Salmon fish. Types of salmon and their description

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:46

Salmonids are the only family of fish that makes up the suborder Salmonidae. There is not a single person who has not tried dishes from chum or salmon, grayling or pink salmon at least once. But salmon fish is considered a delicacy among gourmets. The famous red caviar is also valued all over the world. But not everyone knows that the list of representatives, who are called with one word "salmon", is quite extensive.

List of representatives of salmonids

This family consists of such representatives of salmon as pink salmon and lenok, taimen and grayling, char and omul, whitefish and brown trout, chinook and coho salmon, sockeye salmon and chum salmon, salmon and rainbow trout. Particularly known to many are salmon and trout, which are called fish of several different species. These names are, as it were, collective.

Salmon species of fish, the list of which is presented here, are freshwater and anadromous, that is, living in the seas, but spawning in freshwater rivers. Sometimes this path costs their lives and their unbornoffspring.

The fish of this family live in the oceans - Pacific and Atlantic, as well as in fresh waters of middle and northern latitudes and in the waters of the Northern Hemisphere. Kamchatka is considered the largest spawning ground.

Almost all types of salmon are valued as commercial fish. Moreover, they are mined not only for the sake of delicious tasty and valuable meat, but also for the sake of extremely expensive red caviar, which is also a delicacy. That is why some salmon species of fish today are on the verge of extinction. Some species are even listed in the Red Book for the purpose of their protection.

Cage salmon is a fish of salmon species, which is artificially bred and cultivated. Also, fish farmers breed some types of trout.

Main parameters of salmon representatives

The body length of representatives of salmon ranges from very small sizes, just a few centimeters, to two meters. The smallest are whitefish, but salmon, taimen and chinook, being the largest, reach 70 kilograms in weight.

Usually, the life span of these fish is limited to 15 years. But sometimes among them there are real centenarians. For example, taimen was discovered - salmon fish, which lived for more than 50 years and weighed 105 kilograms at the time of capture! Yes, and the size of this long-liver surprised everyone: two and a half meters - that was the length of his body!

Appearance of salmonids

Representatives of salmon in their structure are extremely close to herring. Apparently, that is why for a long time they were considered the closestrelatives of the well-known herring. But relatively recently, scientists studying fish proved that this is an independent detachment. Thanks to this discovery, they were separated into a separate group, which they called so - salmon.

The body of these fish is laterally compressed, elongated and covered with round scales. In some species, the scales have a combed edge. Many salmon are distinguished by the presence of spots on the body, a kind of specks. A distinctive feature is also the lateral line running along the body.

Salmon fins

The pectoral fins of all breeds of this family do not have spiny rays. They are low seated. But in the ventral fins there are six or more rays.

There is another interesting difference between these fish. These are, for example, dorsal fins, which are observed in salmon two. One of them is real, with a lot of rays. Moreover, in salmon breeds, it contains from 10 to 16 bones, and in grayling - from 17 to 24. Following the real one, there is another non-beamed fin, which is called fat. It is located directly opposite the anal fin and is a characteristic feature of the fish of this family.

Structure of salmonids

There are also other differences between representatives of this family from all others. For example, salmon fish have a swim bladder that connects to the esophagus with a special canal. Her intestines are supplied with numerous pyloric appendages. The mouth of a fish of the salmon family is bordered on top by two pairs of bones, which are called premaxillary and maxillary.

An interesting feature is females that lack rudimentary oviducts, as a result of which, when ripe, eggs fall immediately from the ovary directly into the body cavity.

Salmon fish is also surprising because it has transparent eyelids in front of its eyes. Also, in most salmonids, the skeleton does not completely ossify until death. For example, the skull is almost entirely made of cartilage, and the lateral processes do not adhere to the vertebral bodies.

Poaching kills salmon offspring

During spawning, other distinctive features of this family of fish are also clearly manifested. The fact is that this process occurs only in fresh water. Therefore, anadromous fish living in the oceans and seas, where the water is s alty, rise against the current to spawn in rivers and streams. Lake salmon are also returning to the place where they themselves were born.

There are still a lot of hypotheses explaining why and why fish need to get to the spawning ground exactly at the place of their birth. But poachers do not break their heads over this issue. They take advantage of this circumstance, mercilessly destroying a huge amount of expensive fish, ready to give birth to a myriad of descendants. Nets are set up on the way to the spawning ground, explosive packages are used. As a result, huge numbers of salmon are not born.

Poachers act this way not only because spawning fish are extremely easy to catch. The question also rests on the fact that before spawning salmon occurinternal metamorphoses. For example, their stomach, liver and intestines degenerate, meat loses its elasticity and fat content, which naturally affects the taste of the product.

Salmon spawning

As already noted, in the period before reproduction, the body of salmon fish changes dramatically. In addition to losing the taste of meat, they also change externally: the body loses its silveriness, its color becomes bright, red and black spots appear on the body, it becomes taller. Males of some breeds acquire humps, which gave rise to the name of one of the species - pink salmon.

The salmon jaws are changing: the upper one bends down, and the lower one, on the contrary, upwards, the size of the teeth increases.

Male salmon during the spawning season gets a bright wedding dress. Each subspecies and variety looks different at this time.

It is known that the vast majority of anadromous salmon die after spawning. Such a fate awaits the Pacific chum salmon, sockeye salmon, pink salmon and some others. But among the Atlantic individuals, in particular, salmon, some individuals manage to stay alive. Cases were recorded when one fish spawned four times, and once even a record was set off - salmon came to produce offspring for the fifth time!

Trout

The list of representatives of salmon is extremely huge. Varieties differ in appearance, as well as in habitat. An example of this is trout fish - the salmon family. After all, it is rather not one specificspecies, but the collective name of several. By appearance, not every person is able to determine the exact belonging of an individual to a particular species. But connoisseurs distinguish between Scottish and Alpine, European and American, river and lake, as well as rainbow trout. All representatives of this breed of fish are very beautiful.

Speaking of the rainbow trout, one cannot fail to note its advantages over all other varieties. This unpretentious fish is very tasty, and besides, it is extremely beautiful. Its name came from the bright color of the body, which shimmers in the light with all the colors of the rainbow.

Trout is of industrial importance, as it is successfully artificially bred both for hunting and for food. In some restaurants, gourmets are offered to choose live fish in special artificial reservoirs, which chefs catch with nets and cook in front of the customer. In addition to trout varieties, the trout breed includes taimen and palia.

Chinook

This representative of salmonids spawns mainly in the Koryak Highlands, Kamchatka and the Commander Islands. Chinook is one of the largest salmon in the Pacific Ocean, as well as the largest freshwater northeastern fish. Some individuals reach a weight of sixty kilograms with a body length of almost one and a half meters. Chinook salmon color is spotted: small spots and dots are scattered on the top of the head, caudal and dorsal fins and on the upper half of the body.

Keta

Practically everyonesalmon fish species, photos of which are presented in this article, have spots on the body and fins. But ketu is distinguished by their complete absence. Often you can see faint signs of marriage attire in her. These are usually pink or grayish stripes that run across the body.

During the spawning period, chum salmon stand out sharply among all salmon species. This is due to the fact that her entire body is decorated with transverse red-black with green stripes. And male chum salmon surprise with their huge teeth, which actively grow during this period so much that they are not even able to close their mouths.

Sockeye salmon

The second name of this representative of salmon is red fish, since its meat is not pink, like all other representatives of salmon, but intensely red. And during the mating season, this variety of salmon has a unique color: a green head turns into a red body.

Before spawning, the female is building a nest for her future offspring. She vigorously moves her fins over the pebbly ground, washing away fine sand and silt. Then the sockeye salmon spawns eggs, which, depending on the ambient temperature, develop from 50 to 150 days. Until the complete resorption of the yolk sac, the larvae remain in the nests built by the female mother.

grayling

This is one of the most beautiful representatives of salmon. It has a solid dark gray back, and the sides of some species have black spots of various shapes and sizes. Siberian and yellow-spotted, Amur and Lower Amur, as well as Baikal grayling are distinguished by the presence of a large reddish spot on the sides of the abdomen. The ventral fins are decorated with red-brown stripes. These colored paths cast purple hues. Bright burgundy caudal and anal fins of graylings complete the portrait of this handsome man.

Sig

This type of salmon is considered polymorphic, since it is quite difficult to distinguish the features characteristic of this particular species. Perhaps it is worth noting the absence of teeth and the presence of a lower mouth. In some varieties, a pronounced snout platform can be observed. Among salmonids, this species includes the smallest representatives.

The body length of whitefish can be 10 cm in small varieties and 60 cm in large ones. The life span of these fish can reach up to 20 years, but in the catches, individuals from 7 to 10 years old are most often found. Semi-anadromous and lake whitefish sometimes grow up to 68 cm in length and can weigh up to 2 kg. The largest individual that was caught weighed 12 kg.

You can talk endlessly about salmon - so many amazing and interesting things are connected with this family of fish.