Important Rally During YVR Olympics-For Wild Salmon
- Thread starter bill barilko
- Start date
Most people probably have "bigger fish to fry". :lol::lol:
Yep, that's about it. No demand, no supply necessary.
I'm not sure if we want to start hauling out a bunch of "causes" during the Olympics...isn't one of the objectives supposed to be that we "look good" in the eyes of the world? Jeez, we may want to sweep the fish farm thing under the rug until the media folks all go home.
I once had farmed salmon by accident in a restaurant a few years ago. The menu said salmon and it turned out to be farmed fish. It had a sort of mealy consistency that I didn't like. I wouldn't buy it. It is an inferior product and it is detrimental to wild salmon.
Juan, I liked your first description of it better..."crap." But yeah, it's pretty sad stuff alright. Have a friend who worked on a fish farm some years ago. He won't go anywhere near a farmed fish these days. Tells me he used to get weird growths on his hands from handling the "supercharged" feed, and even grew hair on his hands! (Yeah, I wondered about that one too!) Can't be any growth hormones in the stuff, eh? :lol:
So, the farms are detrimental, but using the wild fish as our exclusive food supply isn't?
I sense a middle ground needed in there somewhere.
I agree. It would be nice if the farms were restricted to using something more natural than "Frankinfeed" for their production. Kinda' like feeding cows grass instead of the feedlot diet. Doesn't seem like rocket science to me.
Lice from fish farms attack wild salmon
Wild young salmon burdened with fish-farm lice
Image credit: Alexandra Morton, Science News
Humans wolf down more than 9 million metric tons of farmed fish every year. Lots of consumers believe farmed fish are a more eco-friendly diet choice than wild fish, many of which are declining due to overharvesting and climate change. But a growing body of scientific studies suggest that fish farms, or aquaculture pens, are not friendly at all to aquatic environments or consumers. Fish in crowded pens, just like livestock in crowded pens, are prone to illness and parasites. Farmed fish are customarily doused with fungicides, parasite medicines, antibiotics, and dyes to render their flesh an appetizing color. All of these substances leak out into the surrounding waters. One recent study, presented February 15 at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, concluded that fish farms in the Pacific Northwest are dangerous to wild salmon. When inch-long young pink salmon and chum salmon swim down the area's coastal rivers toward the ocean, many pass fish farms or aquaculture pens in coastal inlets. These wild juveniles often pick up sea lice that are abundant in the crowded aquaculture pens and drift outside the pens.
The lice suck blood from the tiny fish, and the wounds are also an opening for harmful bacteria and viruses. According to Martin Krkošek of the University of Washington in Seattle, mortality to wild young salmon passing by lice-infested fish farms can be as high as 95 percent.
In addition to making the young fish sick, the parasite load also affects their predator-avoidance behaviors, so that the young salmon are more likely to be eaten by predatory birds and bigger fish. Experiments have shown that while healthy young salmon dart away from a bird diving into the water, the lice-laden youngsters take longer to seek shelter and are thus more vulnerable. The lice-burdened little salmon are also less likely to seek shelter inside a fish school, straggling along on the outside of the school instead, where they are quickly picked off by predatory fish.
Wild young salmon burdened with fish-farm liceImage credit: Alexandra Morton, Science News
The lice suck blood from the tiny fish, and the wounds are also an opening for harmful bacteria and viruses. According to Martin Krkošek of the University of Washington in Seattle, mortality to wild young salmon passing by lice-infested fish farms can be as high as 95 percent.
In addition to making the young fish sick, the parasite load also affects their predator-avoidance behaviors, so that the young salmon are more likely to be eaten by predatory birds and bigger fish. Experiments have shown that while healthy young salmon dart away from a bird diving into the water, the lice-laden youngsters take longer to seek shelter and are thus more vulnerable. The lice-burdened little salmon are also less likely to seek shelter inside a fish school, straggling along on the outside of the school instead, where they are quickly picked off by predatory fish.
Lice from fish farms attack wild salmon
Image credit: Alexandra Morton, Science News
Humans wolf down more than 9 million metric tons of farmed fish every year. Lots of consumers believe farmed fish are a more eco-friendly diet choice than wild fish, many of which are declining due to overharvesting and climate change. But a growing body of scientific studies suggest that fish farms, or aquaculture pens, are not friendly at all to aquatic environments or consumers. Fish in crowded pens, just like livestock in crowded pens, are prone to illness and parasites. Farmed fish are customarily doused with fungicides, parasite medicines, antibiotics, and dyes to render their flesh an appetizing color. All of these substances leak out into the surrounding waters. One recent study, presented February 15 at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, concluded that fish farms in the Pacific Northwest are dangerous to wild salmon. When inch-long young pink salmon and chum salmon swim down the area's coastal rivers toward the ocean, many pass fish farms or aquaculture pens in coastal inlets. These wild juveniles often pick up sea lice that are abundant in the crowded aquaculture pens and drift outside the pens.
The lice suck blood from the tiny fish, and the wounds are also an opening for harmful bacteria and viruses. According to Martin Krkošek of the University of Washington in Seattle, mortality to wild young salmon passing by lice-infested fish farms can be as high as 95 percent.
In addition to making the young fish sick, the parasite load also affects their predator-avoidance behaviors, so that the young salmon are more likely to be eaten by predatory birds and bigger fish. Experiments have shown that while healthy young salmon dart away from a bird diving into the water, the lice-laden youngsters take longer to seek shelter and are thus more vulnerable. The lice-burdened little salmon are also less likely to seek shelter inside a fish school, straggling along on the outside of the school instead, where they are quickly picked off by predatory fish.
Good article, Juan. I've never seen that problem summarized so well before. Now about that happy medium...hmm...inland salmon farms? Maybe not. :-|
how about vaccinations for farmed fish so that they don't become lice ridden cess pools? Which, btw, is what our resident oceanic expert (Tonington) is up to with his new job.
Tonington can likely tell us but from what I've read, a good part of the problem is overcrowding. They are squeezing so many fish into too small a place and the waste food helps to cause the lice infestation and other problems.
Super Store sells that crap and it's at a lower price so people buy it. We live here on the West Coast where fish is so expensive hardly anyone can afford to buy it. My store has a two for one sale on Sockeye this week. Still expensive but I bought anyway just so we could have some good salmon. Halibut is around but there is very little of it. The cost is almost more dear than going out to a good restauant for their best steak dinner.
We once owned a little restaurant here on the Island. Not being too up on our fish, we bought farm fish when wild fish was out of season. Thankfully, we only bought a small amount. It was cooked up as usual, sent out to the customer and sent back to the kitchen just as quickly. The locals knew their fish and they said they were not eating the crap.
Closed containment Salmon aquaculture sounds like a great idea but once the true cost of the product is reflected in the price........
In the end we may find that raising meat eating fish is just too expensive, vegetarian fish like Carp or Catfish might be the way to make it pay.
In the end we may find that raising meat eating fish is just too expensive, vegetarian fish like Carp or Catfish might be the way to make it pay.
That is only part of the problem. Some fish farms are fine. It's the ones the gov'ts allow to screw up the works that aren't. Gov'ts have been obfuscating and doing little about the problems. As long as the gov'ts allow sloppy aquaculture, there will be sloppy aquaculture.
There's not much bigger pressure one could bring onto the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans than to have the entire world focused on how crappy a job it does.
True enough. I wuz just thinkin' about the "national embarassment factor." Isn't the Olympics a time to be proud? :-|
After all the squabbling in the newsmedia about digging the true cost of them out of the gov't? The obvious bigotry of the IOC (women's ski-jumping. The IOC blatantly said that women weren't good enough) hitting the news? lol Funny