Chum Salmon

Fascinating facts about the Chum Salmon

• Some chum salmon travel more than 3,200 km (2,000 mi) up the Yukon River, showing they can navigate distances that dwarf most other salmon migrations and linking distant ecosystems together.
• Adult chum typically weigh between 4.4 kg and 10 kg (9.7–22 lb) and measure about 60 cm (23.6 in) long, yet the IGFA world-record fish hit 15.88 kg (35 lb) and 112 cm (44.1 in), illustrating the species’ capacity for exceptional growth under the right conditions.
• A female chum can lay up to 4,000 eggs in a shallow gravel nest called a redd, meaning a single spawning event can seed thousands of new lives in just one river stretch.
• In 2010 the North Pacific harvest totaled roughly 313,000 tons, or about 91 million individual fish, accounting for 34 % of the total Pacific salmon catch by weight, underscoring how abundant this species is compared to its relatives.
• Chum spend most of their ocean life near the surface, typically swimming 13 m (43 ft) deep by day and just 5 m (16 ft) at night, a habit that keeps them in the food-rich upper water column and shapes their role in marine food webs.

At a glance

About the Chum Salmon

The chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) cuts a striking figure in the Pacific, its deeper-bodied silhouette cloaked in a silvery-blue-green hue dotted with faint dark spots, a belly that deepens to a richer shade when the fish enters fresh water. As adults near spawning, a cascade of purple blotchy streaks ripples along the caudal peduncle, while males grow an elongated snout, white-tipped lower fins and enlarged teeth, features that researchers suspect serve as visual weapons in the scramble for mates. These anadromous travelers spend three to five years at sea, often traversing 3,200 km up the Yukon River or venturing into the Amur basin, before returning to the narrow, gravel-lined streams and intertidal zones where they build redds and lay up to 4,000 eggs. Juveniles drift in the ocean’s upper layers, feeding on zooplankton, insects and, surprisingly, comb jellies, before shifting to smaller fish as adults. Their life rhythm is a choreography of migration, spawning, and a brief two-week post-spawning existence that ends in the very waters that nurtured them, a relentless cycle that fuels the vast North Pacific ecosystem.

Seen on screen

More fish to discover

Browse Feravox