>Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 00:48:16 PST
>Reply-To: Jack Bowling <jbowling at direct.ca>
>Sender: TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu
>From: jbowling at direct.ca
>To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
>Subject: Re: Video footage of Marbled Murrelets at the nest
>X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 beta -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN
>
>
>> Jerry Tangren writes, re Marbled Murrelets fledging directly to ocean from
>> nests often far inland :


>There has been considerable speculation on how the fledgling murrelets
finds their way directly to saltwater. I offer this for your collective
thinking:

Discussing a potential salmon rearing and stocking program for
headwater streams
with a canadian fisheries biologist he mentioned that alevins ( juvenile
fish ready to return to salt water ) produced from eggs removed from native
fish display directional orientation. Eggs taken from females netted in
lakes with an eastward oriented outlet and reared in lakes with a westward
oriented outlet have great difficulty in returning to salt water for
maturation. Some fish seem to never leave the "strange" lake. With this
inate directional response in salmon, perhaps murrelets have a similar inate
ability. Magnetic (iron containing) sensitive molecules have been found in
an number of species. Bill