Salmon

Salmon
Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Order:	Salmoniformes
Family:	Salmonidae
Subfamily:	Salmoninae
Groups included
†Eosalmo driftwoodensis Wilson, 1977 Oncorhynchus gorbuscha (Walbaum, 1792) Oncorhynchus keta (Walbaum, 1792) Oncorhynchus kisutch (Walbaum, 1792) Oncorhynchus masou (Brevoort, 1856) Oncorhynchus nerka (Walbaum, 1792) Oncorhynchus tshawytscha (Walbaum, 1792) Salmo salar Linnaeus, 1758
Cladistically included but traditionally excluded taxa
all other Oncorhynchus and Salmo species

Salmon (/ˈsæmən/; pl.: salmon) is the common name for several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the genera Salmo and Oncorhynchus of the family Salmonidae, native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (Salmo) and North Pacific (Oncorhynchus) basins. Other closely related fish in the same family include trout, char, grayling, whitefish, lenok and taimen, all coldwater fish of the subarctic and cooler temperate regions with some sporadic endorheic populations in Central Asia.

Salmon are typically anadromous: they hatch in the shallow gravel beds of freshwater headstreams and spend their juvenile years in rivers, lakes and freshwater wetlands, migrate to the ocean as adults and live like sea fish, then return to their freshwater birthplace to reproduce. However, populations of several species are restricted to fresh waters (i.e. landlocked) throughout their lives. Folklore has it that the fish return to the exact stream where they themselves hatched to spawn, and tracking studies have shown this to be mostly true. A portion of a returning salmon run may stray and spawn in different freshwater systems; the percent of straying depends on the species of salmon.^[1] Homing behavior has been shown to depend on olfactory memory.^[2][3]

Salmon are important food fish and are intensively farmed in many parts of the world,^[4] with Norway being the world's largest producer of farmed salmon, followed by Chile.^[5] They are also highly prized game fish for recreational fishing, by both freshwater and saltwater anglers. Many species of salmon have since been introduced and naturalized into non-native environments such as the Great Lakes of North America, Patagonia in South America and South Island of New Zealand.^[6]