Pre-industrial emblem
36Heraldry, materia medica or first-fish law met the salmon before film.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed63
Intelligence28
Range86
Resilience50
Cultural impact61
Ecological role88
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Do all salmon die after spawning?
Most Oncorhynchus (Pacific) are semelparous. Salmo salar can spawn more than once. The postcard of corpses on gravel is a Pacific-weighted image.
Why do forests need salmon?
Isotope studies show marine nitrogen in riparian trees and songbirds. Bears and eagles are the visible vectors; the trees keep the receipt.
What did the Elwha dam removals show?
After 2011-14, sediment flushed and salmon recolonised reaches above the old dams faster than some models feared -- a rare full-height teardown.
Are hatcheries a solution or a delay?
They keep harvest numbers up and can dilute wild fitness. The argument is now about proportions, not existence.
Why are Atlantic salmon a different politics?
Wild S. salar collapsed in much of Europe and New England. Farmed Atlantic salmon in net pens are a separate industry with sea-louse and escape files.
What is the Alaska exception?
Many Alaska runs are still large and limited-entry managed. That success is not transferable to a heavily dammed Columbia without the same habitat.
Salmon culture is local: the same silhouette is a licence in one country and a logo in another.
Status bars are editorial -- they track how loudly this type spoke in English-language media and law, not a best-species score.
Status through time
Industrial take
57Canneries, ivory, longlines or shikar scaled the take.
Cinema and logo
53A film, book or NGO mark often outran the field paper.
Statute and listing
68ESA, CITES, IWC or national parks made the type a legal object.
Live-cam and tourism
43Streams, jeeps and auctions are the present tense of attention.
Portrayals
Treaty court1974
Boldt made salmon a constitutional story in the Northwest.
Dam newsreel1938-
Bonneville ladders were sold as coexistence engineering.
Removal documentary2010s
Elwha films treated sediment plumes as a happy ending.
Menuongoing
Farmed Atlantic filled supermarket cases as wild Atlantic receded.
First-fish ceremonyongoing
Coast Salish and other nations still open seasons with ritual, not only quotas.
ESA graph1991-
Snake sockeye counts became a line chart in congressional packets.
Rituals
First salmon
Return of the first fish is still a legal and spiritual opener on many rivers.
Ladder-window watches
Bonneville public chamber turns migration into a weekend.
Roe and smoke seasons
Processing calendars still follow runs more than supermarket weeks.
Sayings
Keep exploring
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Overall 41 🐴Seahorse
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Overall 28 🎏Koi
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Overall 42 🐡Pufferfish
Beak-toothed inflators whose tetrodotoxin made a Japanese cuisine and a genome project out of one family.
Overall 41 ⚡Electric eel
Amazon knifefishes whose stacked electrocytes taught Humboldt, Volta arguments and a 2019 species split.
Overall 36