Deep Impacts: salmon farms threaten marine life and human health
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 11.16.05
Every year the kid from British Columbia's Wilderness Committee comes to the door, and every year we take some literature and give him a few bucks- they deserve it. This year the literature was about salmon farms, and everything we discussed in our previous post was barely an introduction.
-while Alaska bans farmed fishing, Canada's 80 farms produce a raw sewage equivalent to a city of 500,000 people.
-for every pound of farmed salmon, four pounds of wild fish are need for food pellets.
-sea lice, algae blooms and other parasites threaten all kinds of wildlife.
-compared to wild fish, there are far more toxins, antibiotics and chemicals in farmed fish. PBDE's (flame retardants) were found in quantities 10 to 65 as much as wild fish.
In Canada, Norway, Scotland and South America, fish farming is having a serious impact. In the US, George Bush is proposing a five-fold increase in fish farming, going offshore to beat state regulations. This is a tough issue for this fish-loving treehugger, but the evidence is piling up. ::Western Canada Wilderness Committee for a list of restaurants that are farmed fish free visit the cleverly named ::Farmed and Dangerous and the Audubon Society offers a walled sized reference card showing what fish are environmentally safe to eat and which to avoid.::Audubon Society
This seems like a catch 22 to me. Either we fish the oceans clean of fish (bad for environment) or we farm the fish (bad for environment). One would think their must be a way to farm the fish in a more ecologicaly friendly maner.
It's not a one-or-the-other proposition. There are some fish that can be farmed responsibly, like catfish and tilapia. There are other fish that can be fished responsibly, like salmon, tuna and other fishes.
The key word in both those statements is *responsibly.* Yeah, it might raise the price a bit, but that's what happens when you remove negative externalities.
Of course, I don't eat much fish, especially predatory ones, because of the mercury content.
so how many "treehuggers" are going to stop eating fish?