474 Memoir Sears Foundation for Marine Research 



find their way back to their home stream is an aspect of their sea-life about which a 

 great deal more information is needed before definite conclusions can be reached. That 

 most of those that actually spawn do so in the river where they have spent their 

 early life appears to be accepted by most observers who have investigated their life 

 history. Some investigators, however, believe that Atlantic Salmon that go to distant 

 places in the sea do not usually get back and thus may be regarded as lost {6i: i8). 



That Atlantic Salmon are able to return to their natal stream from a distant 

 place is proved by finding one in the Margaree River that had been marked there 

 two years before; in the interval, this fish had been caught, identified, and released at 

 Bonavista on the coast of Newfoundland; the return of this fish involved a round trip 

 of about 550 miles {66). Whether the performance of this one fish was exceptional 

 or whether it is usual for Salmon to undertake such migrations and even longer ones 

 and get back to their home stream must await the results of further research. In 

 studies carried out on the Miramichi River, N. B., over a five-year period, it was 

 found that smolts produced in two tributaries and marked at two-way counting traps 

 returned as adults to the trap of their natal stream with over 98 "/o accuracy (C. J. Kers- 

 will, personal communication). It is also known that Atlantic Salmon often wander in 

 and out of estuaries other than their own and that marked fish are occasionally caught 

 in strange rivers. 



Views as to the means by which Salmon return to their river of origin tend in 

 two extreme and opposite directions. One extreme view pictures them as going uner- 

 ringly from their river to a predetermined feeding place from which, on the approach 

 of sexual maturity, they return unerringly to their river of origin, as if drawn by a magnet. 

 According to the other extreme view, they are carried to feeding grounds by ocean cur- 

 rents, and the only ones that find their natal rivers again are those whose wanderings, 

 with cessation of feeding on the approach of sexual maturity, perhaps aided by currents, 

 take them to the coasts, which they follow until they find themselves within the guiding 

 influence of their home stream. 



Huntsman's studies have led him to believe that Salmon, when outside of the 

 influence of their natal river, find their way back, if they do, through a process of 

 wandering until they come within the influence of the native river (7j). Homing, he 

 says, is the end of wandering rather than a directive factor. He believes that the shore 

 or sea coast and transportation by currents are definitely directive factors for Salmon 

 movement (7J).' Toner, who has reached a similar conclusion, says that "salmon 

 approach the Irish coasts in a haphazard fashion and only when they are close inshore 

 do they make a definite search for the river of their origin" (128). Nearly a hundred 

 years ago, Austin's observations led him to a somewhat similar view {8). He wrote: 



A prominent feature in the migration of these fish to and from the sea is, that they always . . . hug the shore on 

 their way up and down. They do not, asserts Mr. Russell in his work on the salmon, lie offin mid-ocean, and then 

 as with a needle and compass, steer right into the river's mouth; but they feel, or, as Sir Humphrey Davy ex- 

 pressed it, scent their way along the shore for many miles and follow closely the indents of the land. 



7. For a discussion of the relation of currents to Salmon movements, see Bigelow and Schroeder [ly: 970). 



