Bristol Bay

Finding the Origins of Chinook Salmons Through the ‘Otolith’ of the Inner Ear

Medicine & Technology Over the course of many years researchers have sought out to find exactly where Alaska’s Chinook salmon are hatched. The process is known, the migratory patterns are mapped, yet for any given fish caught in the wide open ocean, the story of its origins are often shrouded in mystery—but now that has changed. With a simple chemical marker, accumulating in the inner ear bone of the salmon known as an “otolith”, researchers now believe that they can trace the origins of any Chinook salmon back to the exact waters from which they came before they emerged in Alaska’s Bristol Bay.

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