Wild Atlantic salmon are champion swimmers: They travel more than 2,500 miles from rivers to ocean feeding grounds at Greenland and back to their birth rivers to spawn.

By contrast, farmed salmon swim in circles in sea cages while they are fattened up for slaughter.

However, when carelessness, nature or sabotage destroys sea cage nets, farmed salmon make a quick getaway. They sometimes swim up wild salmon rivers and breed. Sadly, matings between wild and farmed salmon further weaken wild salmon runs that are already threatened.

Majestic wild Atlantic salmon are legendary in the state of Maine. Because there are relatively few, most people never see them-they see mostly farmed salmon in supermarkets and on their dinner plates at home and in restaurants.