Konkani Salmon: Life Cycle
Adults Spawning
During September and October
these are the spawning months
and thousands of Konkani's will
rush up stream, the same stream
that they hatched from. The
female will make a nest called a red
that can be up to 8 inches deep and
12 inches long, She will then lay
her eggs. Any where from 200 to
2000 eggs will be produced by a
single female Konkani. Then the
male will come along and fertilize
the eggs. Then both the male and
the female will die. But their
bodies decomposing will add
nutrition to the stream and help
their young grow better.
Eggs/Alevins
The eggs will stay in the gravel
during the winter months. In
February they hatch into alevins.
These alevins will not eat because
they have a yolk sack that contains
all the nutrition that they need to
stay healthy until they mature into
fry and emerge from the gravel.
Fry
As the fry emerge from the gravel
and are immediately swept
downstream by the current to the
rivers mouth and i to the lake, they
will eat plankton and other small
organisms. They will stay near the
lake shore for their first year of life,
then they will migrate to the cold
deep water.
Silvers
The Konkani's will now be called
Silvers because of their color. They
are a metallic silver color. The
silvers will stay in the depths of the
lake where the colder temperatures
are and there is more plankton,
which is the mainstay of the
salmons diet. The silvers will stay
in the deep water for up to 5 years
but on average stay for 4 years then
return to spawn in the streams that
they were born in.
The cycle starts over
Then once again the cycle starts
over with the fish that were born in
this same creek 5 years earlier. And
every year there is a salmon run
because when they spawn its not
just all one giant group of all the
salmon . There are some salmon
that come up when they are 3,
some when they are 5, not all come
up when they are 4. If you look at
the salmon count you can tell when
the big runs are and from that you
can tell when the next big run will
occur.
Bibliography
http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/ltbmu/documents/recreation/kokanee/2008/KokaneeFlier
-revised.pdf
Living Landscapes. Web. 21 Aug. 2009. <http://www.livinglandscapes.bc.ca/thompok/kokanee-salmon/view-life.html>.
California Inland Fisheries Foundation, Inc. Web. 21 Aug. 2009.
<http://www.kokanee.org/>.
"Kokanee on Flickr - Photo Sharing!" Welcome to Flickr - Photo Sharing. Web. 21
Aug. 2009. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/59041131@N00/1408703148/>.
Also Information that I learned at Taylor creek wildlife area at Lake Tahoe.