Salmon

Salmon are common passive aquatic mobs found in oceans and rivers. They are a reliable and nutritious source of early-game food when cooked.

Java Edition
Salmon spawn in groups of 1–5 in cold or frozen oceans, as well as their deep variants. They also spawn in rivers and frozen rivers.

Bedrock Edition
Salmon spawn underwater at 12–32 blocks away from the player. Salmon spawn in groups of 3–5 in lukewarm, cold, normal, frozen oceans, their deep variants and rivers (including frozen rivers). In addition, salmon spawn on the surface (i.e., there must not be a spawnable block above the spawn location with a non-solid block on top). Salmon spawn in small, normal, and big sizes. 31.5% spawn as small, 52.6% spawn as normal, and 15.7% spawn as large.

Drops
When killed, salmon drop:


 * 1 (1  if killed while on fire). This is not affected by Looting.
 * when killed by a player or tamed wolf.


 * 1 (5% chance).
 * 1 s (25% chance) if salmon size is small or medium.
 * 1-2 s (25% chance) if salmon size is large.
 * 1 s (25% chance) if salmon size is small or medium.
 * 1-2 s (25% chance) if salmon size is large.

Behavior
Salmon tend to swim in schools (a maximum of seven salmon per school). Salmon are able to swim up approximately 4–5 blocks in waterfalls.

The player may collect salmon by a water bucket on it, which gives the player a bucket of salmon. Salmon placed with buckets do not despawn naturally. When that fish bucket is against a block, it empties the bucket, placing water with that fish swimming in it. $$, an empty bucket may be used as well.

Weaknesses
Salmon are unable to survive out of water. Outside of water, they flop around for a while until eventually they start to suffocate and die. Salmon flip around on their sides. $$, they rotate when flipping. Salmon also cannot swim or breathe in cauldron water.

$$, salmon have a weakness to weapons that have the Impaling enchantment, which also affects other fish and water/ocean mobs except drowned.

Axolotls always attack salmon on sight.

ID




Entity data
Salmon have entity data associated with them that contain various properties.




 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.
 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

Trivia

 * They appear to be influenced by real-life sockeye salmon.
 * Salmon also spawn in rivers because in the real-world in Autumn, salmon travel upstream, returning from the ocean to the streams where they were born, to lay eggs.
 * The salmon's ability to swim up waterfalls is actually based off salmon leaping into and above waterfalls in the real-world so they can get to the streams they were born in.
 * Since world spawn points are usually close to either rivers or oceans, also that salmon use a separate mob cap from land-based passive mobs, and that they spawn and despawn regularly, adding to the fact that 2 pieces of cooked salmon with a combined saturation of 19.2 fills the saturation bar completely, all of these factors make salmon a great early-game source of food. Plunging into a river, killing salmon and cooking them in furnaces is thus a great way to ensure food security within the first 10 minutes of a new world.