Chinook Salmon
Chinook Salmon
Oncorhynchus tshawytscha
The Chinook Salmon, also known as King Salmon, is a species of anadromous fish in the salmon family. An anadromous fish regularly lives in the sea, but will migrate to freshwater to breed. It is a Pacific Ocean salmon, but has been introduced to many other bodies of water throughout the world, including the Great Lakes.
The Chinook salmon is blue-green on the back and top of the head with silvery sides and white underneath. It has black spots on its tail and the upper half of its body; its mouth is a dark gray. Adult fish average 33 to 36 inches (840 to 910 mm), but may be up to 58 inches (1.47 metres) in length; they average 10 to 50 pounds (5 to 25 kg), but may reach 130 pounds (50 kg).
Chinook salmon may spend between one to eight years in the ocean before returning to their home rivers to spawn, though the average is three to four years. Chinook prefer larger and deeper water to spawn in than other species of salmon and can be found on the spawning area from September through to December. Young fish usually stay in freshwater from twelve to eighteen months before traveling downstream to estuaries, where they remain for several months.
Chinook salmon range from San Francisco Bay in California to north of the Bering Strait in Alaska and the arctic waters of Canada and Russia. Populations occur in Asia as far south as the islands of Japan. Fresh water populations have also been introduced into the Great Lakes.
Chinook were the first Pacific salmon to be transplanted to other parts of the world, but the only notable success in creating self-sustaining stocks has been in New Zealand. A key factor in this general failure was that, like other Pacific salmon, Chinook salmon seek the stream of their birth to spawn and die. They have apparently failed to find the right kind of spawning streams along Lake Michigan, so continuous stocking is necessary to maintain the Chinook as one of the lake's most prized game fish.
Why do you think people wanted to introduce Chinook Salmon to the Great Lakes?
