The Facts On Fish Farms

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RedFox has his info correct, both on fish farming and on world oil supply. You can make fun of him if you want to but he is correct in my opinion.
Fish farming is illegal in Alaska and I am glad for that. And it only stands to reason that oil supply in the ground is limited and will someday run out. There are no giant "lakes" of oil under the ground and when technology figures out a way to get some of the tougher oil out everyone wants to persecute them for one thing or another....fracing is one of them.
Sure oil companies are making more money by producing more oil but good for them. They make money for their investors and the people get the oil to run the country.
You will never see an 18 wheeler or airliner being fueled by solar panels or wind generators on their roofs.
 
Seems pretty relevant to me. It seems like these farms effect natural strains of fish along with doing environmental damage to pristine places. I wonder how good the farmed fish are for the consumer who eats them. For me at least it casts a bad light on salmon in general. I mean how do you know if your eating in a restaurant whether the fish was farm raised or not? Stores seem to identify farm raised, seems like the more info you have the better the decisions you can make. Thanks for posting.
D.D.
 
Here in the PNW, we ask if the Salmon is farmed. If it is we decline to order it and tell them why. It is a shame what the Canadian Government has allowed to happen.
 
Glad to see this got attention! how about we not be nice so much as we be real ;) :crook :beer :lol:

Here's the Newspaper story on that brave beautiful person: http://www.adn.com/2012/06/02/2489719/m ... enemy.html

It sez she travels around in her "sea dory" :) would like to find out if that's a typo...

The replies are worth reading to! I like to keep a finger on the pulse of the world today.
 
I have heard this woman speak before. Not a lot of facts that can be proven. Most of her funding is from the commercial fishing industry who wants fish farms closed so they can get more money for their fish per pound. You know the same commercials that fished the runs to death in the first place. 99 out of 100 fish eaten in this country is from fish farms of one type or another. With out fish farms ( or more hatchery produce fish) only the rich will be able to afford fish.

Yes there are problems with fish farms but they can be solved thru engineering, placement of pens and run times. A lot of her talk is out dated info. Many of the changes are already happening at fish farms on the west coast . Off shore fish farms are going to be the way of the future. The bush administration funded a lot of research in that area already.

I have a problem with the idea that Alaska does not allow fish farms. They do but they are "free range" fish farms. In other words hatcheries. This is really no different then fish farms except your cost for food is less and paid for in part by the public not the industry. Your return of catch per smolt released is really low and its subject to conditions out side your control. I am for hatchery release fishing. I am for a large increase in hatchery releases both here and up and done the west coast. The proper management of hatcheries is the only way to increase run size on the west coast. Dam removal, wild runs and other flights of fancy are just smoke and mirror games to limit the number and type of people fishing.

I have a really hard time with restaurants that advertise "wild salmon" Most Wild salmon is restaurants is "wild caught". In other words hatchery fish. Which is great but I think most people are being fooled into thinking they are eating a wild fish. But hey I have a problem with the tern wild salmon anyhow. Every major river on the west coast was fished to near death before the turn of the century. These rivers only recovered to be fished again because of hatcheries. I don't think there is any way that there is a pure "wild strain" of salmon on the west coast. All of this happen before fin clipping or DNA profiling. But hey where did they get the hatchery fish from in the first place? Oh yeah the wild. Salmon are salmon. "but tom they can tell which river it came from" We can also tell if you and your fore fathers came from Euorpe or Asia, your still a human right? The importanct of river of origen is way over blown. All most all salmon in the great lakes today came from west coast rivers.

Now I do have one problem with fish farming that is valid. That's the food base. We net fish to feed to fish. This is harming our oceans far more then the net pens them selves. If this food base could be changed or replaced with something else then we would be far ahead in preserving our oceans. That goes for all fish farming, most of which is done in fresh water.

Oh and the biggest lie people tell them selves. " wild fish taste better" B.S. I will cook ten pieces of fish for any one here and if you can pick out the 3 that are wild from the 7 that are farmed I will kiss your ass at the next gathering. The taste of fish is mostly based on speices and how you treat it after you catch it. Kings taste differnt then silver but a silver is a silver. The cooper river salmon hoex is the greatest bit of marketing ever. And good for them for getting more money for the same fish you can catch here in washington.


Now before you all jump all over me for my view let me point out a few things first. 1) I don't eat salmon in restaurants. ( i cant seem to leave the ling cod alone be cause its just to good) 2) I'm not against commercial fishing if done right. I am how ever against gill nets, netting in any river, Indian commercial fishing as a separate industry or "right". 3) I 'm against the illusion of Wild runs of salmon, at least in the lower 48. 4) I can not be swayed in my above stated beliefs so don't bother, not being rude just stopping you all from wasting your time with rebuttals that I wont bother replying to. I'm just saving you time in your busy day.
 
Greg - that is a typo. She has a 22' C-dory. You can see it in the photo in this NY Times article.

I organized a freshman seminar course this spring and had Dr. James Winton speak in it. He's quoted in the article you posted. From a microbiology perspective, one of the biggest concerns about fish farms is that in addition to potentially infecting wild fish that pass by, the environment of a fish farm is ideal for the creation of more virulent bacteria and viruses. In nature, the fish are generally much less concentrated and it's very bad from the virus's or bacteria's standpoint to kill off the host (salmon) prior to getting passed on to another host. In a fish farm, there's constant contact with other fish and there's no evolutionary pressure or "cost" for a pathogen to kill off the host more quickly. A new supply of fry will soon be added. This is the ideal conditions for highly virulent strains to develop.

At some point, I fear that the unnatural evolution of bacteria and viruses that can take place in a fish farm will allow the transfer of highly virulent pathogens to our wild fish and we'll get massive kill offs. For all we know, this could be what has happened already with Frazer River sockeye. We have essentially no data on how the viruses that have been involved in recent outbreaks are evolving in these fish farms as no large scale sequencing is being done over time.

I'm all for the idea of aquaculture but we need to do it in such a way that the aquaculture fish are segregated from wild fish. The Canadian/BC approach in which the fish farms are concentrated near the terminal areas for the spawning wild fish has got to be the most insane place to put these operations.

Finally, there are other potential issues with net pen farming. The pens frequently are breached and there are massive releases of non-native salmon into the local environment. While the Atlantic salmon are created to be mostly sterile, the technology that does that is not 100% effective. Hence another fear is that we wind up introducing viable non-native species to our coasts through these fish farms.

Like Roger, I ask before I order any salmon in any restaurant and I refuse to eat farmed salmon. For home consumption, I catch all my own. I also try to encourage my friends to avoid farmed salmon.
 
starcrafttom":3vq47wdf said:
I have heard this woman speak before. Not a lot of facts that can be proven. Most of her funding is from the commercial fishing industry who wants fish farms closed so they can get more money for their fish per pound. You know the same commercials that fished the runs to death in the first place. 99 out of 100 fish eaten in this country is from fish farms of one type or another. With out fish farms ( or more hatchery produce fish) only the rich will be able to afford fish.
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Tom, I think that a great deal of her funding is coming from recreational fishermen in BC. Many on the BC fishing boards support her both in voice and with donations. Oh - and there is a BIG difference between net pen fish farms and hatchery fish. The former concentrate fish at adulthood, allow for unnatural selection of virulent pathogens and concentrate those near the terminal areas of returning fish.
 
Since Tom won't be replying to this I just wanted to mention the lady who did the presentation I think knows quite a bit more about the subject than anyone here does. I think the facts are there it's just whether you chose to face the facts. I say hatcheries and fish farms are different. Did you watch the part about they process the salmon all the blood and waste they pump back into the water? New viruses are appearing. Runs that don't swim through areas where the fish farms are seem to be doing ok. The runs that do are in rapid decline. If there was the slightest chance these farms could be part of the problem, I'd get them shut down. I don't eat salmon in restaurants either. I think a lot of fish taste better than salmon anyway,haddock,halibut,mahi mahi ling, sea bass,sea trout,striped bass etc. :lol: :lol: :lol:

D.D.
 
The problem with hatcheries is the over-population of salmonids in the North Pacific. With recent cooler ocean temperatures this has resulted in too much competition for food. The "dumb" hatchery fish are effective competitors for this food base because they are not as cautious as wild fish and will feed more aggreesively. I believe the figure I have read is 5 billion salmon smolts released annually in North Pacific. We are suffering regionwide problems in king salmon returns here in the northern part of their range, which I believe is exacerbated by this competition from hatchery fish. Also hatchery fish (especially coho) "wander" and will contaminate the genetics of other river systems.

The problem with net pens is disease as stated above.

I guarantee that I could pick out any lower Yukon River commercial caught king salmon from any farmed salmon you put up against it. A salmon htat has spent its life swimming freely and is genetically designed to run 1200 miles upstream without eating is a far different fish than a sedentary farmed fish fed pellets daily. Also I would point out that there are about 50 million red salmon caught every year in Alaska that are not hatchery fish. If you eat red (sockeye) salmon in a restaurant it is almost certainly a truly "wild," and not a hatchery born or bred fish.

Several years ago in New Zealand they spliced some cauliflower DNA with that of a king salmon IIRC. It created a fish that grew to over 500 pounds. I understood that they destroyed all the fish and DNA so as to prevent it ever from getting out, but that is what we have to look forward to in fish farming.
 
Alexandra Morton is one of the most respected orca whale researchers in the world and lives smack dab in the middle of one of the largest concentrations of salmon farms on the BC coast. Her information is far from outdated as she has been living this issue daily since salmon farms were first set up in the Broughton Archipeligo.

The Canadian government has tried to sensor her several times, once they tried to charge her for fishing without a license when she dip netted several baby pink salmon that were covered in sea lice.

The international salmon farming industry has deep pockets and has lobbied governements all around the world to keep open netcage salmon farming alive. They dont want to move the farms onto land becasue it will raise the costs.

I believe that salmon farms can exist but they must move to land based closed containment tanks to remove the current threats that they have on wild salmon and the ocean environment in general.

Alexandra Morton deserves to be supported by all that love wild salmon.
 
When fish farms first came to be, I had hopes that they would drive down the price of salmon so far that the commercials could no longer afford to fish, thus leaving the non farmed salmon to the sports fishermen. Farming does lead to problems in the ecosystem though. The crux of the problem is that there are too many people consuming a limited resource. Natural spawning simply cannot keep up with the demand for salmon or other food fish. I hope the problems of farming can be overcome so the world's population can get this valuable source of protein and the natural stocks can be protected as well. I think all will be better served if the problems with fish farming can be fixed.
 
You said it forrest. Too many people, too small a planet. Sigh. But nobody wants to discuss that topic...not a boat issue, just a survival issue...Aloha, Steve.
 
hatchery fish are wild salmon (native to the steam) period .. egg's and sperm are milked into the hatcheries stream .. out our way the one hatchy has a gate they allow so many in, than close the gate to many just dig up each others egg's ... others they capture and milk them, less destruction of the hatchery stream bed ..

this was on the form years back I'm to lazy to look everything up but the Federal government was sole caretaker of anything related to fishing ... some how the provincial government took charge of fish farms .. my take is they should be shot. . lol..

with the lice problem alone the kill rate on the fingerling was 80-90% they cature them below the fish farm no lice and than above the fish farm they have two-three lice on them and their finished .. this was done by Calgary University why a prarie town ?? .. forget all the details .. may have been seniors theisis .. the one read i had, the farm eggs are shipped from Norway .. they may still be Atlantic salmon but from which side .. lol .. wc
 
It didn't get moved. It went a couple days without a reply and sank down the list. Then it got a post from a spammer to bring it back to the top of the list of recent posts. The spam was deleted so the thread went immediately way back down the list and out of sight. It just looked like it moved. I'm a coffee drinker.
 
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