salmo

Latin salmo is traditionally connected to salire, 'to leap, to jump.' The Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is famous for leaping up waterfalls during its spawning migration — propelling itself vertically through rapids and cascades to reach the upstream gravel beds where it was born. The name captures the most dramatic moment in the animal's life: the leap.

Salmon are anadromous — they hatch in freshwater rivers, migrate to the ocean, grow to adulthood, and then return to the exact river where they were born to spawn and die. The navigation is extraordinary: salmon use the earth's magnetic field, the sun, and their sense of smell to find their home river across thousands of miles of open ocean. They literally smell their way home.

Pacific salmon (genus Oncorhynchus) — chinook, sockeye, coho, pink, and chum — were a foundation of indigenous economies along the Pacific coast for at least 11,000 years. The First Salmon Ceremony, practiced by many Northwest Coast peoples, honored the first fish of the run. The salmon was not a resource to be extracted. It was a relative returning home.

Salmon farming began in Norway in the 1960s and now produces more salmon than wild fisheries. Farmed Atlantic salmon are raised in net pens in coastal waters. The industry generates roughly $15 billion annually. Environmental concerns — disease transfer to wild fish, sea lice, escaped farm salmon diluting wild gene pools — make farmed salmon one of the most debated foods on earth.