Salmon

From 55 Canneries on One River to a Single Net Pen: The Split History of Salmon

Salmon built an industry around itself twice, a century apart, and the two industries barely resemble each other. The first was wild and explosive: William Hume opened the first US salmon cannery on California’s Sacramento River in 1864, then moved operations to the Columbia River in 1866 after upstream gold-mining waste damaged the run. Canning spread fast — twelve canneries operated between Astoria and Portland by 1874, fifty-five by 1883, packing 630,000 cases of Chinook salmon that year alone, two-thirds of the entire Pacific Coast’s output. The workforce was overwhelmingly Chinese immigrant labor; more than 4,000 men worked Columbia River canneries by 1881, doing the gutting, cleaning, and packing that made canned salmon a global commodity decades before refrigerated shipping existed.

That first boom didn’t last. The US Commissioner of Fisheries flagged overfishing, dam construction, and habitat loss as threats to salmon stocks as early as 1875, and the warning proved accurate: Columbia River catches peaked early in the canning era and declined steadily afterward. By the late 20th century, Snake River sockeye were listed as federally endangered and more than fifty distinct West Coast salmon stocks had gone extinct. Wild Pacific salmon — Chinook (king), sockeye, coho, pink, and chum — never fully recovered the abundance that built those first canneries.

The second industry solved the scarcity problem by leaving the wild fishery behind entirely. On 28 May 1970, brothers Ove and Sivert Grøntvedt lowered a floating net pen into the water off Hitra, an island on Norway’s coast, and raised what became the first commercially successful generation of farmed Atlantic salmon. Norwegian aquaculture output grew roughly 40% a year through the mid-1970s, and Norway now supplies more than half the world’s farmed salmon, with Chile as the second major producer. Farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) has since overtaken wild-caught Pacific species as the fish most kitchens mean when they simply say “salmon” — a reversal that took barely fifty years.

In the Professional Kitchen

Salmon reaches kitchens fresh (whole, side, fillet, or portioned), frozen (block or individually quick-frozen portions), smoked, cured, and canned, and the choice between fresh farmed and frozen wild is usually the biggest driver of both cost and menu story. Fresh, farmed Atlantic salmon is available year-round in consistent sizes and fat content, making it the default for menus that need predictable plate cost and portioning every week. Frozen wild Pacific salmon — sockeye and king in particular — is how most kitchens outside the Pacific Northwest access wild product at all, since the wild season runs roughly May to September; IQF portioning lets a kitchen thaw only what’s needed and hold quality close to fresh.

Salmon anchors dishes across a wide range of cuisines: Nordic gravlax (dry-cured with salt, sugar, and dill), Ashkenazi-American lox and bagels, Japanese teriyaki and sashimi/sushi, Pacific Northwest cedar-plank grilling (a technique with Indigenous origins), French salmon en papillote, and Cajun blackened preparations. High fat content — especially in king salmon and farmed Atlantic — makes it more forgiving of a slightly overcooked minute than leaner fish, which is part of why it travels so well across cuisines. Pin bones need removing before portioning, and skin-on vs. skin-off changes both plating and crisping technique.

On raw preparations: fish served raw or undercooked normally must be frozen to FDA parasite-destruction specifications (either -4°F for 7 days or -31°F until solid, held 15 hours) before use. Farmed salmon raised entirely on formulated feed in a closed aquaculture system is exempt from this requirement, because the parasite life cycle that produces the risk cannot complete inside that system — a genuine food-safety distinction worth knowing before you assume “sushi-grade” always means “previously frozen.”

Varieties & Forms

Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is almost entirely farmed today, raised in Norway, Chile, Scotland, the Faroe Islands, and Canada, and graded largely on fat content, flesh color, and physical condition — “superior” vs. lower “production” grades, a distinction that has become contentious in Norway as processors push more fish into the lower grade. Pacific species are wild-caught (though some coho and Chinook are also farmed) and differ meaningfully in fat and use: king/Chinook carries the highest fat content and the richest flavor, prized for sashimi and high-end plates (Copper River king is the best-known specialty designation); sockeye has deep red, firm, leaner flesh that holds up to smoking and canning better than any other species; coho is milder and silver-fleshed, a good mid-tier grilling fish; pink and chum run leanest and cheapest, and are the backbone of the canned-salmon market rather than a fresh-fillet program.

On forms: use fresh farmed Atlantic for standing menu items that need weekly cost predictability and a fattier, sushi-friendly texture. Reach for frozen wild Pacific (sockeye or king) for seasonal specials, premium tasting menus, or any dish where “wild-caught” is part of the sell — but verify the claim, since wild salmon fraud is a documented problem (more below). Cold-smoked salmon (cured, then smoked at low temperature, roughly 68–86°F) stays raw-textured and silky, the form used for lox and canapés; hot-smoked salmon is fully cooked through smoking at higher heat and flakes like a cooked fillet, better for salads, dips, and pasta. Cured salmon (gravlax-style, salt-and-sugar cured without smoke) is a lower-cost way to deliver a cold-appetizer program. Canned salmon, almost always Alaskan sockeye or pink, is shelf-stable, includes bones and skin (a real calcium source), and is the most cost-effective form for salads, spreads, and cakes where visual fillet presentation doesn’t matter.

Why It Matters for Your Food Cost

Farmed salmon is now priced almost like a traded commodity, and it moves like one. On Norway’s NASDAQ Salmon Index, the weighted average price for fresh Atlantic superior-grade salmon fell to NOK 57.39/kg in late August 2022, then climbed to NOK 128.30/kg by mid-March 2023 — a 224% swing in under seven months — before hitting a fresh record near NOK 140/kg around Easter 2024. A kitchen buying farmed salmon on spot or short-term contract terms can see cost-per-portion move by double digits in a matter of weeks, driven by currency swings, seasonal export volume, and biological performance in the pens.

Biological risk is concentrated and real. Norway confirmed 14 infectious salmon anemia (ISA) outbreaks by mid-2025, tracking toward the 36-case peak year of 2021, and sea lice infestations are estimated to cost the industry roughly 10% of production annually. The most extreme event on record was Chile’s 2016 harmful algal bloom, which killed an estimated 100,000 metric tons of farmed Atlantic salmon — about 12% of that year’s Chilean production — in roughly two weeks, the largest farmed-fish mortality event ever documented. With Norway and Chile together supplying most of the world’s farmed salmon, a disease or bloom event in either country has an outsized effect on global availability and price.

Substitution is common but changes flavor and cost: farmed trout and Arctic char are the closest biological relatives and can stand in for milder preparations — Arctic char runs roughly $12–16/lb versus $14–18/lb for farmed Atlantic salmon and $25+/lb for wild king, with a subtler, less fatty flavor that suits baking and smoking better than grilling or raw service. Fish is one of the 14 allergens the EU requires food businesses to declare under Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 — a mandatory label regardless of species or preparation, distinct from the separate crustacean and mollusc allergen categories. On traceability: Oceana’s 2013–2015 US testing found 43% of retail and restaurant salmon samples mislabeled, with 69% of that being farmed Atlantic sold as wild — and mislabeling rates nearly tripled when wild salmon was bought out of season (23% vs. 8% in-season). Fresh salmon is also highly perishable, typically holding only 2–3 days properly iced, which makes portion-accurate ordering and FIFO rotation directly tied to waste.

How CalcMenu Helps

• Recipe costing tracks live supplier prices against volatile benchmarks like the NASDAQ Salmon Index, so a fillet’s plate cost reflects this week’s market, not last quarter’s.
• Substitution costing models trout or Arctic char alongside salmon on cost and yield, useful when a disease outbreak or seasonal gap tightens supply.
• Allergen tracking flags fish as one of the mandatory EU-declared allergens across every recipe and multi-site menu, independent of which species or form is used.
• Multi-site price consistency and supplier traceability data help confirm that “wild” or species claims on a menu match what’s actually being invoiced and served, a real gap the Oceana testing exposed industry-wide.

Sources

• The first salmon cannery on the Columbia River opens at Eagle Cliff, Wahkiakum County, in 1866 — HistoryLink.org
• Columbia River Canneries — National Museum of American History
• One hundred and fifty Chinese workers bound for salmon canneries at Blaine leave Seattle on April 2, 1900 — HistoryLink.org
• The Struggle to Save Pacific Salmon — U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• Sockeye Salmon — NOAA Fisheries
• Celebrating 50 years of modern aquaculture — Seafood from Norway
• What is salmon farming? — Global Salmon Initiative
• What the Rapid Rise of Norway’s Farmed Salmon Industry Means For the Rest of the World — Civil Eats, September 2023
• Parasite Destruction Requirements — Iowa DIA / FDA Food Code guidance
• Fish and Fishery Products Hazards and Controls Guidance, Chapter 5 — U.S. FDA
• Norway’s “production-grade” salmon controversy driving up prices — SeafoodSource
• Spring 2023: Norwegian Salmon Prices Outpacing Record Highs — Mintec Global
• Norwegian salmon prices surge 16 percent in week 13 of 2024 — SeafoodSource
• ISA, BKD continue to plague Norwegian salmon producers — SeafoodSource
• Is this the start of the next big salmon farming crisis? — SalmonBusiness
• Hydroclimatic conditions trigger record harmful algal bloom in western Patagonia (summer 2016) — Scientific Reports (Nature)
• Chile’s challenge: disposing 27,700 tons of algae/bloom dead salmon — MercoPress, March 2016
• EU 1169/2011 Guide: Allergen Labelling requirements — Menutech
• Oceana Reveals Mislabeling of America’s Favorite Fish: Salmon — Oceana USA
• Seafood Fraud: Your Wild Salmon Is Really Farm-Raised Salmon — TIME
• Arctic Char vs. Salmon: The Complete Guide — FishingBooker