Recent Analyses of Chum Salmon Homing Migration from the Bering Sea to Japan

olfactory discrimination, natal river A number of studies have investigated the amazing ability of salmon to migrate long distances from the ocean to their natal river for spawning (Ueda and Shoji 2002). For a better understanding on the mechanisms of salmon homing migration, three different analyse...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hideji Tanaka, Tomoko Kitani, Masafumi Amano, Yuzo Yamamoto, Takayuki Shoji, Shigehiko Urawa, Masatoshi Ban, Masa-aki Fukuwaka, Yasuhiko Naito, Hiroshi Ueda
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.621.9296
http://www.npafc.org/new/publications/Technical Report/TR5/page 34-36(Tanaka).pdf
Description
Summary:olfactory discrimination, natal river A number of studies have investigated the amazing ability of salmon to migrate long distances from the ocean to their natal river for spawning (Ueda and Shoji 2002). For a better understanding on the mechanisms of salmon homing migration, three different analyses have recently been applied using Japanese chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) migrating from the Bering Sea to Japan and then to their natal river. The first is behavioral analysis on swimming speeds of homing chum salmon by means of a micro-data logger with a propeller, the second is endocrinological analysis on hormone profiles in the brain-pituitary-gonadal axis, and the third is olfactory analysis on discriminating ability of the natal river. Swimming speeds in the oceanic phase can be one of the keys to understand the mechanism of chum salmon homing migration. We tagged a maturing chum salmon (fork length = 685 mm) which was considered to be of Japanese origin with a data logger (sampling intervals: speed and depth = 5 sec; temperature = 60 sec) in the central