Salmon farm facts
Currently British Columbia has over 80 open-net cage salmon farms that create a host of serious environmental problems including;
- the transfer of disease and pathogens to healthy wild salmon stocks. An example of disease transfer occurred in the Broughton Archipelago on the Northern tip of Vancouver Island where sea lice from salmon farms in the area have nearly wiped out 7 genetically distinct runs of wild pink salmon that must migrate past these salmon farms,
- the enormous pollution that is associated with salmon farms which are poorly regulated by both the federal and provincial governments. Salmon farms in British Columbia collectively discharge pollution into the ocean that is equivalent to the raw sewage from a city of 500,00 inhabitants.
- Net loss of protein. Farmed salmon are carnivorous and require fish protein to thrive. For every pound of farmed salmon that is produced over three pounds of anchovies, mackerel, sardines and other oily fish are used as feed. This results in an unsustainable net loss of protein, which negatively affects areas where these “feed fish” are being harvested.
- scientific documentation that farmed fish are less healthy than their wild counterparts. Farmed fish live in close quarters where they are prone to developing disease and are fed a host of antibiotics and additives that leach into the natural environment. Farmed salmon have ten times the level of dangerous toxins such as PCBs and dioxins as do their wild counterparts;
- the escape of hundreds of thousands of farmed Atlantic salmon from salmon farms where they compete with natural wild salmon for habitat. Farmed salmon have been found in 78 streams in BC and have now started to spawn in the wild.
