Chinook Salmon (redirected from king salmon)

chinook salmon

 or king salmon

Prized North Pacific food and sport fish (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) of the salmon family. The average weight is about 22 lbs (10 kg), but individuals of 50–80 lbs (22–36 kg) are not unusual. Chinook salmon are silvery, with round black spots. In fresh water they are found from the Amur River of Asia northward and, across the Bering Sea, southward to the Sacramento River of North America. Their range in the open ocean extends farther south. During spring spawning runs, adults swim as far as 2,000 mi (3,200 km) up the Yukon River, spawn, and then die. Young chinook salmon enter the sea when one to three years old. They were successfully introduced into Lake Michigan, creating a new sport fishery after the virtual elimination of lake trout by sea lampreys in the mid 20th century.

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Chinook salmon

a Pacific salmon, Oncorhynchus tschawytscha, valued as a food fish

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chinook salmon [shə¦nu̇ ′sa·mən]

(vertebrate zoology)

Oncorhynchus tshawytscha.The Pacific's largest salmon, possibly exceeding 46 kilograms (100 pounds) at maturity, often spawns in tributaries located a considerable distance from the ocean. Also known as king salmon.

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Chinook Salmon 

(Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), also king salmon or black salmon, a fish of the genus Oncorhynchus, comprising the Pacific salmon. The Chinook salmon differs from other salmon in the large number of gill rays, which number 15 to 19. The back is covered by tiny, roundish black spots, as are the dorsal and caudal fins. The Chinook salmon is the largest of all the Pacific salmon. The body length of the representatives caught off Kamchatka averages 90 cm, and the weight 8–10 kg; some have been known to weigh more than 50 kg. The Chinook salmon is distributed in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, inhabiting areas along the coast of North America, from Alaska to California, and areas along the coast of Asia, from the Anadyr’ River to Amur Bay.

The Chinook salmon attains sexual maturity at three to seven years of age. It spawns in July and August on the Kamchatka Peninsula; in the rivers of North America it also spawns in the autumn and winter. The fish enter the rivers in the spring, swimming far upstream. Fecundity is 4,200 to 20,000 eggs, which are large, nearly the size of the eggs of the chum salmon (O. keta). The fry live in rivers from the age of three or four months to one to two years of age.

A very valuable commercial fish, the Chinook salmon is bred and acclimatized.

REFERENCES

Nikol’skii, G. V. Chastnaia ikhtiologiia, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1971.
Zhizn’ zhivotnykh, vol. 4, part 1. Moscow, 1971.
Smirnov, A. I. Biologiia, razmnozhenie i razvitie tikhookeanskikh lososei. Moscow, 1975.

A. I. SMIRNOV