Salmon: Wild Pacific

Coho (Silver salmon), Chinook (King, Spring salmon), Chum (Dog salmon) , Pink (Humpback salmon), Sockeye (Red, Blueback salmon)

Sake, Ikura (roe)

Pacific salmon include several species of fish belonging to the family Salmonidae and to the genus Oncorhynchus. Of the seven members of Oncorhynchus found on the West Coast, five are reviewed. Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), Chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta), Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), Pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha), and Sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka). The anadromous trouts (Steelhead and Cutthroat trout) are not reviewed here due to the absence of a commercial fishery.

Salmon have relatively resilient life-history traits, including short life spans and high fecundity. These traits would typically result in a very low estimate of inherent vulnerability. However, salmon’s resilience belies a significant vulnerability based on their dependence on freshwater environments. Freshwater spawning habitats throughout the contiguous U.S. have been severely degraded by a large number of factors including the presence of dams, habitat alteration, introduced species, and pollution. In many cases, these losses have crippled the capacity of salmon runs to sustain even moderate fishing pressure. When these losses are combined with a limited range (river-specific ESUs) and a mixed-stock fishery, the vulnerability of salmon stocks to fishing in California, Oregon, and Washington must be considered moderate.

As a result of habitat loss, climatic shifts, historic overfishing, and other factors, the abundance of many populations of salmon has declined substantially over the past century. Overall, chinook, coho, sockeye, and pink salmon stocks in Washington have been significantly depleted from peak abundances; however several large runs in Washington continue to be viable. In some cases, long-term declines in abundance have been halted or reversed in the recent past.

The gear employed in commercial salmon fisheries includes drift and set gillnets, purse seines, and trolling gear (also referred to as hook-and-line gear). In California, Oregon and Washington, nearly 30 populations of salmon and steelhead are on the Endangered Species List. These endangered fish are unintentionally caught by fishermen who are targeting other salmon species which is a high conservation concern.

The main gear types used in salmon fisheries (drift gillnets, purse seines, and trolling gear) rarely touch the sea floor. As such, salmon fisheries have little lasting physical impact on aquatic habitats. However the reduced productivity of oligotrophic freshwater systems where salmon have been depleted or extirpated in California, Oregon, and Washington indicate that the removal of the targeted species may have disrupted freshwater ecosystem dynamics. This is a moderate conservation concern.

Management has not prevented the long-term declines of many
salmonids in Washington, Oregon and California. Many of the contributing factors (e.g., habitat loss, pollution, introduced species, etc.) are outside of fishery managers’ control; however, management’s escapement forecast models have been highly inaccurate and overly optimistic for the past few years, and as a result, fishing for SRFC in the 2007 season was not constrained as much as would be appropriate for such a depleted stock, further exacerbating the problem of low escapement. Thus, while the fishery’s management was not the sole cause of the decline in the
SRFC run, it did contribute to the failure to achieve the SRFC escapement goal in 2007. In addition, given the highly inaccurate escapement forecasts over the past few years and that the 2009 SRFC escapement was the lowest on record, management should have been more precautionary and not opened the fishery for the 2010 season.

s this wild or farmed salmon?
Was this salmon harvested legally?
What species is this?
What river/run did this salmon come from?

Wild Salmon from Alaska is ranked as a “Best Choice”, while wild salmon from BC and Washington state have a ranking of “Some Concerns”. Wild salmon from Oregon and California should be avoided.

Adults should eat no more than 1 meal per month + Kids age 6-12 should eat no more than 1 meal per month + Kids up to age 6 should eat no more than ½ meals per month + Elevated PCB levels

No.