01 Emerge from gravel
Alevins live on yolk in the redd.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed63
Intelligence28
Range86
Resilience50
Cultural impact61
Ecological role88
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Do all salmon die after spawning?
Most Oncorhynchus (Pacific) are semelparous. Salmo salar can spawn more than once. The postcard of corpses on gravel is a Pacific-weighted image.
Why do forests need salmon?
Isotope studies show marine nitrogen in riparian trees and songbirds. Bears and eagles are the visible vectors; the trees keep the receipt.
What did the Elwha dam removals show?
After 2011-14, sediment flushed and salmon recolonised reaches above the old dams faster than some models feared -- a rare full-height teardown.
Are hatcheries a solution or a delay?
They keep harvest numbers up and can dilute wild fitness. The argument is now about proportions, not existence.
Why are Atlantic salmon a different politics?
Wild S. salar collapsed in much of Europe and New England. Farmed Atlantic salmon in net pens are a separate industry with sea-louse and escape files.
What is the Alaska exception?
Many Alaska runs are still large and limited-entry managed. That success is not transferable to a heavily dammed Columbia without the same habitat.
Operating a salmon life is a loop: sense, decide, act, and stay inside an energy and legal envelope.
Steps are type-level -- hunt, migrate or spawn -- not a promise that every individual follows the same film sequence.
Principles
Energy in, work out
Marine fat built on plankton and forage fish, then spent on the upstream fast. Semelparous Pacific bodies become the forest fertiliser.
Information before motion
Natal-stream olfaction is the famous sense. Polarised light and magnetite help the ocean leg.
Replacement rate
Slow breeders (whales, apes, albatrosses, tigers) cannot outrun a short political cycle. Fast clutch species still fail if the nest site vanishes.
Place is part of the phenotype
A salmon without its lake, ice, anemone or gravel is a different, usually failing, animal.
Human systems are now habitat
Quotas, feeders, reserves and films rewrite survival as much as weather. Dams, warm water, and a hatchery that smells like a factory. Climate-warmed rivers close the adult run before the gravel is reached.
Diagrams
Salmon forage / hunt loop
Sensesense
Orientmove
Strikeact
Handlehandle
Spawninvest
Recruitleave
Salmon life-cycle loop
Hatchstart
Reargrow
Movemove
Feedlearn
Spawnbreed
Die or repeatend
Life-cycle steps
02 Rear in fresh water
Weeks to years depending on species.
03 Smolt and go to sea
Gill ion pumps reverse for salt.
04 Feed in gyres
Ocean years set the return mass.
05 Home by smell
Adults climb, leap and stall at ladders.
06 Spawn and often die
Redds rewrite the next cohort; carcasses rewrite the trees.
Hard limits
Physiological envelope
Dams, warm water, and a hatchery that smells like a factory. Climate-warmed rivers close the adult run before the gravel is reached.
Place dependence
Without the breeding site or forage pulse, brochure behaviour is theoretical.
Human and legal limits
Quotas, listings and trade rules now bound real populations as tightly as weather.
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