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EveryFish

Fish market, United States

Pike Place Market, Seattle

Seattle's public market since 1907, where fishmongers throw salmon across the counter.

Pike Place Market opened in 1907 on the Seattle waterfront to link farmers directly with shoppers, and it is one of the oldest continuously running public markets in the United States. Its fish stalls sell the salmon, halibut and shellfish of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. At Pike Place Fish Market, staff famously throw whole fish across the counter when a customer orders one.

Salmon country

Five species of Pacific salmon are sold here in their seasons: Chinook or king, coho or silver, sockeye or red, chum and pink. Copper River sockeye and king from Alaska open the season in May. Halibut, lingcod, rockfish and Dungeness crab are other regional favourites. For many Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest, salmon is central to food, ceremony and treaty rights.

Salmon in trouble

Many salmon runs in Washington's rivers have fallen far below their historic sizes, because of dams, logging, farming, hatcheries and changing ocean conditions, and several are listed under the US Endangered Species Act. The removal of two dams on the Elwha River, completed in 2014, was the largest dam removal in US history, and salmon have returned to the upper river. Much of the salmon sold in Seattle now comes from Alaska.

Fish of Pike Place Market, Seattle

Sockeye salmonRed salmon, from Alaska's Copper River

Still to be written: Chinook salmon, Coho salmon, Pacific halibut.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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