Silver Colored Salmon
Photo courtesy of the National Park Service |
The salmon will feed and grow in the sea for the next one to eight years. They will remain in the sea until they reach full maturity. The salmon will also remain silver in color until they return to their home stream.
Sea Lion and Pup
Photo courtesy of the
NOAA |
During their stay in the sea, the salmon travel hundreds, or even thousands, of miles searching for food and trying to stay out of the mouths of predators. They feed on small fish, shrimp, squid, etc. Orca whales, sea lions, and seals are a few of the natural predators that the salmon meet in the ocean. Humans also like to eat salmon, so commercial fishermen are another threat the salmon face while in the ocean.
Depending on their species, mature salmon are anywhere from 14 inches to five feet in length and anywhere from two to 125 pounds in weight. At maturity, the salmon will travel back to the same estuary they visited earlier in their lives. Here they will undergo osmoregulation again to adapt back to fresh water. Once adapted, they will head up river to spawn where they were born.
No one knows for sure how the salmon find their way back to the exact stream where they were born. Some scientists think that they can smell differences between the waters of different rivers and that they know where to go by their home stream's particular smell.
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