184 The Life Story of the Fish 



SALMON 



All salmon, except for the "landlocked" races, are, like 

 the steelhead, anadromous — meaning that they are born in 

 fresh water, go to the ocean to live while growing up, and 

 return to fresh water to spawn. This applies equally to the 

 Atlantic and the Pacific species. 



All the salmon in the Atlantic, whether they come from 

 Norway or the Bay of Biscay or the Saint Lawrence River, 

 are one and the same species. Their name runs trippingly off 

 the tongue. It is Salmo salary "Salmo the leaper." 



The salmon of our Pacific coast are five species, and they 

 range from the Asiatic rivers to the Sacramento. They be- 

 long to the burdensomely named genus Oncorhynckus 

 ("hook-nose"). The five species labor under excruciating 

 names taken from the Russian vernacular, such as tschawyt- 

 schuy gorbushuy etc. We shall have nothing to do with these, 

 and shall refer to them simply as the king or chinook sal- 

 mon, the silver salmon, the pink salmon, the chum salmon, 

 and the sockeye or red salmon. 



The difference between the Atlantic salmon on the one 

 hand and the whole group of Pacific "salmons" on the other 

 is that the former does not necessarily die after it has spawned 

 once, whereas the latter unquestionably and inevitably does. 

 And the unforgettable similarity between the two is that the 

 adults in both species, after years of wandering in the ocean, 

 find their way back at spawning time to the identical stream 

 in which they were born. 



There is also on the Atlantic coast the landlocked salmon 

 or "ouananiche." Some people claim that it is a distinct spe- 

 cies, but I find it hard to believe that it is anything more than 

 a non-migratory, fresh-water variety of Salmo salar. It often 

 survives spawning. And on the Pacific coast our old friend 

 the steelhead, Salmo gairdnerii, also often survives spawn- 



