Sockeye salmon ‘sense magnetic field of home’

Salmon use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate across the ocean as they return to their home rivers to breed, research suggests.

Each year millions of fish make the journey home in one of the toughest migrations of the animal kingdom.

The memory of the magnetic field where they first entered the sea helps them find their way back, say US scientists.

The data, in Current Biology, provide the first direct evidence that salmon use geomagnetic cues in migration.