Salmon: King of the river
At the edge of the American River, the dorsal fins of tired Chinook salmon breach the surface as the fish tread the slow currents. They’ve performed their last act: the return to the streams used by their parents to lay and fertilize their pea-sized, orange eggs. These kings—the largest of the Pacific salmon—have nowhere left to go. They’ll soon join the bony skeletons of their kin beneath the water or those scattered upon the river’s bank, a feast for turkey vultures, bald eagles and the surrounding trees—just as their young, called alevin, hatch in gravel beds and begin the life cycle again.
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