Salmon farms are sustainable and provide fish for the future.
by Grant Warkentin, Time comment, August 23, 2011
Interesting article, Bryan. As you are probably aware the scientific debate on this issue is not black and white. However, most of the studies which suggest farms are killing wild salmon are mathematical extrapolations with the same authors (Krkosek and Morton). However, sometimes even they don't agree with themselves. Take a look at this study they did last year which concluded that there was no statistically significant difference in the survival rate of wild salmon when comparing a region with salmon farms and a region without salmon farms: http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.... Oddly this study didn't get the fanfare and wide media release all their other ones have.
Full disclosure - I work in the salmon farming business in B.C. And I am proud to say that our operations are sustainable, are environmentally sound, are socially sound and are economically sound. We have ISO 14001, 9001, 18001 and 22000 certifications for our environmental, quality, food safety management systems and our occupational health and safety management systems. We are the first company to attain the APSA (Aboriginal Principles for Sustainable Aquaculture) certification. We also have a Certificate of Recognition from the Food/Manufacturing Industry Occupational Safety Association of B.C., one of only two large companies in British Columbia to achieve this high standard for worker safety.
So I am confident when I say that our salmon farms are sustainable, and are providing fish for the future.
Reference Link:
Sea lice dispersion and salmon survival in relation to salmon farm activity in the Broughton Archipelago
Oxford Journal, Ices Journal of Marine Science, October 2010
Alexandra Morton1, Rick Routledge2, Amy McConnell3 and Martin Krkošek1,4,*†
...The survival of the pink salmon cohort was not statistically different from a reference region without salmon farms.
http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/10/09/icesjms.fsq146.abstract
Grant was commenting on the following article:
Study Says Sea Lice From Farmed Salmon Do Hurt Wild Fish—But the Debate's Not Over
Posted by Bryan Walsh, Time Blog, Tuesday, August 23, 2011
One of the hottest points of debate on aquaculture is the effect that farmed fish might have on their wild cousins. Fish raised in a major aquaculture operation live in close, sometimes cramped conditions that are nothing like the open ocean. As a result, they can become victims of disease and parasites—just as for centuries human beings who lived in densely populated cities tended to fall victim to infectious disease more often than those who lived in sparsely populated rural areas. Disease is a major economic worry for aquaculture producers—just as it is for their counterparts on land–but if infected farmed fish escape, they can introduce those diseases to wild species, with potentially devastating environmental consequences.
But the aquaculture industry has argued that the threat farmed fish might pose to wild ones has been overblown by environmentalist opponents—and last December, fish farmers received a boost from an academic source. Researchers led by Gary Marty—a fish pathologist at the University of California-Davis—found no evidence that the spread of parasitic sea lice from farmed salmon were leading to the dramatic collapse of wild salmon stocks on the West Coast. (There was an amazing 97% decline in wild pink salmon returning to spawn in 2002.) Marty's results were a departure from other studies that had shown a connection between infections in farmed fish and the decline in wild salmon, but his team was able to analyze new data from industry that hadn't been available for past research. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), concluded that there was no reason to separate farmed fish from wild salmon—a change many environmentalists have long demanded.
The PNAS study got significant media pickup—at least, as far as fish farming research goes—but it turns out it may be wrong. That's the conclusion of a new study published today—also in PNAS—that examines some of the same data used in the original study, and finds that parasites like sea lice do indeed hurt wild salmon. Martin Krkosek, a professor in the department of zoology at New Zealand's University of Otago, led a team of researchers who found that the results of the original study were simply wrong, and understated the impact of lice on wild salmon. By contrast, Krkosek and his colleagues write:
Our results show that survival is negatively correlated with the abundance of lice on salmon farms, for both pink and coho salmon.
Expect more back and forth on this issue, and between these studies. In fact, this week the Canadian government is investigating the possible connections between fish farms and disease in a long-awaited and controversial commission. But both sides have reason to try to fix this problem. Fish farming has environmental costs, but as I wrote in a cover story last month for TIME, we can't sustainably catch enough wild fish to meet the growing global demand for seafood. The fish of the future will increasingly be farmed—and we need to find and support aquaculture methods that really are sustainable.
