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The Fish of Loch Ness
Thousands of miles and up to four years may separate a salmon from its river of birth, but when time for spawning comes the fish will find its way from the Atlantic to the waters where it hatched. The Earth's magnetic field or even the stars may control the salmon's direction-finding in the ocean. At the coast, a chemical memory enables the fish to "smell" its own river. A salmon arriving in fresh water at the end of winter is silver and sleekly plump from its diet of small fish, sand eels and crustaceans. It does not eat again until the autumn spawning is finished, but it will snap at items in the river or loch - including anglers bait. The journey to the headwaters is strenuous, often through wild water and up waterfalls. Large salmon can leap heights of up to 10ft (3m), jumping best from deep water. A salmon can lose almost half its weight from these exertions.
Wide variations in colour and growth rate, depending on the local environment, have resulted in many forms of the trout - for example, the silvery seatrout, the dark spotted Loch Leven trout, Orkney trout and Irish trout. However, they are all one species which has a migratory habit over part of its range.
Sea Trout feed on small fish such as sprats. They grow much faster than river and loch dwelling trout, whose diet is chiefly invertebrates such as insect larvae - though some freshwater trout turn to feeding on small fish and grow much faster.
The eel has been fished, farmed and eaten in Europe for centuries - yet scientifically there is still much that is mysterious about its life. For example, the yellow eel is found as two distinct types, by far the most common with a broad, blunt head, the other with a slim, sharp snout. Why two types exist and how they are related is not known.
Charr closely resemble their relatives the trout and salmon, but occur less widely. Several lakes in England have charr populations. The fish are also found in a number of Scottish lochs including Loch Ness, Irish loughs and in Llyn Peris and Llyn Padarn in Wales. Most populations show minor differences in size and colouting, and in some cases they have been given different names. The Welsh charr is called torgoch (red belly).
Sturgeon, any of the numerous fishes of the family Acipenseridae, native to temperate waters of the Northern Hemisphere. Related to the paddlefish and perhaps to the bichir,sturgeons have five longitudinal rows of bony plates(scutes) on the body,an unequally lobed tail fin, and a long snout with a toothless mouth and four sensitive barbels on the underside of the snout. The barbels are dragged over the bottom in search of invertebrates, small fishes, and other food.
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