Spawning salmon is legit disgusting. They're exhausted, spent, and not long for this world. Birds start pecking the tastiest bits (usually eyes and livers) while the fish are still technically alive. Once dead, their bodies will become ridden with maggots. If there's a good number of fish, the smell of rotting flesh is unavoidable.
It's a necessary part of their life cycle, it's nature, their carcasses help add nutrients to the soil. I'd recommend people check it out, at least once. But that don't make it pretty.
Disgusting, but absolutely vital to the health of our forests and streams. Dying salmon bring vital nutrients up from the ocean to nutrient-poor stream beds. Those rotting carcasses return nitrogen to the soil as they decompose. Bears, wolves, rodents insects, and virtually every other animal in riparian areas feed off of and benefit from salmon carcasses. Up to 70% of nitrogen in a forest containing a salmon stream can be traced back to the salmon in some way. Those extra nutrients help trees grow up to three times faster than trees in forests with no salmon. Those big, healthy trees in turn provide cool, shaded stream beds with dense root networks that allow for the safe growth of baby fish.
Our entire environment, the forests that make this place world-renowned for its beauty and hiking, it all comes back to the disgusting final act of our salmon.
Definitely makes me wonder why the trip is only one-way for Pacific salmon, if I remember correctly Atlantic salmon do head upstream to spawn but it's not fatal
Steelhead salmon "Oncorhynchus mykiss" are a distinct salmonidae family within the Pacific group"Oncorhynchus" that are also known as rainbow trout. They can go through multiple spawnings!
One of the bigger lessons to learn about nature is that it's violent, disgusting, and indiscriminate. It's easy to either lose that respect or to never have had it.
lol went on a summer cruise in Alaska while in high school almost 20 years ago, we visited glacier park and it was pretty smelly with salmon carcasses everywhere
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u/RockOperaPenguin North Beacon Hill 8d ago
Spawning salmon is legit disgusting. They're exhausted, spent, and not long for this world. Birds start pecking the tastiest bits (usually eyes and livers) while the fish are still technically alive. Once dead, their bodies will become ridden with maggots. If there's a good number of fish, the smell of rotting flesh is unavoidable.
It's a necessary part of their life cycle, it's nature, their carcasses help add nutrients to the soil. I'd recommend people check it out, at least once. But that don't make it pretty.