Does Fish Farming Threatens Wild Salmon? - Updated

Treehugger has posted a quirky but very informative animated video from a group called Watershed Watch on the dangers of sea lice in the farmed-salmon industry. If you’ve got any interest in eating fish, or in fish conservation, it’s a must-watch…plus, I think it’s pretty funny too.

The long and short of it is that, since keeping salmon in a pen isn’t natural, they’re highly susceptible to parasites, and to be honest a whole host of other parasites and diseases. There’s strong evidence that the presence of these farms in an area greatly increases the risk of wild fish being afflicted by the same things, and experiencing a reduction in population as a result.

When these fish farms are placed near sensitive salmon spawning streams, the damage is multiplied exponentially, since the young are much more susceptible to these maladies and much more likely to die from them.

With the recent collapse of the mid-Pacific salmon fishery off California and Oregon this year, farmed fish has shot to the forefront of the marine biology and aquaculture worlds as a hot topic for discussion, and a major cause of concern. As badly threatened as wild fish populations are, the idea of farming fish seemed like a potential savior. We’re finding out now that might not be the case, or at the very least, that it has a long way to go - ultimately, farming could do more harm than fishing was.

*UPDATE*

After reading Dr. Weaver’s insightful comment below, I feel compelled to clarify my statements. I don’t believe that fish farming caused the collapse this year in California and Oregon, since, as he pointed out, the only fish farms in those regions are test programs which have been sponsored by the state specifically to research the impact that farms would have on that coastline (to be fair, Dr. Weaver, there are a COUPLE farms, but too few to cause such a widespread systemic collapse)

Additionally, the website and video in question focus specifically on the British Columbia salmon fishery and Watershed Watch are a group  whose stated mission “is to catalyze efforts to protect and restore BC’s precious wild salmon.”

I posted the video and this piece with the intention of highlighting the debate going on about farmed fish vs. wild, which I intend to cover more deeply in the coming months. For what it’s worth, you should know that fisheries worldwide have been greatly depleted and exist at small fractions of their previous size (some estimates suggest 90% off important commercial fish are already gone, and more for sharks and other big fish). You should also know that there are documented problems with fish farming, particularly related to the excess feed and massive doses of antibiotics that are put in the fish pens and are theoretically contaminating the surrounding areas.

It’s a very polarizing issue in fisheries science, and there are often clear divisions between those who believe that wild populations are beyond recover, who think that farming is the only solution for feeding America’s growing appetite for fish, and those who believe the only responsible option is radical conservation of the remaining wild stocks, and who have often joked that farmed fish are not “real fish” for a variety of reasons.

I’ve invited Dr. Weaver to share his thoughts on the benefits of salmon farming, and I hope that he will choose to do so. In the meantime, I would love to know what more of you think - Do you eat farmed fish? Do you think it tastes the same? Do you believe that wild fish are beyond rescue?