Salmon

Salmon is the common name for several species of fish in the family Salmonidae.  Salmon are intensively produced in aquaculture in many parts of the world.  The term "salmon" comes from the Latin salmo, which in turn may have originated from salire, meaning "to leap".

*The only people who wear salmon are gay men and…salmon. ~ Rita Lefleur

Salmon is a popular food. Classified as an oily fish, salmon is considered to be healthy due to the fish's high protein, high omega-3 fatty acids, and high vitamin D content. Salmon is also a source of cholesterol, with a range of 23–214 mg/100 g depending on the species.

Quotes about salmon

• I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
  Till China and Africa meet,
  And the river jumps over the mountain
  And the salmon sing in the street,

  I'll love you till the ocean
  Is folded and hung up to dry
  And the seven stars go squawking
  Like geese about the sky.

  • W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening (1937).

• The salmon swimming upstream to spawn may be wily in a hundred ways, but she cannot even contemplate the prospect of abandoning her reproductive project and deciding instead to live out her days studying coastal geography or trying to learn Portuguese.
  • Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves (2003).

• Far out beyond the surf they felt it. Beyond the reach of any canoe, half a sea away, something stirred inside them, an ancient clock of bone and blood that said, "It’s time." Silver-scaled body its own sort of compass needle spinning in the sea, the floating arrow turned toward home. From all directions they came, the sea a funnel of fish, narrowing their path as they gathered closer and closer, until their silver bodies lit up the water, redd-mates sent to sea, prodigal salmon coming home.
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 241. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8. 

• The only people who wear salmon are gay men and…salmon.
  • Rita Lefleur (Ali Landry) in "Worst First Date Ever," Eve (15 September 2003, S1E1).

• [W]hen you look at the whole thing you don't try to count the scales on the salmon, of course you don't. You see them as little silver pearls against grey and pink – isn't that right? – look at the pink of the salmon, with the bone appearing white in the centre and then grays, like the shades of mother of pearl.
  • Édouard Manet, on painting, reported by Philippe Burty, as cited in Manet by Himself, ed. Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Little Brown 2000, London; p. 52.

• In the swirl of its pool
  the home-coming salmon
  has no intuition
  of anything changed.
  • Andrew Motion, "You Helped Give a Shape", An elegy on the death of HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

• One pitch-dark rainy night we landed about ten o'clock at the mouth of a salmon stream when the water was phosphorescent. The salmon were running, and the myriad fins of the onrushing multitude were churning all the stream into a silvery glow, wonderfully beautiful and impressive in the ebon darkness.
  • John Muir, Stickeen (1909).

• Gene Ray: Another thing, did you know your father is a fish?

Interviewer: No, I did not know my... [laughter]

Gene Ray: You know how salmon swim upstream, the male fertilizes the female eggs laid in the water?

Interviewer: Yes.

Gene Ray: The sperm fish swims upstream just like the salmon fertilizes female eggs laid in the water.

• Gene Ray, Radio KoL interview (April 9, 2004).

• There is a river in Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth;... and there is salmons in poth.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, sc. vii (Fluellen).

External links

• Data related to Salmoninae on Wikispecies