Originally Posted By: Carcassman
I would also add that it seem a little cynical or disingenuous to create a fishery (stocked resident coho and black mouth) that are known to concentrate toxins at rates higher than normal wild fish.

Can't argue with that!

Originally Posted By: Carcassman
The natural environment can't produce enough salmon for consumption. And, how times change. Back in the 80s, 100-125K hatchery Chinook returned to Bellingham Bay alone, products of the Nooksack and Samish hatcheries.


I don't see how you can predict the carrying capacity of our ecosystem when salmonids have been overfished since the 1870's!
We are producing 17 million pounds annually of Atlantic salmon. How much of that is eaten locally?
Basic laws of supply and demand say there is no shortage of farmed salmon or the price would be sky high. There is no reason they cannot be produced on land as they are in other places.
The simple reason they are not is because we are allowing this. On land farms don't have the added benefits of year round chemical weapons labs to experiment on what hurts our pacific salmon runs and what doesn't work. This is a long term investment to eliminate the competition and have entire market for themselves.