Chum Salmon

Wild Chum Salmon

Chum Salmon Flavor Scale

Flavor
Oil
Texture

Fresh wild Chum Salmon, also called Keta Salmon, has a milder flavor and is more lean than Coho, Sockeye and King Salmon. But it still has enough firmness and oil content to lend itself to a wide variety of cooking applications.

Chum (Keta) Salmon Flavor Profile

Chum Salmon have light pink to orange colored flesh which is lighter than Chinook, Sockeye and Coho. The texture is more firm and coarse than the other salmon and Chum has a milder flavor.

Alternate Names

Keta, Dog Salmon, Calico Salmon, Chub, Fall Salmon, Silverbright, Dark Chum, Qualla, River Chum.

DescriptionOncorhynchus keta)

Image courtesy of BCSalmon.ca

Commercial Chum Salmon range from 6 – 12 lbs but can grow to about 20 pounds. They have a steel-blue color and instead of spots they can have larger black splotches on their body and no spots on the tail. Chum have large scales and a their eyes have large pupil.

Spawning Chum have an olive-green to brown back with vertical red-purple bands on their sides. Follow the link for a video on how to identify species of salmon.

The highest quality Chums are ocean-run fish and are frequently called “Silverbrights” due to their silvery sheen. The second quality grade of Chum have watermarked skin and are grouped together as “Semibrights”. They go by various names including: Calico Chum, Dark Chum, Fall Chum, River Chum and Qualla.

Fresh Chum (Keta) Salmon Availability

Fresh seafood availability chart: green areas show peak availability, light green show limited availability, gray indicates not available fresh. Frozen available all year long.

Chum Salmon Butchering Yield %

Range & Habitat

AquaMaps Data sources: GBIF

Chum Salmon are a very wide ranging Pacific Salmon. They are commercially caught from southern California and southern Japan to the Mackenzie River in the Arctic Ocean.

Typical Wholesale Products

Head/On Dressed, Head/Off Dressed, Fillets, Steaks

Chum Salmon Sustainability Info

Name	Alternate Names	Catch Method	Catch Region	Seafood Watch	Ocean Wise	Sea Choice	Mercury Concerns
Chum	Keta, Dog Salmon, Calico Salmon, Chub, Fall Salmon, Silverbright	Wild – Drift Gillnet, Purse Seine, Troll	US – Alsaka				Low
			US – WA
			US – CA, OR
			Canada
Roe	Ikura	Wild – Drift Gillnet, Purse Seine, Troll	US – Alsaka		n/a		Low
			Canada	n/a	n/a
Disclaimer:The sustainability info above is accurate to the best of our knowledge. However, each program randomly updates their information without our knowledge. We therefore recommend that you verify the current accuracy of this information.
= Best Choice/Recommended     = Good Alternative     = Avoid/Not Recommended							Updated August 2013

There is some discrepancy in BlueOcean.org’s info for Chum Salmon. On one page for fish from WA it lists the species as yellow “Good Alternative”, and on another page it is listed as green “Best Choice”. Upon diving into the details it appears that the page with a yellow rating is lumping all 5 Pacific species together, while the page with a green rating is evaluating only Chum Salmon.