Inside Angle: Animal Magnetism

I like to think that I’m smarter than the average Atlantic salmon. I’ve come to this conclusion for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because my yacht design office overlooks the largest sportfishing fleet on Lake Michigan, where we catch Chinook, Coho and Atlantic salmon by the Bertramload from July to November. But just because I’m smarter than a fish doesn’t mean they’re utterly dumb. Salmon, gifted with their own built-in GPS software, imprint on their home waters and return years later to spawn. Presumably like you and those salmon, I travel all over but I feel most at home back at my particular waterfront. I think most of us boat people have this in common with our Coho cousins.

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If you’re reading this from somewhere other than the coasts of the Great Lakes, congratulations because it’s probably March right now and it’s still chilly up here. But you may not have known that we have big, delicious salmon all over these vast waters. Pacific and Atlantic salmon have been a staple of Great Lakes sportfishing for more than a half century. Salmon were introduced to the Great Lakes by the Wisconsin and Michigan Departments of Natural Resources to curb the problem of an exploding alewife population. And it made for some of the world’s best fishing in the process.

I was similarly introduced to the Great Lakes by my parents as a young boy. While I’ve traveled the world since, lived and worked in Florida and Newport, Rhode Island, I likewise returned to these waters years ago much like a homesick fish. I belong here.

If you’re anything like me you have a certain spot on the waterfront where you’ve imprinted, whether it’s the shallows of the gulf coast of Florida, the craggy edges of Narragansett Bay, Long Island Sound, Minnesota’s 10,000 Lakes, the PNW or Cabo.

The other night as I turned the corner at our south beach and passed the historic local lighthouse, I wondered for a moment how salmon pull this imprinting trick off and whether we really do have something biologically in common with our finned friends that makes us want to return to our native waters.

Marine biologists say it’s all about magnetism. When salmon are young, biologists assert, the fish imprint on the pattern of the Earth’s magnetic field at the mouth of their native river. Years later they home in on that pattern. Magnetic detection “is one part of their toolkit for being really efficient navigators,” says Nathan Putman, a postdoctoral researcher at Oregon State University in quaint Corvallis.

Does paying an annual boatyard invoice unleash this animal magnetism in we, the boat people? Does a whiff of diesel exhaust trigger our fish-like instinct to seek out our native cruising grounds? I think I might be onto something here.

Further investigation the next day at the Sparkling Waters Yacht Club up by North Beach bolstered my theory. A school of fellow fishermen and cruisers had amassed around the elegant mahogany bar. Stories of adventure on the water regaled. In the background our tribal sports team was fighting enemy fish on NFL Sunday. Among the school, some had traveled from as far as the Mediterranean, the Gulf Stream and Alaska recently. But all had returned home at the appointed hour, just like our local salmon.

We drank communally from the sparkling waters. Our tribal NFL fighters lost to the Dolphins that day, which only encouraged us to meander upstream together to the next watering hole for more nourishment. Afterwards, we paired up and headed home. Undoubtedly, some among the school would complete the spawning process before the night came to a close.

This parallel pattern of behavior has been observed to repeat itself far more frequently among the boat people I know than it does among our salmon sisters. While fish do this once a season, many boat people repeat the ritual at least once a week. So, while we may be smarter than an average salmon, we may have more in common with our tasty taimen than meets the eye—or even the sockeye.

This article originally appeared in the March 2024 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

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Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/column/inside-angle-animal-magnetism