A Toast to Dead Salmon

A wild salmon after spawning leaves it's nutrient rich body to feed its coastal river home.

Their annual spawning runs into coastal rivers, like the Rogue River, acts as a pipeline of nutrients from the ocean.

A wild salmon after spawning leaves it's nutrient rich body to feed its coastal river home.

After spawning, salmon decompose keeping forest soils fertile. Forests continuously lose soil and nutrients to the water. Migrating salmon reverse this out-flow by eating fish and krill at sea and bringing nutrient-rich body mass back into the forest.

A wild salmon after spawning leaves it's nutrient rich body to feed its coastal river home.

These same nutrients derived from the open ocean can be detected in old growth fir and redwood trees, hundreds of years old, as well as the animals that live on them.

A wild salmon after spawning leaves it's nutrient rich body to feed its coastal river home.

Near salmon-rich coastal rivers, over half of the nitrogen in shrubs and trees originates in the open ocean. And the salmon signature isotope can be found as far inland as the Rocky Mountains - carryed by large and small animals throughout the food chain.

A wild salmon after spawning leaves it's nutrient rich body to feed its coastal river home.

So the next time you see (or smell) a decomposing salmon on your favorite river, crack open a beer and give these important bags of nutrients their propers!