As they get older, those bright colors fade and become shades of gray and brown. I see your true colors: Juvenile wolf eels are quite noticeable in the water, with vibrant, brick-red color and bright orange and purple highlights.
During this period, only one parent at a time goes out to feed. The female lays her eggs in the den (up to 10,000 of them!), then both parents guard them for the 13–16 weeks it takes for them to mature and hatch, even wrapping their bodies around the egg mass to keep it safe from predators. Will you be mine? Wolf eels may mate for life, and both males and females care for eggs as they develop.So, you could think of wolf eels as relatively small animals with really, really long tails! A wolf eel’s body cavity is close to its head, and the rest of the animal is muscle. This helps them move from the coastal areas near their spawning grounds to rich feeding areas, and then back again toward the end of their lives.įirst and foremost-and name and appearances aside!-did you know that wolf eels aren’t actually eels? They’re fish, with one key distinction being that they have pectoral fins behind their heads, which is characteristic of fish (not marine eels such as morays). Studies have shown that salmon, while in the ocean, use Earth’s magnetic field to guide their migration. Magnetic attraction: After salmon hatch in their home streams and reach early adulthood, they travel to the open ocean and spend six months to five years there-sometimes traveling thousands of miles-before returning to those same home streams to spawn.Eggstravaganza: Chinook salmon lay more and bigger eggs than other Pacific salmon species-about 5,400 at one go! Steelhead are next, with 4,900 eggs, and the other species range from around 1,000 to around 3,000.After spawning, salmon die within a few weeks. Anadro-what? Most salmon species are anadromous, which means they’re born in freshwater, migrate to the ocean on a journey that can be hundreds of miles long, and then return to freshwater to reproduce-most often, to the same stream in which they were born.Look for more interesting info on salmon in our blog post later this week!
Salmon are a keystone species, which means that other species depend on them for their health and wellbeing (the southern resident orcas’ dependence on Chinook salmon is a great example of this). When we’re able to reopen to the public, we hope you’ll come get to know them better-these species can all be found in our Window on Washington Waters, Underwater Dome and Puget Sound Fish exhibits.Īs you probably know, there are several species of salmon-and five of them are found in Pacific Northwest waters: Chinook (also known as king), coho, chum, pink and sockeye.
Wolf eel skeleton plus#
That’s a lot of fish in the (Salish) Sea! And today, we’re bringing you highlights of some of our favorites, plus three fast facts about each. (Curious about what waters are encompassed by that term? The Salish Sea includes Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Strait of Georgia and the waters around the San Juan islands and Canada’s Gulf islands-roughly 6,500 square miles altogether.) Our local waters are home to some truly amazing fish-according to our friends at the Burke Museum, 253 species of fish have been recorded in the Salish Sea.
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