There is a billboard outside my office that advertises canned Pacific “pink salmon”.
What other kind is there (aside from the obvious “salmon-colored salmon”)? Is there such a thing as “white salmon”? Does it come in other pastel shades (blue, purple, puce)? 
The choice is between pink salmon and red salmon, if you’re talking tins. Red salmon appears to be sockeye salmon, whereas pink salmon is just… salmon.
Snopes also has something to say.Legend: A cannery stuck with unmarketable pale salmon turned this handicap around by boldly labelling their product as “Guaranteed not to turn pink in the can!”
Origins: It’s a great marketing tale of transforming the insurmountable disadvantage into the overpowering advantage, but that’s likely all it is, a tale.
Although her in Australia red outprices pink by more than 100% even from the same manufacturer. $8.53 to $4.15.
Farmed salmon are white or grey because they don’t have krill to feed on. So they are fed dye pellets along with their food. So “pink” doesn’t really tell you much – technically, artificially colored salmon should be labeled.
Here’s an editorial (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/123199_dye23.html) that’s admittedly over the top in its anti-fish-farming agenda, but contains some info on the subject.
There are five species of Pacific salmon:
[ul]
[li]Pink Salmon (also known as 'humpies") - Oncorhynchus gorbuscha[/li][li]Sockeye Salmon (also known as Red Salmon) - Oncorhynchus nerka[/li][li]Coho Salmon (also known as Silver Salmon) - Oncorhynchus kisutch[/li][li]Chum Salmon (also known as “Dogs”) - Oncorhynchus keta[/li][li]Chinook Salmon (also known as King Salmon) - Oncorhynchus tshawytscha[/li][/ul]
There is a range of color from pale pink to deep red, and winter ocean run King salmon are grey to white.
Barb and I were friends with a gentleman whose surname was Coe, and who had a garden, which he worked with tools including a redwood-handled hoe (the handle therefore being tan wood with a pinkish cast).
I cracked her up by pointing out that that particular garden tool was clearly salmon in color, being a Coe hoe. 
My only additional comment is that pink salmon (which are the most abundant in the wild) are pretty much considered to be ‘bottom shelf’ both in texture and flavor. Thanks, Fear Itself, for posting a factual answer and saving me the trouble.
Former Alaskan cannery worker here.
As Fear points out, “Pink” doesn’t refer to the color of the salmon meat (although Pink salmon *Oncorhynchus gorbuscha * are, in fact, usually pink in color), but to the species of the salmon in the can.
Likewise, “Red” salmon refers to sockeye salmon, Oncorhynchus nerka, and in fact their meat is bright red, at least when raw.
The different species of salmon all have different tastes because of their different life cycles. Pinks are small and spawn in small streams. They don’t have a lot of fat reserves, so their meat is generally lean and delicate. And relitively cheap, since “delicate” is another word for “flavorless”. Plus pinks go bad very quickly, so they are almost never sold fresh, the vast majority are canned.
Chum salmon is also pretty lean and flavorless. They are called “dog” salmon because native alaskans invariably reserved them for dog food. One salmon per dog per day for working dogs. To my mind, pinks and chums aren’t worth eating.
Reds are silvers are intermediate, much richer and more flavorful than chums and pinks. Reds and silvers are generally much more expensive than pinks, and are usually served fresh. Canned red/sockeye is probably fish that were too old to sell fresh and had to be canned or ground (i.e., ground up and dumped back into the ocean).
Kings spawn waaaaaay upstream in large rivers. They have very large fat reserves, since salmon don’t eat during spawning. So King salmon is dense, rich, and delicious, and expensive, and so is almost always sold fresh.
And of course, we also have feral atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), steelhead *Onchorynchus mykiss * (which are seagoing rainbow trout), and other kinds of salmonids.
Also note that the cannerys make more money from eggs than the meat. 99% of the eggs are sold in Japan for ridiculous prices.
Oh, back to color:
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon
For more on carotenoids, see Cecil’s column on Are flamingos pink because they eat shrimps?
Thank you, one and all!!
So this company (which will remain un-named here) is renting out all that billboard space in the hope of getting me to buy their cheap, relatively tasteless canned salmon.
Little do they know I am a Confirmed Doper, and not likely to fall easy prey to their tactics, thanks to the warnings of the Teeming Millions. 