King salmon
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King salmon ( Oncorhynchus tshawytscha ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Oncorhynchus tshawytscha | ||||||||||||
| ( Walbaum , 1792) |
The king salmon or quinnat ( Oncorhynchus tshawytscha ) occurs mainly in the waters of Russia , Japan and North America .
Appearance
Before the spawning migration, the back is still gray-green and the silver belly is covered with black spots. During the spawning migration it changes its appearance. The back and sides become a little bluish and the belly gets red spots. Older male fish can also turn completely red. Male king salmon can be up to 150 cm long and weigh 36 kg and females 120 cm long and 20 kg heavy.
behavior
The sexual maturity a normally occurs between 4 to 6 years in these animals. When they reach sexual maturity, the king salmon migrate from their hunting grounds off the coast to their home rivers, where they finally spawn . During their spawning migrations, these fish can cover over 40 km a day and overcome 3.60 m high waterfalls. In the rivers they cover distances of up to 4000 km to their spawning grounds. The young fish stay in fresh water for between 1 and 3 years before swimming to the estuaries .
The long migrations between the waters of their birth and the open sea are attributed to their magnetic sense in the case of king salmon, sockeye salmon and ketal salmon .
food
Young fish first eat insect larvae and small crustaceans, later also small fish such as minnows, bullheads and loaches. Adult fish, on the other hand, feed on crustaceans and fish such as sprats, mackerel and herrings.
King salmon and human
Due to human influence, king salmon are also found in habitats that differ greatly from their natural range. Since 1967 this fish species has been settled in the area of the Great Lakes and their tributaries - i.e. in a complete freshwater environment - where the population has since established itself well and adapted to the circumstances.
The king salmon has a special cultural and religious meaning among the Eskimos . It is food and part of the seasonal rituals. Under the influence of global warming , the stocks in Alaska have been decreasing massively since around the turn of the millennium. In the delta of the Yukon River , a fishing ban was imposed in 2012 as a means of protecting species . Local Eskimos disregarded it for cultural reasons and were deliberately sentenced to very low sentences in the summer of 2013. You inserted and hope the verdict that the Alaska Supreme Court as the cultural in at least one earlier case subsistence - hunting - and fishing as a religion by the first Amendment to the Constitution of the United States considers to be protected.
Web links
- King salmon on Fishbase.org (English)
Footnotes
- ↑ Kenneth J. Lohmann, Nathan F. Putman and Catherine MF Lohmann: Geomagnetic imprinting: A unifying hypothesis of long-distance natal homing in salmon and sea turtles. In: PNAS . Volume 105, No. 49, 2008, pp. 19096-19101, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.0801859105 .
- ↑ Kurt F. de Swaaf: New strains: The turbo evolution of the king salmon . In: Spiegel Online . January 8, 2012
- ^ The Atlantic: When Global Warming Kills Your God , June 3, 2014