Although many fish species spend their entire life in the same river or lake, the salmon is anadromous. The word anadromous comes from the Greek word “anádromos” which means “running upward”.

The salmon is born in a river and spends its early life there, then swims out to the sea where it lives its adult life and once it has matured migrates upstream for kilometres against the flow of the river trying to reach the exact place where it was born and spawned.

It is unknown exactly how they can return with uncanny precision to the river where they were born, but the salmon contrarian run is certainly one of the animal kingdom’s more extreme migrations.