At present, domestic ichthyologists use two body survey schemes for Pacific salmon species, including humpbacked salmon. The first one was developed and first used for morphometric description of the Bolshaya River (Western Kamchatka) humpbacked salmon by I.F. Pravdin based on the scheme proposed by Smith [10]. The system of surveys was finalized by the author and finally includes 32 plastic and six meristic features, determination of sex, age, stage of maturity, and body weight [11]. Several parameters characterizing the length of the humpbacked salmon body, as well as finding the body weight and determining the age, were selected from the number of surveys specified in the scheme for mass studies in the framework of the full biological analysis (FBA). One of the first population studies using such surveys of humpbacked salmon was conducted by S.P. Volovik for the Sakhalin populations [1] and by M.N. Gorokhov for the North Pacific populations [5; 6]. The morphological structure of Chukchi humpbacked salmon populations using I.F. Pravdin's survey scheme was described by I.A. Chereshnev [11]. Unfortunately, there are no new works characterizing the morphological features of Asian humpbacked salmon populations.
The survey scheme described by I.F. Pravdin was generally accepted until the early 1980s, when M.K. Glubokovsky proposed a modified scheme to determine 18 dimensions [2; 3]. The main idea is to develop a system of surveys for more rapid determination of external morphology parameters during population studies of humpbacked salmon of Primorye and Sakhalin. This study provided the factual basis for proposing the hypothesis of fluctuating humpbacked salmon herds as opposed to the pre-existing concept of local herds. A.I. Karpenko not only described the morphological structure of humpbacked salmon breeding in the rivers of southern Sakhalin but also compared the two mentioned survey schemes [8; 9].
The results of a recent morphometric study (using M.K. Glubokovsky's survey scheme) of humpbacked salmon acclimated in the White Sea and that from the Ola River donor population (Taua Bay, Okhotsk Sea) are extremely interesting [19; 20]. The length and body weight of White Sea humpbacked salmon, grown from eggs collected at the spawning grounds of the Ola River and bred at a fish hatchery on the river flowing into the White Sea, were greater than those of Ola humpbacked salmon. In addition, a number of differences were found in body surveys between the samples studied. Apparently, the noted changes are explained by the adaptation of individuals to the new habitat conditions.