Salmonids are the only family of fish that makes up the suborder of salmonids. There is not a single person who at least once has not tried dishes of chum salmon or salmon, grayling or pink salmon. But salmon fish is considered a gourmet delicacy. Also, the famous red caviar is valued throughout the world. But not everyone knows that the list of representatives who are called “salmon” in one word is quite extensive.
List 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 salmon and coho salmon, sockeye salmon and chum salmon, salmon and mikizh. Especially known to many are salmon and trout, which are called fish of several different species. These names are as if collective.
Salmon species of fish, the list of which is presented here, belong to freshwater and migratory, that is, living in the seas, but spawning in freshwater rivers. Sometimes this path is worth their life and their unborn offspring.
The fish of this family live in the oceans - the Pacific and Atlantic, as well as in the fresh waters of the middle and northern latitudes and in the waters of the Northern Hemisphere. The largest spawning ground is considered Kamchatka.
Almost all types of salmon are valued as commercial fish. Moreover, they are being mined not only for the sake of delicious tasty and valuable meat, but also for the sake of the extremely expensive red caviar, which is also a delicacy. That is why some salmon fish species are on the verge of extinction today. Some species are even listed in the Red Book with the aim of protecting them.
Landing salmon is a salmon fish that is bred artificially and cultivated. Also, fish farmers breed some types of trout.
The main parameters of the representatives of salmon
The body length of representatives of salmon ranges from very small sizes, only a few centimeters, to two meters. The smallest are whitefish, but the salmon, taimen and chinook salmon, being the largest, reach a weight of 70 kilograms.
Usually, the life of these fish is limited to 15 years. But sometimes among them there are real centenarians. For example, taimen was discovered - a salmon fish that lived for more than 50 years and at the time of capture weighed 105 kilograms! Yes, and the size of this centenarian surprised everyone: two and a half meters - such was the length of his body!
Salmon-like appearance
Representatives of salmonids in their structure are extremely close to herring. Apparently, therefore, for a long time they were considered the closest relatives of the well-known herring. But relatively recently, scientists involved in the study of fish have proved that this is an independent squad. Thanks to this discovery, they were separated into a separate group, which they called salmon-like.
The body of these fish is laterally compressed, elongated and covered with round scales. In some species, the scales have a comb edge. Many salmon are distinguished by the presence of spots on the body, a sort of crap. A distinctive feature is the side line along the body.
Salmon-like fins
The pectoral fins of all breeds of this family do not have spiny rays. They are low sitting. But in the ventral fins there are six or more rays.
There is another interesting difference between these fish. This, for example, the dorsal fins, which are observed in two salmon. One of them, real, with a lot of rays. Moreover, in salmon breeds it contains from 10 to 16 seeds, and in grayling - from 17 to 24. Next to the present is another radiationless fin, which is called fatty. It is located directly against the anal fin and is a characteristic feature of the fish of this family.
Salmon-like structure
Other differences of representatives of this family from all others are also observed. For example, salmon fish has a swimming bladder that connects to the esophagus with a special canal. Her intestines are equipped with numerous pyloric appendages. The mouth of the fish of the salmon family is bordered on top by two pairs of bones, which are called premaxillary and maxillary.
An interesting feature is distinguished by females who do not have rudimentary oviducts, as a result of which, when they mature, the eggs fall directly from the ovary directly into the body cavity.
Salmon fish also surprises with the fact that 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 consists almost entirely of cartilage, and the lateral processes do not grow to the vertebral bodies.
Poaching is killing offspring of salmonids
During spawning, other distinctive features of this fish family are clearly manifested. The fact is that this process occurs only in fresh water. Therefore, migratory fish living in the oceans and seas, where the water is salty, rise to spawn against the current in rivers and streams. Lake salmon-like also return to the place where they themselves were born.
There are still a lot of hypotheses explaining why and why fish need to get to spawning grounds at their birthplace. But poachers do not puzzle 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. On the way to the spawning grounds, networks are set up, explosive packages are used. As a result, a huge amount of salmon is not born.
Poachers act in a similar way, not only because fish that spawn are extremely easy to catch. The question also rests on the fact that before spawning, salmonids have internal metamorphoses. For example, their stomach, liver and intestines degenerate, meat loses its elasticity and fat content, which, of course, affects the taste of the product.
Salmon spawning
As already noted, in the period before breeding, the organism of fish of the salmon family cardinally changes. In addition to the loss of taste of meat, they are also transformed externally: the body loses its silverness, its color becomes bright, red and black spots appear on the body, it becomes higher. Males of some breeds acquire humps, which served as the name of one of the species, pink salmon.
The jaw of salmon is changing: the upper bends down, and the lower, on the contrary, up, increases the size of the teeth.
The male salmon fish during the spawning period receives a bright mating outfit. Each subspecies and variety at this time looks different.
It is known that the vast majority of migratory salmon die after spawning. Such a fate awaits Pacific chum salmon, sockeye salmon, pink salmon and some others. But among the Atlantic individuals, in particular, salmon, some individuals manage to stay alive. There were recorded cases when one fish spawned four times, and once a record was even counted - salmon came to produce offspring for the fifth time!
Trout
The list of salmon representatives is extremely huge. Varieties differ in appearance, as well as in habitat. An example of this is trout fish, the salmon family. After all, this is rather not one specific species, but the collective name of several. In appearance, not every person is able to determine the exact belonging of an individual to a particular variety. But experts 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 rainbow trout, one cannot but note its advantages over all other varieties. This unpretentious fish is very tasty, and also extremely beautiful. Its name appeared due to the bright coloring of the body, which shimmers in the light with all the colors of the rainbow.
Trout is of industrial importance, as it is successfully bred artificially for both hunting and nutrition. In some restaurants, gourmets are offered to choose live fish in special artificial reservoirs, which the cooks catch with net and cook at the customer's place. Besides trout varieties, trout and palya belong to the trout breed.
Chinook salmon
This representative of salmonids spawns mainly in the Koryak Upland, Kamchatka and the Commander Islands. Chinook salmon 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 equal to almost one and a half meters. The color of chinook salmon is spotty: small spots and dots are scattered along the top of the head, caudal and dorsal fins, and along the upper half of the body.
Chum
Almost all salmon 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, she may notice faint signs of a wedding dress. These are usually pink or grayish stripes that run across the body.
During the spawning season, chum salmon stands out among all varieties of salmon. This is because her whole body is decorated with transverse red-black with green stripes. And males of chum salmon surprise with their huge teeth, which actively grow during this period so much that they do not even have the opportunity to close their mouths.
Red 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. Yes, and during the mating season, this variety of salmon has a unique color: the green head turns into a red torso.
Before spawning, the female is building a nest for her future offspring. She energetically moves the fins over the pebble ground, washing off fine sand and silt. Then sockeye salmon throws caviar, which, depending on the ambient temperature, develops from 50 to 150 days. Until the yolk sac is completely resorbed, the larvae remain in the nests constructed by the female mother.
Grayling
This is one of the most beautiful representatives of salmon. He has a plain dark gray back, and the sides of some species have black spots of very different 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 tracks are cast in purple hues. Bright burgundy tail and anal fins in grayling complete the portrait of this handsome man.
