CalCOFI.io CalCOFI.io open data ecosystem

Trachipterus altivelis

King-of-the-salmon

Speciesaccepted · checked 2026-08-05WoRMS 272531ITIS 166341key worms:272531
i

2026-08-05: itis_id 166341 via WoRMS external link

King-of-the-salmon is a species of ribbonfish in the family Trachipteridae. Its common name comes from the legends of the Makah people west of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which hold that this fish leads the salmon annually to their spawning grounds.W CalCOFI holds 587 observations of it in 1 dataset between 1959 and 2023, as larva.R

587
observations
587
records
587
sampling events
1959–2023
years
1
datasets
larva
life stages
1.8 m
max length
King-of-the-salmon (Trachipterus altivelis)
Photo · NOAA/NMFS · Public domain · commons

Observed in 1 dataset
i

One row per dataset, and beside it one cell per year, darker with more observations — the same strip the front door draws per dataset. Each row ends with the name that dataset uses (dataset_taxon); the accepted name is written once, in the title above. A quiet pill marks a name the authority does not accept.

  • 587 obs587 events1959–2023larva
    name used: Trachipterus altivelis King-of-the-salmon · code 382

Ways inExplorerdb-queryERDDAPRPythonThis page as JSON

Code and endpoints ERDDAP · R · Python · JSON
ERDDAPCalCOFI's own server, the Ichthyoplankton table constrained to this taxon
https://erddap.calcofi.io/erddap/tabledap/swfsc_ichthyo.html?&taxon_key=%22worms:272531%22

Read from taxa.json of release v2026.10.19, written at release by calcofi4db::build_taxa_catalog(). The catalog's index is /species/.

How big is it 1.8 m max · egg 2.65–3.1 mm
King-of-the-salmon1.8 m
a person1.7 m

max · worms_attribute

Every mark is a measured length with its own source — hover one to read it. The reference objects are _data/size_reference.csv: two of them, the 505 µm bongo mesh and the net's ring, are CalCOFI's own sampling gear.

Life stages larva
  • Ichthyoplankton larva

The stages each dataset records for it, from the release's obs_bio.life_stage. Their lengths are under How big is it.

Lineage 12 ranks · Biota to Trachipterus
Credits silhouette · photo · text · length · plate
  • Silhouette · lilychughes · Public Domain Mark · PhyloPic, drawn from Lampris guttatus · source
  • Photo · NOAA/NMFS · Public domain · commons · source
  • Text · Wikipedia, “King-of-the-salmon” · CC BY-SA 4.0 · revision 1363692112
  • Length · worms_attribute
  • Plate · Matarese, Kendall, Blood & Vinter 1989, NOAA Tech. Rep. NMFS 80, via the AFSC Ichthyoplankton Information System · Public domain (US Government work) · noaa_iis · source
Elsewhere Wikidata · iNaturalist · FishBase · GBIF

WikidataiNaturalistFishBaseGBIF

The same organism on the services the faces were fetched from; the authorities' own pages are the ids in the head.

Cite the release, v2026.10.19

Cite the release, v2026.10.19; each dataset's own citation, licence and DOI are on its page. How to cite ↗