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Sockeye Salmon — printable fact sheet
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Sockeye Salmon
Oncorhynchus nerka
The sockeye (Oncorhynchus nerka) is the only Pacific salmon whose life cycle usually requires a lake. Fry hatch in a stream, drop down into a nursery lake and spend one to three years feeding on zooplankton before going to sea, which is why sockeye runs exist only in river syste…
Did you know?
- Some sockeye salmon populations never leave freshwater and spend their entire lives in lakes—these are known as 'kokanee' salmon.
- Sockeye turn red by moving pigment out of their own muscle and into their skin, which is why spawning fish have pale, poor-quality flesh. Kokanee are simply sockeye that never go to sea, landlocked in lakes, and they mature at a fraction of the size. Bristol Bay can see more than 60 million sockeye return in a single season, the largest run of any salmon anywhere. Nitrogen from salmon carcasses is measurable in the growth rings of trees hundreds of metres from the stream.
What I learned
Draw the sockeye salmon
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