Salmon in the wild

Small rivers, large rivers, cold glacial rivers, rough rivers, deep fjords, short fjords, long fjords, the big ocean! During their lives, salmon live in many different natural environments. They migrate between freshwater and saltwater. The different environments offer different food and different dangers. Here you can read about salmon in the nature where they live.

Living area

Only 0.6% of all the world's fish species migrate between freshwater and saltwater during their lifetime. The Atlantic salmon is one of them. They are born and live in rivers that flow into the North Atlantic, and they grow large in northern seas.
Norway has over 400 rivers with Atlantic salmon. This is almost a quarter of all such rivers in the world.
We can roughly divide the salmon's habitat into three different environments: fjord, river and sea.

Featured

The wild salmon is a freshwater fish. This is because wild salmon spawn in flowing freshwater. Freshwater offers a highly variable environment. Wild salmon are tough and can live in many places in a watercourse.

Fjord

Norway is a distinctly fjord country. But for wild salmon, the fjord is not the most important habitat.

The sea

The Atlantic Ocean is huge! The journey from Norway to North America is more than 4000 kilometers long. The average depth is as much as 4000 meters. For us humans, the sea is deadly salty, but not for wild salmon. They eat themselves big there.