Salmon comes from spawn/eggs. A female returns to her river of birth to lay her eggs. She covers these in a mound of gravel. This mound is called a Redd. The eggs then turn into an alevin.
As a salmon grows from a fry into a parr, they need to stay in a safe part of the river to hide from predators. Predators include fish, eels, herons, otters, kingfishers and pikes.
If food is scarce in a river, parr may stay up to three years in the river before migrating.
Six – eight weeks before migration, a parr changes colour to silver and is now called a smolt. Smolts migrate to sea.
They stay in the estuary for a while in preparation for the ocean. This is the most dangerous part of the fish’s life cycle.
If Bradán survives the estuary, she now makes her way to the ocean.