The Chum Salmon

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Chum Salmon
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Image of animal

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General Information;

Type: Fish
Diet: Omnivore
Size: 60cm
Weight: 4.4 to 10kg
Conservation status: Not applicable
Scientific Classification:
Size relative to a 6-ft (2-m) man: Not applicable
Chum Salmon Range


The chum salmon, is a species of anadromous fish in the salmon family. It is a Pacific salmon, and may also be known as dog salmon or Keta salmon, and is often marketed under the name Silverbrite salmon. The name Chum salmon comes from the Chinook Jargon term tzum, meaning "spotted" or "marked", while "Keta" comes from the Evenki language of Eastern Siberia via Russian.
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Physical Features;
They have an ocean coloration of silvery blue green. When adults are near spawning, they have purple blotchy streaks near the caudal fin. Spawning males typically grow an elongated snout or kype and have enlarged teeth. Some researchers speculate these characteristics are used to compete for mates. Adult chum usually weigh from 4.4 to 10.00 kg, with an average length of 60 cm.
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Mental Features;
The Chum salmon usually will spend it's time within fresh water and is priomarily for reproduction. Chum salmon will migrate to the estruaries during the first spring of first summer of their life. Adult chum salmon live in the offshore marine or estuarin environments. The chum salmon return to the stream in which they hatched and then die after spawning.
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Diet;
Juvenile chum eat zooplankton and insects. Recent studies show that they also eat comb jellies. As adults, they eat smaller fish.
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Habitat;
Chum salmon have the widest distribution of any of the Pacific salmon. They range throughout Alaska, but are scarce north of Kotzebue Sound. Elsewhere they are found along the east and west coasts of the North Pacific Ocean north of northern California (Sacramento River) and Kyushu, Japan, and along the Arctic Ocean coast east to the Mackenzie and Anderson rivers in Canada and west to the Lena River in Russia. While at sea, most of Alaska’s chum salmon remain in the eastern Chukchi and Bering seas and the Gulf of Alaska. Chum salmon usually spawn at the mouth, or in the lower sections, of rivers, although in Alaska’s largest river systems, some travel great distances (up to 2,000 miles to the upper Yukon River in Canada) upriver to spawn. After hatching, juvenile chum salmon spend a short time (days to weeks) in fresh water before migrating to the ocean. Once in the ocean, juvenile chum salmon remain near shore, particularly in shallow eelgrass beds, for the first several months before dispersing into the open ocean.
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Credits (c);

Images:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/crappywildlifephotography/1479586147/

Information:
http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/wdb/pub/species_profiles/82_11-081.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chum_Salmon
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