What other livestock are raised where their excess uneaten rotting food, excremental sewage, and massive doses of toxic drugs are allowed to simply run-off completely uncontained into the environment?

Not saying that salmon farming isn't a viable option... but the industry is in serious need of reform to clean up its act.

Doc ... We're agreeing, I think?

The lady in the video tried in the last 3 weeks to get authorization to move the outmigrating fish around the farms and then release but she was turned down by the canadian govt. and threatened with huge fines if she did.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHTQij_8O0w

Agreed.

When I was at the AG's office there was talk of trying to establish net pens as "point sources" of pollution due to the food and waste problem, which would bring them under the purview of the Clean Water Act...I thought the idea had some merit, but apparently it was never pursued, or at least never came to that conclusion.

Fish on...

Todd

I am not making this post to defend fish farms but I would like to point out that you tube is not recognized as a source of the best peer review science. It is good for promoting an agenda cloaked as science. Look at the link below, I have heard both of the scientists give presentations and their arguments are convincing. In one talk photos of steelhead smolts from Hood Canal, completely covered with sea lice were shown. Are there salmon farms in Hood Canal?

http://www.newsdata.com/fishletter/242/4story.html

Toxic compounds in farmed fish are a concern. One should read the paper, widely reported in the press a few years ago, and not just the stories in the press. Reported in the paper but not in the press was that tests indicated that chinook on the west coast had a higher level of dangerous toxins than any west coast farmed salmon.

Without a doubt there are significant concerns about LOCAL impacts of net pen operations. Those concerns can and should be addressed. However that doesn't mean the pens should be eliminated.

As WN1A is pointing out much of the "Science " being reported to support the negative impacts from the net pens are being cherried picked to provife a slanted view. If one digs into many of those sources you will find that the funding sources come from the commmerical fishig industry, which has a huge concern about the impacts from farmed fish on their profits.

Just one example from the toxic issue referred to by WN1A; in this case PCBs. There was much made about the farmed fish having higher levels than wild fish - of course those making those claims didn't mention that they were comparing most wild chums to the farmed fish or that the famed Copper River Chinook had higher PCB levels than the farmed fish - wonder why?

As with most of this type of issues I encourage folks to take the time to local at the full range of information before making snap judgements.

FNP -
Regarding the polution by other commerical sources of protien. Who are cleaning up after the free ranging cattle - those grass feed animals that are so much better for you than those grain fed feed lot animals? While the feed lots may control the fecas of the animals what are the environmental impacts from the agiculture associated with the grain produced to feed the animals.

The real issue is where is the protein we human's want going to come from? Without a doubt it would be much better for the ecosystem if we all got our protein from sources much lower on the food chain. Instead of eating salmon (either farmed or wild) we limited our fish diet to such sources as fish meal from bait fish would be much better. However I suspect that most of will continue to want to enjoy a nice piece of salmon or a juicy steak from the grill.

Tight lines
Curt

Aren't we (as humans) finding out that picking on the smaller food chained critters, such as bait fish, is just as bad, if not worse?

Krill fishery - impacting the whale populations and everything else that depends on kill for their diets to survive.
Herring - impacting the Stellar Sealion populations, as well as the salmon/fish/birds.
Sardines - impacting many fish, birds, etc.
Anchovies - same, same.

I think we'd probably do more harm than good if we focused a majority of the harvesting on bait fish.

We tend to harvest fisheries in an all or nothing manner. The trend seems to be fish it until it collapses *then* work on recovering the fisheries.

Having no bait fish around because we are focusing fishing on them impacts many many aquatic species. Even I know that can't be good.

We'd cut down tremendously on our bait fish harvest if we weren't making fish meal out of them to feed fish in fish farms...

Fish on...

Todd

As I've stated earlier, the fish supply has to come from somewhere, so which is it? Are we gonna get them from farms, hatchery stocks, or wild stocks? Which evil are we going to keep?

I thought that is what happened to all those tribal gillnet caught wild steelhead kelts......

Here are a couple of good reads on the subject that I used for a research paper in Marine Biology. One thing that surprised me was the amount of organic matter that is associated with salmon farms. Apparently for each ton of salmon produced 55kg of Nitrogen and 4.8kg of Phosphorus are excreted into the ocean. I'd think that would lead to some heavy eutrophication and anoxic conditions in some areas with heavy densities of salmon farms.

http://www.bioone.org.ezproxy.lib.uwm.edu/archive/0006-3568/55/5/pdf/i0006-3568-55-5-427.pdf

http://biology.plosjournals.org/archive/1545-7885/6/2/pdf/10.1371_journal.pbio.0060033-L.pdf

Parker -
If you think back to high school biology and the concept of the basic food chain I think you will get what I was referring to.

For a fish such as a Chinook salmon that is feeding well up on the food chain it takes roughly 10 pounds of forage fish to produce 1 # of salmon. By consuming fish meal rather than salmon we can get much more protien ; for the same impacts from consuming 1# of salmon we can eat 10# of fish meal.

Todd -
You have to remember that the farm fish are much more efficient that the wild fish in converting their diet to usuable protein and that we can further harvest the final farmed product at a much higher rate than wild fish. As a result for say a ton of bait fish consumed the farmed fish will produce much more protein for the human table than the wild fish.

Of course the issue still remains where on the food chain we as a society opt to do are foraging.

Tight lines
Curt

That is the problem with fisheries science today and for that matter any science. Everybody has an agenda and there seems to be very little unbiased work being done. There is no doubt that the fish farmers are lining the pockets of DFO and the commercials are supporting those that are against fish farming. This is how it works in todays society. The question is can we believe any of them.

Agendas aside, one thing is clear.... the farms create an unequivocal biohazard for wild fish swimming past them. How can that be construed as anything but BAD?

This ain't rocket science... it just IS!

The farms serve to amplify sea-lice production in a VERY unnatural way. The man-made bloom of lice is like a plague of biting insects that literally suck the baby salmon dry.

Salmon sewage and uneaten fish-food is concentrated beneath the net-pens creating mini dead zones.

Mass doses of anti-biotics and anti-louse treatments add to the toxic brew.

Bottom line... wild juvenile salmon can't help but die by the millions.

It doesn't need more study.... just responsible action. History has already shown that Scandinavian rivers' wild salmon populations crashed due to sea-lice infestation as salmon farms proliferated in their vicinity. What makes them think it would be any different on this side of the globe?

It's an utterly indefensible way for ANY business to operate.

Doc! You're starting to sound like my wife! "Act Responsibly!" WTF does that mean, anyway? Do you have a workable recommendation?

Big Bird sums it up nicely here.....worldwide, most ocean fisheries are fully exploited or overfished and the fish have to come from somewhere to meet the world's huge demands for seafood. The US, due to the lack of farm raised fish, has about about an $8 billion/year "seafood trade deficit". We get most of our farmed fish from BC and Chile. The Bush Administration set out to rectify this situation by passing legislation allowing industrial scale aquaculture in ocean waters.

American Gold Seafoods is the only company in this state currently farm raising salmon, and they operate 8 marine net pens, so it is a concern locally.

I think I can speak for most of us here who are privileged enough to be able to eat "wild" salmon on a regular basis....farm raised Atlantic Salmon just plain sucks. It's soft and mushy and tastes like crap. Back when all my friends were getting married (bigamy is one wife too many; monogamy is more of the same) I attended a lot of rehearsal dinners and weddings; they almost always had farm raised Atlantic on the menu....."I'll have the chicken please".

Ike

I don't understand why they can't create saltwater pools or tanks on land to raise these fish. That way there is NO chance any fish will be affected by this problem.

Because they get free water and free water filtration/aeration by doing it out in the salt...waaayyy cheaper.

They could easily be required to do it in tanks, though...I wonder what the added cost would be?

Fish on...

Todd

Land basing the salmon farms would most likely kill the industry. It started out with big profits in the 1980s. Previously most local salmon farming had been limited to pan size coho from saltwater pens. The chinook and Atlantic salmon farms are huge in comparison. The cost of pumping all that salt water might be enough to kill the industry, but we would likely have to require that the pump intakes be screened to our WA and northwest region screening criteria. Maintaining those screens in a saltwater environment seems like it would be prohibitively expensive to me. As far as I know, using salt water pens in the public water domain is essential to the economic viability of commercial salmon farming.

In the mid-80s I favored salmon farm development for many of the same reasons already expressed in this thread. For the last several years I've become a lot more apprehensive about them.

Sg