ECOLOGICAL DATA
Distribution: One of the most widespread of Pacific
salmon; spawn in smaller streams and rivers; extensive feeding migration in Pacific Ocean.
Habitat: adults migrate to streams from Jul to Nov; spawn from mid-Oct to
mid-Dec, as late as Feb; eggs laid in gravel redds in streams; fry emerge in Apr and May;
rear in freshwater for 1-2 yr and migrate as smolts to estuary in May and June, or fry may
rear in estuary until late Sep-Nov; may rear in outer estuary from mid-May to June,
occasionally to Sep; adults may make long ocean feeding migration, while resident or
inshore migrants remain in Georgia Strait; some males or "jacks" return to
freshwater after one summer in ocean; mature adults may hold in estuary for several days
or weeks before migrating upstream to spawn.
Tidal elevation: fry may rear in estuary; smolts and adults feed and migrate in
deeper water.
Food: fry prey on drift (e.g. Diptera and amphipods); smolts eat fish
and decapod larvae, larval insects and crustaceans (e.g. gammarid amphipods);
larger juveniles take herring and sand lance, euphausiids, amphipods and megalops larvae.
Predators: fishes, birds, marine mammals and bears.
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GROWTH RATE
Mature at 3-4 yr, 1-2 yr in freshwater and 2 yr in ocean; may
reach 98 cm.
FISHERY
Important sport fish; support commercial and Native fisheries;
1986 commercial catch was 11,666 t valued at $39.3 million.
REFERENCES
Aro, K.V., and M.P. Shepard. 1967. Salmon of the north Pacific
Ocean - Part IV. Spawning populations of north Pacific salmon. 5. Pacific salmon in
Canada. Int. North Pac. Fish. Comm. Bull. 23: 225-327.
Fraser, F.J, P.J. Starr, and A.Y. Fedorenko. 1982. A review of the chinook and coho
salmon of the Fraser River. Can. Tech. Rep. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 1126: 130 p.
Hart, J.L. 1973. Pacific fishes of Canada. Fish. Res. Board Can. Bull. 180: 115-118.
Healey, M.C. 1980. The ecology of juvenile salmon in Georgia Strait, British
Columbia., p. 203-229. In W.J. McNeil and D.C. Himsworth [ed.] Salmonid ecosystems
of the North Pacific. Ore. State Univ. Press, Corvallis.
Healey, M.C. 1982. Juvenile Pacific salmon in estuaries: the life support system, p.
315-341. In V.S. Kennedy [ed.] Estuarine comparisons. Academic Press, N.Y.
Tschaplinski, P.J. 1987. The use of estuaries as rearing habitats by juvenile coho
salmon, p. 123-142. In T.W. Chamberlain [ed.] Proc. Workshop: Applying 15 Years of
Carnation Creek Results, Nanaimo, B.C.
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