The normal life cycle of a salmon is to swim upriver and spawn right before they die. That leaves a lot of dead salmon in popular spawning areas. In the late 1980s, university students began studying the salmon population at Hansen Creek in Alaska. They counted and measured the dead salmon, and then by protocol, they flung the carcasses up onto the north-facing bank of the stream, in order to prevent the same fish from being counted again. The reason the protocol is to throw all the fish to one side of the stream and not the other was a long-term experiment in forest growth. Now the results are in.
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Over the past 20 years, researchers across the Northwest have shown that salmon play an essential role in forests: Trees next to salmon-bearing streams appear to grow better than their salmon-deprived counterparts, and the nutrients salmon bring from the ocean make their way into the needles and wood of trees. But this experiment, described in a recently published paper, led by Tom Quinn, a professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, proves a basic fact: More salmon means faster growing trees.
We learned in grade school that Native Americans taught the Pilgrims to plant corn with a dead fish for fertilizer. That method still works today, even better than fertilizers that contain the same plant nutrients.
Yes, dead fish or fish guts present a problem in shipping and storage for agriculture or gardening, but the research highlights the importance of maintaining a population of wild salmon as well as forest creatures, such as bears, who transport those fish inland. -via reddit
(Image credit: Maitegonza)
Source: neatorama