King salmon

King salmon

　　A pale-spotted edible North Pacific salmon of the family Salmonidae, scientific name Oncorhynchus keta. It can weigh up to 3.6 kg (8 lb). During the autumn spawning season, it migrates over 3,200 km (2,000 miles) up the Yukon River in North America. The young fish enter the sea just a few weeks after hatching in spring.

King salmon is a type of salmon (Oncorhynchus keta), renowned worldwide for its delicious flesh and rich nutrition, and has long been considered a premium fish. The Heilongjiang River basin in China produces abundant king salmon, earning it the title “Home of King Salmon.”

The king salmon has an elongated, laterally compressed body with a protruding snout resembling a bird’s beak. It has a large mouth with sharp teeth, making it a fierce carnivorous fish. It is born in rivers, grows in the sea, and mainly inhabits the oceans of the Northern Hemisphere, especially in areas such as the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea. After living in the ocean for four years, they reach sexual maturity in August and September each year, migrating in schools from the open sea to coastal waters and then upstream into rivers, traveling thousands of kilometers against the current to return to their birthplace—the Heilongjiang River. Once in the river, they stop feeding. Some king salmon swim into the cold tributaries of the Heilongjiang, such as the Ussuri River, the Huma River, and the Songhua River, to find the most suitable spawning grounds. Before spawning, the female fish use their bellies and tail fins to clear mud and weeds from the riverbed, stirring fine gravel to create an oval spawning bed. Then, the male and female fish spawn together. After spawning, the exhausted parent fish, having traveled such a long distance, guard the spawning bed until they die. More than 100 days later, the young fish hatch from the eggs. The following spring, they swim downstream back to the sea, but they never forget their birthplace. Once they reach sexual maturity, they will endure countless hardships to return home again.

King salmon holds high economic value, not only for its delicious meat, but also for its highly prized roe. Its eggs are much larger than those of common fish, about 7 mm in diameter, with a bright red, translucent color resembling amber, and are extremely nutritious—making them an excellent ingredient for caviar.