How Nutrient From The Sea Ended Up In The Forest?

Chum salmon swimming their way back to their breeding place. Photo by: Thomas Kline, Salmonography.

It’s hard to believe that trees deep in the forest get their nutrients far-far away from the sea. That what the wonder on nature when they work together accordingly. One of examples that we can see is the returning of salmon during the breeding season.

Salmon is one of few species of animals that start their life in the freshwater and spend their growing time in the sea then return back only to lay their eggs. As they return their journey back to the deep forest that might take few thousand kilometres as example of chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) that travel the longest journey far up to Yukon River and deep into the Amur River basin where the journey will take more than 3,200 km (2,000 mi).

Alaskan brown bear with chum salmon. Photo by: Alan Vernon

Salmon alevin. Photo by: OpenCage

Within their journey they will become meals for numbers of other animal species such as eagle, otter, water birds, and bear that waiting for their returning from the sea. Then for the surviving salmon will continue their journey to their breeding place far into the forest. Their journey up the river requires them to have strong muscles, with it they are capable to leaps more than 2 meters height.

Travelling far from the sea will make salmon lost lots of energy all of them will die after spawning their eggs. Their carcases might be taken by other animals out of the water and left the remaining alone. Then the remaining will become home to blow fly’s larvae that will eat on the remaining flesh.

Once they are ready, the maggots will buried themselves in the soil until they emerge as adult flies. These flies again will do another important thing for plants and trees in the surrounding areas; pollinating the flowers to make sure they can produce seeds for their next generation.

Dying salmon after the breeding season. Photo by: Ned Rozell

Death salmon releasing nutrients from the sea. Photo by: fishbio.com

We might think that salmon just one species of animal and maybe important to those few animals that eat them. With closer observation we can see how all the ecosystem intertwine together with every single piece of them nourishing one another.

Even though each female salmon can carry from 2,500 to 7,500 eggs depending on size and species, only some of them will hatched. From that numbers less than 2 percent will return to the same location to spawn again in the next 6 to 7 years.

More Interesting Things About Flying Fish

Flying fish leaping out of the water in group - Photo by: caribbeannewsservice.com

Flying fish is the only fish that can fly or actually gliding in the air in order to avoid their predators. Compared to its body size the distance they can achieve from the glide is considered very far. Even though this behaviour help them to run away from the predators, but their predators too have different techniques to catch this super leapers.

Flying fish are family of fish known as Exocoetidae, in the order of Beloniformes class Actinopterygii, with 64 species from 9 genera. They can be found in all of the oceans, mostly in tropical and warm subtropical waters. That’s the other reasons why flying fish is quite popular as part of people’s culture all over the world, from Japan, Vietnam, China, Indonesia, India, South America such as Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. Besides of that, flying fish still can be found in many other areas (even when they are not become part of people consumptions for that areas).

Flying fish has a bigger fins than usual fish. - Photo by: hootersbutwithcats

Flying fish from the side. - Photo by: Thinkstock

Flying fish can achieve great distance when they gliding above the sea. The distance can get farther with the right condition of wave and wind. They can reach up to 4 feet heights and gliding distances up to 655 feet. Sometimes they will continue the jump soon after touching the water to reach longer distances up to 1,312 feet. They also can soar high enough and sometimes get stranded on the decks of ships.

Flying fish become important food source for other bigger species of fish in the sea and when they leap out the water, birds too will take advantage to make them as their food. With their size can reach up to 18 in (45 cm), flying fish is consider moderate in size. Flying fish had been using in many dishes all around the world. One of the popular dishes is the flying fish sashimi from Japan.

Fried flying fish. - Photo by: Josh Berglund

Sashimi - Tobiuo (Flying Fish) - Photo by: travel.gaijinpot.com 

Fisherman caught them with different ways such as using gillnetting in Japan, Vietnam and China, while using dipnetting in Indonesia and India. There’s also a technique using lights to catch this fish as they are attracted to the lights (especially during the dark moon).

Catch in the mid air by bird. - Photo by: aquarium.ucsd.edu

Chase under the water. - Photo by: YouTube

Even though flying fish is not considered as threaten species, their hunting should be controlled in order to avoid overfishing. Flying fish is important to human especially in some cultures, but they are more important to the nature itself.

Micro Post: Seahorse

More like a horse than a fish.

Seahorse is a wonderful creature since it resembles a horse while in fact it is a fish. There are 54 species of seahorse most of them found in shallow tropical and temperate water throughout the world. They mainly live in the areas with sea grass beds, estuaries, coral reefs or mangroves. Using its tail, seahorse will bind itself to vegetation to aid it from drift by the currents.

Seahorses’ sizes range from 1.5 to 35.5 cm (0.6 to 14.0 in). Not like any other fish, seahorse is the only species come with neck and tail, but like any other fishes, they have gills to allow them to breath in the water. Seahorse not a good swimmer and spend their whole life in the same small areas, sometimes just few meters cubic areas. They are not suitable for rough current areas and will die if caught in the storm-roiled seas.

Seahorse anatomy.

Hard to identify, seahorse resemble their surrounding.

Tied itself to corals or sea grass.

Previously thought that seahorses mate for life but further observation shows that some species will stay close together for the breeding season, while some species show a higher level of mate fidelity than others. One thing unique about seahorse is the male will get pregnant instead of the female. With the gestation periods will take around two to four weeks in most of species.

Despite of their slow movement, seahorse is voracious eaters and need to continually eating by consuming almost 3,000 or more brine shrimp per day. By sticking themselves to sea grasses or corals with its prehensile tails, they waiting for their prey to get closer and then suck them with its elongated snout.

Beautiful species of seahorse.

Another unique species of seahorse.

Pollution affected the life of this wonderful creature.

They area many other wonderful things about seahorses, because many of them not just be able to change their colours but some of them can make themselves look like their surroundings to avoid their predators and at the same time to increase chances of catching preys. Some of these wonderful species will be highlighted in their own dedicated articles. 

New Threat To The World

Japanese fisherman with net full of jellyfish.

Maybe not many of us ever expected that the biggest threat will come from one of the most gentle creature without brain against human, whether we believe it or not, these notorious stinging creatures getting larger and larger in number every year and causing lots of damages in various ways. Sure we all know that human are the causes of this blooming jellyfish, but here we want to see what are the threat and what should we do.

The increasing of jellyfish population occurred much frequent over the pas few years and threatens other marine life populations that become the source of income for human. The fisherman in Southern Japan and South Korean are among fisherman affected badly by these jellyfish. When there are jellyfish in the net, all the fishes inside it are no longer suitable for human consumption. Anyway you can see how many jellyfish were caught in the picture above. So Japanese government keep on trying to improve the situation to help the fisherman.

Large number of jellyfish can cause many devastation in human activities.

Moon jellyfish that cause the closure of reactor in Sweden.

Box-jellyfish, one of the most venomous.

That’s only one part of the invasion problems. Some jellyfish equipped together with powerful stinger that can cause death when contact with human. These jellyfish are mostly transparent and some of them are very small to identify by swimmers. Even though not all jellyfish are harmful most of them still can cause painful stings.

One of the most dangerous jellyfish also known as box jellyfish is very small can cause death in short period of time. Box jellyfish native to Australia now had spread in many other areas in the world. These are the areas where human enjoying the beaches with their family and relatives. All we need to know jellyfish has nothing to do with human as we are not their source of foods.

Jellyfish life cycle.

Non stinger jellyfish.

There area many other species of jellyfish in the world.

In bigger scale jellyfish threat get more serious when few incidents had caused interruption in human activities. The closures of nuclear plants or power reactors caused by jellyfish invasion become more frequent all over the years. Some of the incidents include; Australia (937), Madras (1989), Philippines (1999), US Navy warships (2006), Scotland; Japan; Israel (2011) and also in Sweden (2013).

Throughout the world, scientists are trying to understand more about jellyfish not just to find an antidote for their stinger but also to learn how they grows in such large numbers. Jellyfish have different life cycle than from any other creatures. Jellyfish can stay in polyps’ stage for long time before producing the medusa (as the jellyfish that we know). So what triggering the production of the medusa and why it happens more often?

Purple-stripped jellyfish at Monterey Bay Aquarium that also studying on jellyfish,

Sea nettle jellyfish also in aquarium.

With the changes of environment caused by human activities that caused the alteration of marine population has resulted the blooming of jellyfish. The over-fishing, habitat destruction, pollution and many other activities had killed most of the creatures that prey on jellyfish. They are few other factors that increase the numbers of jellyfish, anyway if they have no prey anymore - their numbers will only get bigger.

It’s not hard to tell when the equilibrium of nature had been interrupted it will caused catastrophe. It will keep on going until the equilibrium comes to normal again. In this case, if we never restored the balance of nature - we will see some new species!

How Pearl Created By Oyster

Pearl in the oyster.

Pearl is a substance that is produced not only by the oyster, but by most living things that are similar to oysters. The process of formation of a natural pearl is rare. So today pearls are produced mainly by the oyster farming industry learned thousands of years ago.

Pearls are actually produced from 'calcium carbonate' as well as materials to produce the shell of the oyster itself. This layer is used to coat materials that entered into the oyster shell that may consist of foreign objects such as sand and other materials. These foreign objects can cause injury to the soft parts of the oyster, so it needs to be overlaid with 'nacre' also known as 'mother of pearl'. This material can be seen on the inside of an oyster shell or other shellfish.

Various types of pearls produced by living things.

Pearls extracted from oysters.

Apart from used to make jewelries, pearls are also used in cosmetics, drugs and even paint. While the pearls available today are mostly produced through the oyster farming industry, to ensure that the oyster producing pearls, the foreign objects are inserted manually into the oyster to be plated with 'nacre' and producing the pearls.

For a long time pearl considered being among the precious materials, even today it can be found at cheaper price, it still requires an oyster to produce it.

Crown produced from natural pearls.

Black pearl and oyster.