder, making the difficult (and
presumably somewhat uncomfortable) transition from saltwater to freshwater
again. The lock engineers gave Sam and her friends an extra long step in the
fish ladder just before they reach the lake, to give them time to make the
transition more slowly. Wasn’t that thoughtful?
Luckily, Sam makes it up the ladder and through Lake
Washington without incident, and over the course of a few months, returns to
her spawning place in the Sammamish River. She’s one of the lucky ones. Only a
small handful of her thousands of siblings have survived to this point.
Once she finds the perfect spot to spawn, she flips herself
onto her side and slaps the gravel with her tail fin, creating a nest of sorts.
Males fight, sometimes to the death, for the right to swim up beside her,
hoping to be the one to fertilize her eggs with his sperm as they fall into the
next. After her first batch of eggs is fertilized and laid, she goes upstream a
bit and makes another nest. Then another. Then another. Why upstream? Because
the stirring up of the riverbed helps to cover the previous nest, protecting
the eggs in several inches of gravel. Brilliant! Sam’s no dummy.
She’s also no slacker mom. She has survived the past few
months without food by cannibalizing herself, using her own body oils and
nutrients to keep her alive long enough to spawn. Once she’s finished spawning,
her thousands of eggs safely tucked away in the gravel, she perishes. Her body,
barely held together until now, breaks apart, and the rich nutrients she
gathered in the Pacific – particularly nitrogen and phosphorous, which she
alone sacrificially offers to the river’s ecosystem – will feed the insect
larvae that live there. And those larvae will ultimately feed her baby salmon
when they hatch.
What a perfect cycle! I hope you find it as fascinating as I
did. Maybe you needed to have that enthusiastic guy there to really drive the
coolness factor home. I think it’s just fantastic.
Interestingly, scientists are really just figuring out how
much of a vital role salmon play in the health of river ecosystems. They bring
nutrients from the ocean that the river doesn’t get anywhere else. They feed
their babies with their dead bodies, yes, but they ultimately provide food and
nutrients for countless other creatures as well.
Just more evidence that we truly are all connected. It’s a
good thing to remember.
She’s also no slacker mom. She has survived the past few
months without food by cannibalizing herself, using her own body oils and
nutrients to keep her alive long enough to spawn. Once she’s finished spawning,
her thousands of eggs safely tucked away in the gravel, she perishes. Her body,
barely held together until now, breaks apart, and the rich nutrients she
gathered in the Pacific – particularly nitrogen and phosphorous, which she
alone sacrificially offers to the river’s ecosystem – will feed the insect
larvae that live there. And those larvae will ultimately feed her baby salmon
when they hatch.
What a perfect cycle! I hope you find it as fascinating as I did. Maybe you needed to have that enthusiastic guy there to really drive the coolness factor home. I think it’s just fantastic.
Interestingly, scientists are really just figuring out how much of a vital role salmon play in the health of river ecosystems. They bring nutrients from the ocean that the river doesn’t get anywhere else. They feed their babies with their dead bodies, yes, but they ultimately provide food and nutrients for countless other creatures as well.
Just more evidence that we truly are all connected.
It’s a good thing to remember.
Credited to Original writer Ms.Annie Reneau
