Salmon and trout
Atlantic and Pacific salmon, the trouts, char and whitefish. 18 fish on EveryFish so far.
The salmon family, Salmonidae, includes the salmons, trouts, chars, graylings and whitefishes, about 200 species of cold, clean waters in the Northern Hemisphere. They have a small adipose fin on the back near the tail and a streamlined, spotted body. Many are anadromous: they grow at sea and return to the rivers where they hatched to spawn, often finding them by smell.
The salmon run
Pacific salmon, such as the sockeye and Chinook, swim up to thousands of kilometres up rivers to spawn, turn red or develop hooked jaws on the way and die after spawning, their bodies feeding streams and forests. Atlantic salmon and steelhead can survive to spawn again. The runs feed bears and eagles and sustain Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and northern Europe. Dams, warming rivers and changes at sea have reduced many runs.
Farmed salmon and travelling trout
Atlantic salmon is one of the most valuable farmed fish in the world, raised in sea cages in Norway, Chile, Scotland and Canada. Trout have been carried far beyond their home ranges for sport and food. British anglers brought brown trout to Kashmir and trout to the Nilgiris around the turn of the 20th century, and trout farms in Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim now raise them. In some places introduced trout have harmed native fish.
Famous salmonid fish
Still to be written: Atlantic salmon, Chinook salmon, Rainbow trout, Brown trout, Arctic char, Huchen.
Further reading
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Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Sockeye salmon: Timothy Knepp of the Fish and Wildlife Service., Public domain, source
- Omul: Newspaper "Number One" (photographer Petr Sanzhiev), Public domain, source