Escape
Alaska, USA
Each year during the summer, in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, Sockeye salmon (also known as reds) return from the northern Pacific Ocean where they have spent the last two or three years. They travel up into the freshwater rivers and streams, attempting to return to the headwaters of their birth. The collective goal is to fertilize and deposit the eggs that will produce the next generation of Sockeye.
Once entering the freshwater, they stop feeding and undergo a physical transformation, changing both shape and color. The head turns green and the body bright red, as the orange-red pigments from the fish's flesh concentrate in the skin. Sockeye males undergo the most radical changes, developing humps on their backs and forming a kype - a curved mouth with large teeth. Spawning is the last act of their life cycle.
The journey is arduous, as the salmon must overcome many obstacles. They must adapt to the freshwater environment, navigate through natural impediments such as waterfalls, and avoid predators such as the many brown bears that congregate along their way. Salmon are innately determined, and relentless in their attempts to procreate.
As a brown bear closes in on it, this sockeye rises out of, and then skips along the surface of the water attempting to escape. Photo © copyright by Dr. Edward Mikol.
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