From today's copy of "The Fishing Wire". See link at the end for the full article




Is Farmed Salmon Really Salmon?
By Mathew Berger
Nautilus Magazine

The fish market has become the site of an ontological crisis. Detailed labels inform us where each fillet is from or how it was caught or whether it was farmed or wild-caught. Although we can now tell the farmed salmon from the wild, the degree of differences or similarities between the two defies straightforward labels. When a fish—or any animal—is removed from its wild habitat and domesticated over generations for human consumption, it changes—both the fish and our perception of it. The farmed and wild both say "salmon" on their labels, but are they both equally "salmon?" When does the label no longer apply?

This crisis of identity is ours to sort out; not the fish's. For us, the salmon is an icon of the wild, braving thousand-mile treks through rivers and oceans, leaping up waterfalls to spawn or be caught in the clutches of a grizzly bear. The name "salmon" is likely derived from the Latin word, "salire," to leap. But it's a long way from a leaping wild salmon to schools of fish swimming in circles in dockside pens. Most of the salmon we eat today don't leap and don't migrate.

We now manage salmon's evolution—even to the point of genetically modifying them to grow faster.

More than 90 percent of all the adult Atlantic salmon now on the planet are thought to be in salmon farms and almost all Atlantic salmon available in the United States at your local market is from a farm. This rise of the farmed salmon, and the decline of native ones, is casting the definition of species into doubt and in the process tweaking our relationship to nature. In a 1998 paper, Mart Gross, a conservation biologist, called for the recognition of a new creature, Salmo domesticus.

"Domesticated salmon are about as different from wild salmon as dogs are from wolves," says Gross, a professor at the University of Toronto. Like dogs, these salmon now depend on humans for habitat and food, and we manage their evolution—even to the point of genetically modifying them to grow faster.

Salmon species aren't the first to undergo this identity shift at our hands, but the transformation from a wild to domestic species has seldom happened as quickly. We are watching this one unfold within a single human lifetime. To Gross and other scientists, the rapid transformation epitomizes our Anthropocene epoch, where nature can no longer be separated from humans.

Read the rest of this story in Nautilus Magazine here: http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/is-farmed-salmon-really-salmon.
- See more at: http://www.thefishingwire.com/story/362288#sthash.hISkdLUb.dpuf

According to NOAA, “aquaculture globally supplies more that 50 percent of all seafood produced for human consumption and that percentage has been and will continue to rise.

Conventional wisdom holds that traditional fisheries are producing near their maximum capacity and that future increases in seafood production must come largely from aquaculture.

Experts at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization say we will need another 40 million tons of seafood worldwide per year by 2030 just to meet current consumption rates.”

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/aquaculture/faqs/faq_aq_101.html#3whydo

Salmo d.... has a pretty nice ring to it, eh?

NO THANKS.

I can live without the EXPECTATION and sense of entitlement to having salmon available year round.

I'll eat mine seasonally.... wild-caught, fresh out of my fish box, NEVER frozen.

It's already been over a month since my last serving. It will be several more months before my next.

I CAN WAIT

Makes the new year's first bite of spring king that much more special.

A pretty good case can be made for Oncorhynchus pseudomykiss, that hatchery form of rainbow. Since most of them do not survive well in the wild, they are obviously evolved for a different environment. They are close enough (sister species) to be able to hybridize with the expected results of little or no viable production.

Making them different species might just help the conservation of the true mykiss.

That a good one Doc.

You and I as boat owners are probably looked at as stuck up American brats by turning our nose up at protein the rest of the world is clamoring for while ironically waiting for springers that are adipose clipped HATCHERY Chinook.

I can’t wait for the those awesome springers we are entitled to and the hell with what the rest of the world needs or thinks.

I too am spoiled......like fresh caught, have the boat and when I can fish, have been known to catch something for dinner....

but that said,,,,I also shop at Safeway, Costco and others.....what amazes me if the amounts of "fish" that is moved at these stores. I know they have special sales at some times, but not generally. The prices scare me...even I won't buy lobster or crab but the price for salmon is unbelievable. I called one of the local sea food stores in Aberdeen, during the past year....ask price on "springer"....$24.95 a pound, I then asked if sales were good "we sell all we get"....

Hope the springer runs continue to improve.....I enjoy a bar-b-qued piece of these fish..........but that said, summer run steelhead is not to bad!!!!

I put on my Norsky hat and enjoyed Dungeness crab cakes night before last and halibut last night - but not quite as selective at Doc as mine were out of my freezer. Crab at Fred Meyer last week was $9.99/# in the round so makes one crab (1.8#) about $18.00. Using a yield rate of 25% that crab meat is about $40/#.

Didn't know I was living so high on the hog (crab).

Don't want to think about buying halibut.

I think Costco has 1# tubs of picked Dungeness crab for about $29 and you don't have to do the picking.....

Thanks Dave. But the remnants of the hunter/gatherer in me gains some gratification from the process. That and I know exactly where and how it was caught (as in, not Eagle Harbor) and processed (as in, cleaned before cooking).

My sin story...

I paid $27 a pound for two generous center-cut pieces at that same market about 6-7 years ago, DW.... fresh, not frozen... wild caught from the CR during the gillnet opener 2 days previous.

It was absolutely delicious! I devoured my piece for dinner later that night. LMWS savored hers a bit more slowly. She deliberately consumed the 2 inches at the top of the fillet (that oh so juicy back medallion) and the lower 2.5 inches of greasy belly meat.

She pushed her plate away with a pretty good center section still remaining. "I'm done," she declared. Talk about raising a fish snob.

"What about the middle part?" I inquired.

"You can pack that part for lunch tomorrow, Dad"

Whats a Springer?