The docks should have quaked with activity, but the mooring basin was quiet except for the hoarse bark of sea lions. The fishermen with the biggest boats hoped to go way out after tuna later in the season; others had already joined roadwork crews or cobbled together odd jobs. Disaster relief money would be on the way, but to many second- and third-generation fishermen, a summer without salmon felt like the end of the line. For the better part of a century the fish supported Fort Bragg, home of the World's Largest Salmon Barbeque, at which local politicians flip fillets on the grill and tourists come from far and wide to taste one of the most sought-after fish in the sea, the chinook salmon, a.
The sudden decline of California's chinooks, most of which originate in the Sacramento River, has shaken scientists as well as fishermen. Typically several hundred thousand adult fish return from the sea to the river in the fall. Last autumn, only about 90, made it back, and fewer than 60, are expected this year, which would be the lowest number on record. But no such catastrophe has been definitively linked to the shortage. Salmon is the third most popular seafood in the United States, after shrimp and canned tuna, with about million pounds consumed annually.
Most of the fresh meat is Atlantic salmon raised in fish farms. California fishermen bring in about five million pounds of chinook meat in a good year. That's not terribly much, considering the national appetite, but king salmon is the largest and perhaps the choicest variety, owing to its deep reddish pink color a result of its krill-heavy diet , high omega-3 fatty acid content and rich flavor. It is the stuff of white tablecloth restaurants and fancy markets, not salmon burgers.
What's more, local chinook, chrome-colored and strong enough to charge up waterfalls, are revered as a symbol. We savor the salmon's story almost as much as its flesh—its epic slog from birth stream to sea and back again, its significance to Native Americans, who saw the fish as a dietary staple and a religious talisman. Salmon still retain something of that spiritual power. Called the "soul food of the North Pacific," king salmon is the flavor of healthy rivers and thriving coastlines.
It is a pepper-crusted or pesto-smeared communion with nature, gustatory proof that in a region where cities are sprawling, wildness still waits below the surface—if you will only cast your fly and find it. There are about a half-dozen salmon species worldwide, and populations are further defined by their rivers of origin and migration seasons. The species whose sudden disappearance has been in the news, prompting Congressional hearings this past spring, is the fall-run Sacramento River chinook, named for the river to which mature fish return to spawn and the season in which they do so.
The Sacramento River also supports much smaller winter and spring runs, which are classified as endangered and threatened, respectively, and a late-fall run.
After eggs are laid in autumn, young salmon emerge from their gravel nests as early as Christmastime, swimming south a few weeks later. They slink seaward mostly at night to avoid predators, lingering in brackish estuaries to gather strength.
As they near the ocean, their bodies change. Their renal systems adapt to salt water. They lose black bars on their sides and gradually assume the silvery color—with a scattering of black spots—that thrills fishermen. The fish typically stay at sea three years, ranging thousands of miles in the Pacific and gaining 90 percent of their body mass between 10 to 50 pounds, though the largest weigh more than Then they head for home, tracing the smell of minerals and organic materials to find their natal streams.
It is a brutal journey. The fish stop eating once they hit fresh water, and their bodies begin to deteriorate even as they ascend rapids the word "salmon" comes from the Latin salir , to leap.
Ready-to-mate males flush crimson and grow tough-guy hooked jaws for fighting; females search for gravel for a nest. Soon after laying and fertilizing eggs, the exhausted adults die.
But the life cycle doesn't stop there. The kings' spawned-out carcasses nourish not only the baby salmon that will take their place but also living things up and down the food chain, stimulating whole ecosystems. Salmon-rich streams support faster-growing trees and attract apex predators like bears and eagles. In certain California vineyards, compounds traceable to salmon can be found in zinfandel grapes. This is the elegant narrative that people in the West are fighting to preserve, a tale of determination and natural destiny that somehow touches even those of us who don't live there.
And yet this ideal of wild salmon is increasingly an illusion. But I couldn't make out the hatchery's outbuildings, or anything much beyond a series of long concrete pools, or raceways, illuminated by floodlights. It dawned on me that the gray current shifting and flickering below the surface of Raceway 5 was actually hundreds of thousands of three-inch-long fall-run chinooks. A hatchery worker scooped up a couple: squiggles with woeful expressions, they were barely princelings, never mind kings.
But every so often one would snap itself suddenly out of the big pond, a hint of the athleticism that would one day launch it upstream. We were there because the hatchery was taking a historic step. Usually, the federal facility—at the northern end of California's Central Valley—releases the juveniles out its back door into Battle Creek, which feeds into the Sacramento River six miles downstream. This year, though, natural resource managers had decided to load 1.
I had already been startled to learn that between 50 percent and 90 percent of the Sacramento River's "wild" fall-run chinooks are actually born in hatcheries, which were created to compensate for the loss of spawning grounds to dams. Every autumn, hatchery workers trap returning adults before they spawn and strip them of sperm and eggs. The offspring are incubated in trays and fed pellets. Now this latest batch would not even have to swim down the river.
The shipment was an effort to rekindle future fishing seasons, Scott Hamelberg, the hatchery manager, said: "If you truck a fish from Coleman and bypass certain areas where mortality can happen, you may improve survival.
You take out hundreds of miles of avoiding predators, water diversions, pollution, any number of things. We spoke in his office, which held a shrine to Popeye, a cat who must have enjoyed an extremely happy tenure at the hatchery. Despite the low numbers of returning Sacramento salmon this year, Coleman planned to go ahead with its annual Return of the Salmon Festival in the third week of October, where in years past schoolchildren have shrieked over the chinooks jamming the creek.
Outside, a worker standing waist-deep in the raceway crowded the fish toward a hydraulic pump, using a broom to goad stragglers. Their shadowy forms shot up a transparent tube and into a tank on a waiting truck. In a few hours they would be piped into net pens in the bay, then hauled by boat farther out and released to swim out to sea. Some scientists say the hatchery fish are less physically fit than their wild brethren, with a swimming-pool mentality that does not serve them well in the ocean.
And yet in years past, many survived to maturity simply because they were introduced in such overwhelming numbers. Some wildlife experts speculate that the hatchery-born fish may even be weakening wild populations they were meant to bolster by competing with the river-born fish for food and space, and heading home with them to breed, altering the gene pool.
The trucked fish won't know where home is, exactly. Many will likely never find their way back to Battle Creek, not having swum down the river in the first place. These strays might spawn successfully elsewhere, but without that initial migration it might seem that some essential quality of salmon-ness is lost.
If this is the price of keeping the species going, so be it, said Hamelberg, who wears a wedding band etched with tiny salmon. Our obligation is to keep these runs as sound as possible. The hatchery workers looked weary as the trucks pulled away. As it turns out, chauffeuring tons of pinkie-length fish hundreds of miles is trickier than it sounds. True to its royal name, the Pacific king salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha , or chinook salmon, is the mightiest of all the main salmon types!
Not only is it, by far, the heaviest and longest salmon species, but its impressive body coloration, large mouth, big teeth, and impressive strength make it the ultimate gamefish.
Chinooks commonly have dark or darker backs and silvery to whitish sides. They also have black spots on the upper half of their heads, bodies, and their tails. King salmon are also known to have a dark to black gum line, making them look even more frightening. Native chinook salmon populations can be found along the North American Pacific west coast from Alaska in the north down to California in the south.
In the western Pacific, king salmon can be found from Japan in the south up to the Arctic Ocean and the East Siberian Sea in the north.
There are also populations of them that inhabit the Great Lakes in the Northern parts of the United States. Currently, the world record for king salmon is a massive 97lb 4oz.
This giant king salmon was caught in the Alaskan Kenai River in Thanks to its particular body coloration, the Pacific sockeye salmon Oncorhynchus nerka is perhaps the most beautiful and impressive looking of all the salmon types. However, when they enter freshwater to make their way upstream to their spawning grounds, their bodies turn an intense red and their heads turn green. Another distinct feature of the sockeye is their long, serrated gill rackers that can range from anything to 30 to 40 in number.
Unlike most other salmon types, they also completely lack dark or black spots on their upper body halves or tails. Along the North American Pacific coast, they can be found as far south as the Columbian River and as far up north as the Canadian Arctic.
In the western Pacific, they are commonly found between Japan in the south and Siberia in the north. These landlocked fish are referred to as kokanee.
The biggest sockeye salmon ever caught is a fish of 15lb 3oz. The Pacific chum salmon Oncorhynchus keta is another really awesome-looking type of salmon! Chum salmon are typically deeper than other salmon species. When the spawning draws near, they will be marked by beautiful purple blotchy streaks on their sides and. As this salmon type has the largest natural range of all Pacific salmon species, it can also be found in all of the Asian Pacific ocean.
The coho salmon Oncorhynchus kisutch is yet another Pacific salmon type that also develops a reddish body coloration on its way up to its spawning grounds, although not as pronounced as that of the sockeye.
Once they enter freshwater, however, their appearance changes quite drastically; their sides will be of a reddish to deep-red color, their heads will turn green or green-blue, and small, dark spots will appear on their backs. Additionally, male cohos will develop a fairly pronounced kype that can appear extremely hooked and almost take the shape of a beak.
A feature that is quite rare within the salmon family! Coho salmon can be found on both sides of the Northern Pacific ocean, pretty much all the way from Japan and Eastern Russia, through the Bering Sea, to Alaska, and down south to Monterey Bay in California.
Cohos have also been successfully introduced in all the Great Lakes, as well as quite a few landlocked reservoirs around the US. Interestingly, coho salmon have also been spotted and caught in Danish and Norwegian waters back in At first, it was believed that these fish had somehow made their way into the Atlantic and European waters, but as there are a few coho salmon farms in Northern Europe, the conclusion was drawn that these fish must simply have escaped their farms.
The current world record coho salmon is a fish of 33lb 2oz. Due to its extreme body shape, this salmon is also called humpback salmon or humpy. As all other salmon, pink salmon are of a bright silver when they dwell in saltwater. When they swim upstream in freshwater, both their body shape and coloration change.
Their bright silvery bodies change into a fairly dull grey or white and they develop larger oval and dark spots on their backs. Additionally, their mouths will turn white with dark or black gums, which is a feature the pink salmon has in common with the chinook salmon. Furthermore, populations of pink salmon have been introduced in the Great Lakes, where they now occur in great numbers.
As late as , self-sustaining and spawning populations of pink salmon have also been recorded in both Norway and Scotland. The biggest pink salmon ever caught is a fish that weighed 14lb 13oz. The Atlantic salmon Salmo salar is the second biggest salmon species and the only one that is found in the Atlantic ocean.
It is an extremely popular game and food fish in both North America and Europe. When leaving the rivers and entering the sea, Atlantic salmon will develop a bright silver body coloration. Adult fish have black spots on their backs and often also on the upper halves of their gill plates, while their lower flanks and bellies remain silvery or whitish.
Pre-spawn male fish will often have a slight green or red body coloration and can develop a kype. DID YOU KNOW: Atlantic salmon are the only iteroparous type of salmon, which means that some individuals can actually recover from spawning, swim back to the ocean, and return the following year for another spawning round.
In Europe, they can be found from Portugal in the south to Norway, Iceland, and Greenland far up north. In Europe and Eurasia, there even remain smaller populations of them as far south as Spain and as far north as Russia. After a couple of very rough decades, it appears that this population is now slowly recovering.
Salmon in their saltwater phase travel an estimated 18 miles a day, but they are capable of maintaining an average of 34 miles per day over long distances.
Salmon can migrate more than 3, kilometres upstream through freshwater to spawn Yukon River. That is comparable to driving halfway across Canada. Salmon often travel 50 kilometres per day on their spawning journeys. This is equivalent to running more than a marathon every day! Salmon can jump up to two metres to cross obstacles in rivers — the same height some Olympic athlete can jump.
A typical orca eats 25 kilograms of salmon a day. For the resident orcas in B. The city of Vancouver has lost most of its salmon streams due to urban sprawl. Out of about 50 streams, only two remain.
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