10 Catchy Salmon Facts

Did you know ... ?

Posted: 11-Jul-2006; Updated: 28-Dec-2006

1. Wild salmon get their orange/pink color from the krill they eat. Because krill is not part of farmed salmon’s diet, pigment is added to their feed to make them look like wild salmon.

2. Modern commercial salmon farming began in Norway in the late 1960s, but aquaculture dates back to about 2500 BCE when the Chinese captured carp after river floods and grew them in artificial lakes.

3. Over half of the salmon available at seafood counters around the globe are from salmon farms.

4. Chile and Norway are the two largest salmon farming countries in the world.

5. Wild Atlantic salmon are endangered, and therefore illegal to catch. So all Atlantic salmon sold in the U.S. is farm-raised.

6. Although there is only one species of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), Pacific salmon is a generic term covering five different species. The five species of wild Pacific (and Alaskan) salmon are chinook (king), sockeye (red), coho (silver), pink and chum (keta).

7. Most spawning salmon return to the precise stream of their birth, sometimes overcoming great distances and hazardous river conditions to reach home. For example, a chinook salmon tagged in the central Aleutian Islands and recovered a year later in Salmon River, Idaho, had traveled a whopping 3,500 miles!

8. Salmon generally produce 2,500 to 7,000 eggs, depending on species and size of fish. The chinook salmon generally produces the most and largest eggs.

9. All Pacific salmon die shortly after spawning, but Atlantic salmon are capable of surviving and spawning again.

10. Atlantic salmon (now listed as endangered) have been known to weigh up to 100 pounds; the record for the largest of all the Pacific species, chinook, is 126 pounds for a fish caught in Alaskan waters.