Oncoryncus

Genetics, for the most part. The original strain of Salmon used in Lake Ontario was based on the Tule Fall Chinook, which is west coast race that runs the rivers in the fall, spawns and dies quickly. They have grey/white meat. There are also strains in Lake Ontario Chinooks that have pinker meat. Cross breeding over the last 30 years probably has produced characteristics from either race, so some Chinooks have white meat and some have pink meat. Diet also plays an important part for coloring the meat in the non-Tule strains, so more invertebrates or sticklebacks with lots of keratin in them will improve the color of the meat. Also, the longer they are in the river the lighter the meat seems to get.

I don't think it's illegal, maybe unethical to some tho.... I dig the idea of bringing the dead fish down to Erindale and we`d be glad to provide them to anyone who wants to pick them up and drive them down. The Ringwood volunteers don`t have time or energy left to pull it off though!

Correct, Chinooks are electrofished. We do kill thhem however as most of them are too big to handle alive, plus it's inhumane to extract eggs from live fish in the manner that we do. They are not cut open, instead eggs are extracted with air pressure and sperm extracted by squeezing the males near the vent. Most carcasses are put back into the river although some do go to University of Guelph for virology testing and some to the DFO for toxicology and other tests. All of this happens at the Streetsville dam, I doubt any make it back down to Erindale.