Deep Impacts: salmon farms threaten marine life and human health

pink salmon.jpg 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