From one of the links in the posted article, this section about where the Atlantic salmon go, once out of the pens.
“John Volpe, a fisheries ecologist at the University of Alberta, has been swimming rivers with snorkel and mask to document the spread of Atlantic salmon and their offspring.
"In the majority of rivers, I find Atlantic salmon," Volpe said. "We know they are out there; we just don't know how many, or what to do about them."
His research focuses on how Atlantic salmon can colonize, if given a chance. It has terrified the U.S. neighbors to the north. Alaskan officials banned fish farms in 1990 to protect their wild fishery.
The following is from a link in the posted article. It doesn’t seem to “put to rest any propaganda about colonization.”
And from an article in the Seattle Times: “Farmed salmon ‘heading to every river in Puget Sound’”
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-new ... get-sound/
The following is an article from the LA Times, and is linked to in the “Salmon Farming on the Rise in Washington” by Daniel Jack Chasan. This article was posted in the previous thread.
Article: Fish Farms Become Feedlots of the Sea
By: Kenneth R. Weiss
Of: Times Staff Writer from Port McNeill, BC
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-sal ... story.html
The following is from a link in the article you posted.
“IF you bought a salmon filet in the supermarket recently or ordered one in a restaurant, chances are it was born in a plastic tray here, or a place just like it.
Instead of streaking through the ocean or leaping up rocky streams, it spent three years like a marine couch potato, circling lazily in pens, fattening up on pellets of salmon chow.
It was vaccinated as a small fry to survive the diseases that race through these oceanic feedlots, acres of net-covered pens tethered offshore. It was likely dosed with antibiotics to ward off infection or fed pesticides to shed a beard of bloodsucking sea lice.
For that rich, pink hue, the fish was given a steady diet of synthetic pigment. Without it, the flesh of these caged salmon would be an unappetizing, pale gray. ….. “
Continuing….
"Industrial fish farming raises many of the same concerns about chemicals and pollutants that are associated with feedlot cattle and factory chicken farms. So far, however, government scientists worry less about the effects of antibiotics, pesticides and artificial dyes on human health than they do about damage to the marine environment.
"They're like floating pig farms," said Daniel Pauly, professor of fisheries at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. "They consume a tremendous amount of highly concentrated protein pellets and they make a terrific mess."
Fish wastes and uneaten feed smother the sea floor beneath these farms, generating bacteria that consume oxygen vital to shellfish and other bottom-dwelling sea creatures."
And further,…
“Disease and parasites, which would normally exist in relatively low levels in fish scattered around the oceans, can run rampant in densely packed fish farms.
"Pesticides fed to the fish and toxic copper sulfate used to keep nets free of algae are building up in sea-floor sediments. Antibiotics have created resistant strains of disease that infect both wild and domesticated fish.
"Clouds of sea lice, incubated by captive fish on farms, swarm wild salmon as they swim past on their migration to the ocean.
"We are not taking strain off wild fisheries. We are adding to it," Naylor said. "This cannot be sustained forever."
And farther down ….
“Five international companies -- three of them based in Norway -- control most of the existing farms….In Norway, parasites have so devastated wild fish that the government poisoned all aquatic life in dozens of rivers and streams in an effort to re-boot the ecological system.
"The Norwegian companies are transferring the same operations here that have been used in Europe," said Pauly, the fisheries professor. "So we can infer that every mistake that has been done in Norway and Scotland will be replicated here." Dale Blackburn, vice president of West Coast operations for Norwegian-based Stolt Sea Farm, said his staff works very closely with its counterparts in Norway. But, he said, "It's ridiculous to think we don't learn from our mistakes and transfer technology blindly."
Still, more than a dozen farms in British Columbia have been stricken by infectious hematopoietic necrosis, a virus that attacks the kidneys and spleen of fish.
Jeanine Siemens, manager of a Stolt farm, said, "It was really hard for me and the crew" to oversee the killing of 900,000 young salmon last August because of a viral outbreak.
Grieg Seafood recently got an emergency permit from the Canadian government to dump in the Pacific 900 tons of salmon killed by a toxic algae bloom. The emergency? The weight of the dead fish threatened to sink the entire farm. Farms are typically required to bury the dead in landfills to protect wild marine life and the environment.”
The article goes on and on, and shows nothing good can come out of an open pen fish farm industry, except dollars in the coffers of those who are paid to make very bad environmental and ecological decisions.
Personally, I think open pen fish farms are not the way to go, for many reasons. ( I happen to believe that land based, aquaculture, in controlled effluent pens, with recycling and monitoring can be a good thing, much like current hatchery type systems, could be not only acceptable but good, would work.) I know I can’t make decisions for anyone else. And, I support others right to their own opinions and they can base them on whatever input they want.
Seems Tom and I don’t agree and that’s OK. I still think he is a great guy, a good fisherman, and a friend. Pretty sure we can agree to disagree, and support our rights to have and present our own differing opinions.
It has been a good learning experience for me here, Thanks to those who participated and to the Admin guys for some latitude.
