COMMENTARY: Sea sense-ational: The amazing abilities of some Atlantic sea creatures |
My grandkids inspired me to write my first kid’s educational book (which I did as psychotherapy during COVID) about “scary” sea creatures that I have encountered while travelling the world for leisure or working as a fisheries biologist.
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Most recently, they have asked if there are any sea creatures that are “smarter” than people. My initial reply is that there are some really smart ones like sea otters, octopuses and orcas but these are found more commonly in other oceanic areas of the world. Closer to home, in waters off Atlantic Canada, there are some species that can see, hear and smell better than we can.
We pride ourselves on our perception, yet these species exist in a world of sensation we can scarcely fathom. From the icy depths of the ocean to streams and lakes inland, these species have evolved sensory abilities that render our own senses, crude and limited. To step outside our sensory prison, consider six ambassadors from our region, each a master of a hidden realm.
Begin with the Atlantic salmon, a navigational wonder. Where we smell a river’s general scent, salmon perceive a precise chemical signature imprinted in its youth. It uses this exquisite olfactory map to traverse thousands of kilometres of open ocean (some to feed in oceanic waters as far off as Greenland) and upon their return pinpoint the exact freshwater stream of its........