The Black Sea salmon (''Salmo labrax'') is a fairly small species of

salmo ''Salmo'' is a genus of ray-finned fish from the subfamily Salmoninae of family (biology), family Salmonidae, and is part of the tribe (biology), tribe Salmonini along with the sister genera ''Salvelinus'' and ''Salvethymus''. Almost all ''Salmo ...

n, at about long on average and rarely reaching over . It inhabits the northern

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

coasts and inflowing rivers. There are anadromous, lacustrine and resident river populations. This fish is a close relative of the

brown trout The brown trout (''Salmo trutta'') is a species of salmonid ray-finned fish and the most widely distributed species of the genus ''Salmo'', endemic to most of Europe, West Asia and parts of North Africa, and has been widely introduced globally ...

. While it is the only native species of ''Salmo'' present in the northern Black Sea basin, it may hybridize with (introduced) brown trout in the major rivers.Freyhof, J. (2013
''Salmo labrax''
The

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological ...

of Threatened Species v. 2014.3 (March 2015). Sea-run populations are currently at low numbers, but the resident river stocks are doing well.

References

Salmo Fish described in 1814 Commercial fish Fish of Europe Fish of the Black Sea {{BlackSea-stub