Study - Salmon Farms Have Cut Wild Salmon Populations By Up To 70% In Multiple Regions

[hatrack]

HALIFAX - Salmon farming operations have reduced wild salmon populations by up to 70 per cent in several areas around the world and are threatening the future of the endangered stocks, according a new scientific study. The research by two Canadian marine biologists showed dramatic declines in the abundance of wild salmon populations whose migration takes them past salmon farms in Canada, Ireland and Scotland.

"Our estimates are that they reduced the survival of wild populations by more than half," Jennifer Ford, lead author of the study published Monday in the Public Library of Science journal, said in Halifax. "Less than half of the juvenile salmon from those populations that would have survived to come back and reproduce actually come back because they're killed by some mechanism that has to do with salmon farming." The authors, including the late Halifax biologist Ransom Myers, claim the study is the first of its kind to take an international view of stock sizes in countries that have significant salmon aquaculture industries.

Ford said wild salmon populations in Atlantic Canada have been hit the hardest, with rivers in New Brunswick and Newfoundland that have stocks that swim past farms dropping steeply over the years. The scientists compared the survival of wild salmon that travel near farms to those that don't, finding that upward of 50 per cent of the salmonid that do pass by farms don't survive.

"There's really strong evidence that this can have impacts on wild salmon and in particular in places like Atlantic Canada, where Atlantic salmon populations are doing so badly," Ford said. "It's worrying."

EDIT

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hrPAdRi1kMyaNmxaPNCspc_95ihw

[pansypoo53219]

1. i am just glad i hate salmon.

and sea food, cause i would hate to give it up if i loved it. so far, pigs are not endangered. pass the bacon.

[cloudythescribbler]

2. Is there some way, even if more expensive, to have salmon farming that DOESN'T threaten wild salmon?

It is a subject that concerns me but about which I confessedly know squat

[hatrack]

3. Not really - even if the issues of parasites and pollution were solved . . .

. . . you'd still have the irreducible problem of strip-mining protein from the oceans to feed the farmed fish - food that consequently isn't there for the wild populations to eat.

And with between three and five pounds of wild-caught protein required for every pound of farmed salmon . . .

As somebody said, farming salmon for meat is like farming tigers for meat.

[cloudythescribbler]

4. It seems that w/research it should be possible to synthesize their food -- but that

stripping the oceans is easier and cheaper. That's what I wonder about -- but in the meantime, I suppose that there needs to be some way (eg a HUGE tax) on salmon (which I eat all the time, just had it for dinner last nite) to reduce demand massively.

But the money could go to research to make the farming safer, even if it isn't cheap.