Chum salmon is an anadromous fish of the salmon family. In Russia, in terms of catch volumes, it is only slightly inferior to pink salmon. In 2009, more than 90,000 tons of this fish were caught commercially. Lives in the northern waters of the Pacific Ocean for 3-5 years, fattening up meat and fat, after which it enters the rivers and rises to the place of birth, overcoming up to 2000 km, even jumping over rapids and waterfalls several meters high. How this fish finds its birthplace - scientists have not yet figured out. Some believe that she remembers the "smell of the house." Others think that they remember the taste of the water of the stream in which the egg hatched. Still others suggest that it is guided by a magnetic field.
Chum salmon go to spawn late in autumn and it happens that it spawns under the ice of an already frozen river. It does not eat anything in fresh water, but consumes fat first from the adipose fin - a skin growth filled with fat near the tail, and then from the body itself. Before spawning, it is so thin that it is suitable only for fishmeal or canned food. If at the entrance to the river its fat content is from 9 to 11%, then after spawning it is less than 0.2 - 0.5%. In addition, the meat in this life stage in chum salmon becomes flabby. Therefore, it is tasty when caught in the sea or in the coastal parts of the rivers at the beginning of the run.
Many representatives of the salmon family have two forms of existence: anadromous and residential. For example, sockeye salmon forms both a migratory form and a residential one. The habitation was formed in isolated lakes and is called kokani. Steelhead salmon have both anadromous and residential forms, as do brook and lake trout.
Chum salmon fish is an anadromous fish, because it spends its whole life in the sea, and in adulthood “passes” into rivers for spawning. It belongs to the salmon species of the Pacific Ocean, dying after spawning. Why are they dying? There are several versions. First. How can she, who lived in the sea and fed on plankton, crustaceans and small sea fish, feed herself in the river with worms, snails, crayfish, freshwater fish? Second. Sea fish, having traveled a long way without food, spawned, has no more strength. Therefore, having given offspring, completes earthly existence. There are other versions, but they have not been proven to this day.
On both sides of the Pacific Ocean, both people and animals, including bears, know about the special properties of red caviar, which is given by chum fish and other salmonids: our brown bears, and black Alaskan, and Kodiak giants - grizzlies, and Japanese - black and brown. Salmon go to spawn in the fall, when the bears make their stock of fat for the winter. Red fish is the best for this. Therefore, the bears on the rivers scoop it up with their paws, going in huge numbers.
When there is an abundance of fish, like real gourmets, they eat caviar and head, and the rest is thrown on the shore. At the beginning of the 20th century, the famous explorer of the Ussuri region V. K. Arseniev and his no less famous guide Dersu Uzala escaped from starvation with a fish thrown by a bear. This is reported in different ways on the Internet. But V. K. Arseniev himself wrote that they ate not “bear leftovers”, but full-fledged parts of carcasses.
Bears prefer caviar for a reason. They feel with animal instinct that it contains up to 20% of proteins and practically no carbohydrates. And vitamins are hard to count. Scientists have found that caviar and chum salmon meat contain: retinol, folic and ascorbic acid, thiamine, riboflavin, calciferol, as well as macro- and microelements: potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, etc. Interestingly, thiamine is a protector from toxic the effects of alcohol and tobacco. If such fish is regularly present in your menu, then expensive vitamins will not be needed. It contains the most complete composition of those substances that are necessary for the normal functioning of living organisms. And there are even more of them in caviar.
Here it is, chum fish!
Photo of a man with a catch: chum was caught in Alaska during spawning and weighs 15 kg.
The woman in the photo has a silver chum salmon (a marine form of chum salmon), caught in the same place, in the coastal zone of the sea, weighs 13.5 kg.
Any kind of salmon caught with your own hands in a river in Kamchatka, Chukotka, the Kola Peninsula, in Lake Ladoga or Onega, is truly priceless. Well, buy fish, chilled orfrozen, you can in the supermarket. The price for chum salmon fluctuates from 50 to 75 - 80 rubles/kg.
