Study: Salmon farms kill wild stocks – World environment- msnbc.com — For anyone who wants to know, farmed salmon tastes like crap too. This is just great.
Sea lice infestations from salmon farms can drive populations of wild salmon toward extinction, and in fact that’s happening in Canada’s British Columbia, scientists reported Thursday in the journal Science.
After examining four decades of data on pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago, the experts said those populations have been rapidly declining over the last four years. The researchers expect a 99 percent collapse in another four years — or two salmon generations — if the infestations continue.
This is a really important issue. Funny enough, Boston Legal did something on this back in the 1st or 2nd season.
BTW, sorry for going off-topic here, but is there any way you can get your blog fixed so it is either a variable width center column or at least have it centered on the page? In IE it the 3 columns are all pushed to the left in the browser. In Firefox everything is pushed to the right. Otherwise, the new design looks great.
WTF John, – a salmon crisis? The wild salmons are probably heathens anyway! Didn’t something happen in baseball today?
I agree with Ronald. I use Firefox and everything is pushed to one side. I liked it better in the center.
This just shows there is no such thing as a “negative impact” when you screw with mother nature.
Farm raised salmon taste awful so the “world class” chefs can have an excuse to create dishes that don’t taste like salmon.
Off topic, but eds, would you be able to review post http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=15033 and see if it is worthy?
Thanks 😀
Actually, it may be not be IE vs Firefox. I use Firefox, and right vs left justification is based on window size. Up until 1846 pixels wide I get a right justification, but, wider than that, I get a left justification. Very strange.
dvor_blog looks great here in Opera 9.2x.
It doesn’t kill me to have ff open at the same time. Between the two, I can handle almost any web page.
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a salmon “generation” 4 years? They run on a 4-year cycle. I believe that at the moment that one of those years is really really low. The other three years are merely low.
“Sea lice infestations”? You mean the population decline isn’t because of global-warming?
Well, they may not be blaming it on global warming yet, but they are still claiming it is man’s fault.
If the sea lice are so bad, why are they not killing the fish in the farms?
Don
#9 “If the sea lice are so bad, why are they not killing the fish in the farms?”
The fish farms use drugs, chemicals, whatever means necessary to fight the sea lice. The wild salmon have only what Nature (& Evolution) gave them.
By analogy, one of the possible scenarios of global warming is the cessation of the Gulf Stream current, reaulting in major cooling of Western Europe. Then you’ll ask: “If global warming is so extreme, why don’t I want to take a beach holiday in Wales?”
Or another one, because a lot of washed away, nutrient-rich soil ends up in the sea … “If erosion is so bad, why don’t we have more fish?”
It’s a viscous (sic) circle.
Those farm salmon taste like shit. The farms should all go out of business.
doesn’t help that our “sovereign nations” (you know, first peoples, yada yada) can gill net the salmon during the spawning runs. You know, same guys as the ones who went whale hunting….
But, yes, farmed salmon tastes worst than battery cage chicken and feed yard fattened cows. You can taste the inhuman (Island of Dr. Moreau) flavor of greed and stupidity in every bite.
I know…DON’T BUY IT.
While tastes and preferences can not be argued, the fact that about 1,500,000 tonnes of farmed salmon is consumed each year to me indicates that someone likes it. And if you compare farmed salmon, which is mostly Atlantic salmon, with wild fish, you should specify which species of wild salmon you are talking about. You’d be hard pressed to find someone that can tell the difference between farmed fish and wild ones of the same species- everything else being equal. I (and my family) enjoy fresh farmed salmon pretty much every week.
I often eat farmed salmon. It costs much less (around $4-5/lb versus $8-9/lb around here), the pieces are bigger, and it tastes fine to me.
15 Mister C. Yes, your foreign industry farm non-supporters are far more credible.
Now please make up your mind if my DFO above is a worthy info source and an industry supporter or not. JCD’s study above is interpreted from their old data.
DFO’s Brian Riddel: Article’s warning of extinction threat “overstated and not consistent with recent trends we’ve seen in salmon populations in the Broughton.” Vancouver Sun
RBG
#17, RBG,
DFO’s Brian Riddel: Article’s warning of extinction threat “overstated and not consistent with recent trends we’ve seen in salmon populations in the Broughton.” Vancouver Sun
So a direct quote from a Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans spokesperson in a newspaper is more credible? Yes, the Canadian government favors the farms over the wild salmon. As one of the researchers said, the Canadian government has poopooed every study that doesn’t support the farms.
If the reported conclusions are from a spokesperson who is also the DFOs senior fisheries scientist relying not only upon trusted DFO research (ie: used in the report above), but also their latest observations, then yes, the DFO is more credible.
Obviously your scientists do not have the latest trusted DFO info showing those lice predictions already falling apart.
Now let’s contrast this with your lead-author Martin Krkosek – a Ph.D. student – along with your quoted research participant – primarily a Bachelor of Science whale researcher whose own web site clearly shows the opposite of a disinterested, impartial scientist.
RBG
Gosh, it was only a few years ago I was vacationing in New Zealand. I was in a public/school playground in ChristChurch. Nice little paved parkinglot leading to a grassy area with swings and jungle gym. There was a drainage ditch about 6-12 inches wide and 1-2 inches deep that looked like it drained the parking lot whenever it rained.
There was a sign there that said “Fishing Not Allowed” and there were multiple 12 inch fish I took to be salmon frolicking in said ditch.
I thought to myself, gee if drainage ditches have this kind of fish, I wonder what the fishing streams have? BTW, salmon does taste good in New Zealand, ditch, farm, or whatever.
#7, jbellies, Wiki has a half assed set of entries on the different types of salmon. Good enough for back ground. Sort of.
Pacific Salmon generations vary widely, depending mainly on the breed of salmon. Enough of each species come back all at once that a run can be devastated by a dry fall and cold winter that kills off that summer’s spawn but enough spawn out of schedule to allow a total wipe out to gradually recover.
Pinks (O. gorbuscha) are considered a two year fish. “Jacks” are precocious males, or one year breeders, and occur in all species. There are probably 3 and 4 year breeders around, considering that Pinks and Chums are still close enough to cross breed. (The cross breeds are called “Chumpies” and are a pain to grade. Too big to go in with the Humpies and taste like Pinks so they should not go in with the Chum.)
RGB, who’s the “you guys”? Alaska has no trouble with it’s runs, Canada is finally coming around to Alaska style management (but the Indians are screwing things up by overfishing and selling commercially), Washington and Oregon are in flux, same Indian problem.
The different types and runs of salmon taste differently enough that I suspect only a trained palette can spot the farmed. Some wild runs of some types just are not going to sell fresh to anyone who knows where the fish came from while others taste so good that the entire run goes to the fresh market.
I don’t literally see “you guys” but it would mean the authors of the quoted study and their supporters and apologists.
RBG