|
In the rivers of the west coast of North America lives one
of the of the world’s most interesting migrants.
Braving difficulties
of every sort, the salmon traverses rivers and seas.
The life of a salmon
begins when its mother lays her eggs in a stream The first
food of the young salmon is the special nutrient sack in the
egg.
As they continue to
grow, they spend about a year in the stream. Salmon have been
created with a system that allows them to live both in fresh
and salt water.
The reason for this
is hidden in the miraculous journey that the salmon will make.
On a spring morning, thousands of salmon begin to migrate
down the river.
The place where they
will arrive weeks later is the magnificent Pacific Ocean.
As soon as they arrive
at the ocean, a genetic mechanism in the salmon causes a change
in the make-up of their bodies enabling them to live in salt
water.
In the next one to
four years they will traverse the ocean.
Leaving the American
coast, they will pass by Alaska, continue in a great arc in
the direction of Japan and return again.
At the end of their
journey, they are mature and ready for the final and most
difficult journey of their lives.
They will return to
their home: that is, to the stream where they were born.
Now they begin to travel
upstream in exactly the opposite direction to the one they
travelled years earlier to reach the sea.
No obstacle daunts
them. They can jump high enough to scale waterfalls. They
can even jump three metres out of the water to climb over
obstacles in their way.
Sometimes they doggedly
pursue their journey for distances reaching 3200 km.
In the course of this
journey they eat nothing, using energy stored while they were
in the ocean.
Finally, those who
survive, without fail, reach the river where they were born
years earlier and there lay their eggs.
This journey of the
salmon is one of the most amazing phenomena in nature. How
is it that after thousands of salmon live for years in the
sea, they can find the very stream in which they were born?
Research has shown
that salmon have been created with a special sensory system
to enable them to make this journey.
They have been created
with a natural compass that lets them find their way in the
ocean by sensing the earth’s magnetic field.
Thanks to this, they
are able to find their direction in the vast ocean without
error.
We can see that every
stage of the journey made by the salmon was calculated. It
is by itself a great wonder that there is a programme that
directs the salmon to return years later to the river in which
it was born.
All this shows that
the salmon is a creature specially created for the migration
decreed for it.
The One Who created the salmon with all its extraordinary
capabilities is Allah, the Creator of all living things and
Lord of all the worlds.
|