Pearson College Marine Science

Yesterday and today, first year marine scientists traveled to Goldstream Provincial Park to observe the spawning salmon.

It seems to be quite a good year for chum returns – lots of salmon! And lots of gulls feeding on dead salmon and on salmon eggs.

We also observed maggots amongst the gill filaments, under the operculum…

I had a significant realization while at Goldstream today… given that the average life span for chum salmon is four years, most of the salmon that are currently spawning at Goldstream would have come from the eggs and sperm spawned during the season when I took the very first cohort of Pearson College Marine Science students (Year 35) on this same field trip!

Full circle life cycle.

Tags: Chum salmon, Goldstream Park, maggots, salmon, year 35, year 39

This entry was posted on November 6, 2012 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Events, Field trips, Fun Activities, Marine organisms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.