Pacific Salmon Field Guide

About this book

Pacific salmon are of immense cultural, ecological and economic importance to the west coast of North America. They are the most commonly seen fish on the western side of North America but identifying among the seven species is difficult for most of their life stages. Two salmon researchers have worked extensively in the field with this iconic group of fish and have developed the first comprehensive field identification guide for Pacific salmon in a functional format.

Pacific Salmon Field Guide presents information and identifying characteristics for the seven Pacific salmon species – sockeye, coho, Chinook, pink, chum, steelhead and coastal cutthroat – across five life stages, with strong emphasis on detailed and intuitive illustrations. This guide is an identification resource that includes natural history, life stage descriptions and conservation status of Pacific salmon and how to observe these fish in the wild. The identification portions are organized into five life stages: fry, smolt, post-smolt, ocean adult and spawner.

The many scientific illustrations for each species are drawn from real specimens representative of their species and life stage. Joseph Tomelleri, who drew all the brilliant illustrations in this book, painstakingly measured every part of each fish, counting every fin ray and row of scales while layering colour upon colour. In addition, dozens of photos show these fish in incredible detail.

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Biography

Sean Godwin is an outdoor enthusiast masquerading as a marine ecologist and conservation biologist, currently located at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. His research interests revolve around marine fish conservation, using field experiments and statistical modelling to evaluate the impacts of sea lice on the early marine life of wild juvenile sockeye salmon. As a researcher and field lead for Hakai Institute's Salmon Early Marine Survival Program, he spends most springs and summers in the field at Salmon Coast Field Station.

Martin Krkosek is an assistant professor and Sloan Fellow in Ocean Science in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. He works on fundamental and applied questions in population ecology in the areas of conservation, disease, aquaculture, and fisheries. He works mostly on wet species such as salmon, herring, marine mammals, parasitic copepods, and water fleas (plus their parasites). Their department has a long-term fieldwork program on salmon epidemiology and ecology based out of Salmon Coast Field Station in partnership with the Hakai Institute. Martin is an editor for the journals Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences and Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.