How do salmon find their way home to spawn?

Many of us have seen how adult salmon can fight even the toughest currents and waterfalls to get back to where they were born in order to spawn.

Sometimes the journey home can be as long as 1200 miles. No one knows for sure how they find their way home, only that it may have to do with a combination of factors, like the positioning of the sun, the smells they remember from their youth, or the earth’s magnetic fields.

However they do it, they only return home and spawn once in their lifetime before they die. The fish are not wasted afterwards, as they provide food and important nutrients for bears and other wildlife, keeping the ecosystem in balance.