Exactly what salmon do out there in the big blue sea remains largely a mystery to scientists. But as Doug Schneider reports in this week's Arctic Science Journeys Radio, one scientist has gained some answers by studying what salmon eat as they migrate home to spawn. Sifting through a salmon's cut-open stomach isn't glamorous work, but heck, somebody has to do it. That someone is Bruce McIntosh, a fisheries master's degree student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. McIntosh studied the feeding habits of sockeye salmon that migrate home to spawn in Alaska.
Sockeye salmon are one of five salmon species native to the state.
To find out, McIntosh spent the last two summers poking around inside the stomachs of thousands of sockeye salmon. He looked at salmon caught near spawning grounds on the south end of Alaska's Kodiak Island. He also studied salmon caught in Shelikof Strait, a wide ocean channel north of the island, used by salmon migrating to spawning areas hundreds of miles away. McIntosh made some interesting and potentially important discoveries as he examined the two groups of salmon. He found, for example, that salmon caught near Kodiak island ate less as they got closer to their spawning grounds.