Farmed salmon: employment saviour or ecological disaster?
published this on 11:49 am, Sunday, 22nd November, 2009Business| Marine Environment| News | Comments (rss) | Respond | Ping |
Oban’s Corran Halls was the venue for a first film showing and debate, entitled ‘Farmed Salmon Exposed’, commissioned by the Pure Salmon Campaign.
Pure Salmon’s Global Coordinator, Don Staniford (pictured below), introduced the film and chaired the discussion which followed. This film showing was part of a Global event week with numerous film showings around Scotland.
The short documentary style film was built up around facts from incidents that have occurred around the World, using Chile, Canada, and Scotland as examples. The film showing was well attended with representatives from the salmon farming industry, Salmon and Trout Associations, environmental groups and members of the general public.
Some of the facts produced by Pure Salmon Campaign make for disturbing reading. One title in their literature reads: ‘If You Are What You Eat, KNOW What You Are Eating’. The leaflet lists some of the pros and the cons concerning salmon produced in this way around the World. This article has added a few more.
Points in favour of farmed salmon
- Rich in Omega-3 fatty acids
- Relatively cheap (by Western World Countries)
- Provides employment in remote locations
Points against farmed salmon
- Carry added synthetic dyes
- Carry added fungicides
- Contaminated by pesticides (One type of pesticide used for sea lice treatment is emamectin benzoate.This is highly toxic to other aquatic organisms and overuse is known to adversely affect food webs.)
- Contain antibiotics. Non-therapeutic use may increase antibiotic resistant infections in people. A report by the Chilean Government in 2007 indicated the use of 385,635 kilograms where Norway used 649 in during the same period a massive 600 times increase.
- Act as incubators for parasites and infectious disease
- Cost other fish species to produce: one tonne of farmed salmon may take up to five tonnes of wild fish to produce.
- Accumulates wastes on the sea floor under the cages and in the water. The waste includes excreta, chemicals and ‘messy’ feeding (where some of the food is missed and drops through the cages). 200,000 caged fin fish produce as much faecal matter as a city of a population of 20,000 to 60,000.
- Harm other marine life – nets trap animals; acoustic deterrents are known to adversely affect cetaceans and the shooting of seals and sea-lions reaches many thousands around the World.
- Interbreed (as escapees) with wild salmon causing genetic change andincreases competition with wild stocks.
- Take food from third world countries, where the fishing of anchovy, herring, sardines, and mackerel could potentially feed five times the number of people.
- Depleted fish stocks, have decimated third World countries fisheries, leading to starvation in some areas.
Fin fish farming in Scotland started around forty years ago where the industry was seen as the employment saviour of the remote and island regions. Many thousands of pounds of tax payers money was ploughed into the industry with little thought to the environmental consequences.
The industry has improved its ecological mark with technological improvements but some see this as being overshadowed by the massive increase of tonnage being produced. These improvements have also led to an actual lowering of local people being employed.
The negative impacts of salmon farming, whilst becoming less per kilo of fish produced are likely to have multiplied in total due the scale of the industry. This is an industry based with the world leaders in Norway, a country which has much higher standards of farmed fish production than in Scotland and Chile.
The Pure Salmon Campaign say that it does not have to be this way. The farmed fish could be separated from the wild fish populations – as in the ‘closed containment’ systems – and in on-land farms which are known to decrease transmission of diseases and parasites as well as reducing escapes and the need for lethal and non-lethal predator control.
The question and answer session in Oban identified some very disturbing issues. Firstly those that work close to the industry have a poor grasp of the facts of the actual effects that farm salmon is currently having on our coastal systems.
In response to one question, John Barrington of Scottish Sea Farms gave a fairly sincere sounding reply that the industry only shoots seals as an ‘absolute last resort’.
Unfortunately this is not true. To enable the ‘last resort’ feature within the pending Marine (Scotland) Bill, all possible measures should be in place before shooting becomes an option.
Scottish Sea Farms do not employ the use of anti-predator nets, not even in the Lismore Special Area of Conservation for seals (pictured above), neither are they requested to do so by Scottish Natural Heritage or the Scottish Government.
As TS Eliot said in his poem The Hollow Men:
‘Between the idea and the reality,
Falls the shadow.’
Mark Carter, Environmental Editor
Photographs accompanying this article are by copyright holder, Mark Carter.
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November 22nd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
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November 22nd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
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November 22nd, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Surely the relocation of salmon farming to on shore sites will have a much greater environmental impact? What’s the carbon footprint likely to be of even a small scale site that would have to constantly pump millions of tonnes of seawater every day? Do the math
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:42 pm
In reply to Eric,
Unfortunately, Eric the Viking has only grasped one very small part of the problem; firstly not all contained sites need to be on land; Norway are currently leading the use of contained floating structures which appear to be highly competitive without causing adverse effects to the environment.
The environmental issues brings me on to the following points; this is not just about climate change, the ecological footprint could even be more important than the carbon one for this particular industry. These problems or rather the “lack of will” to deal with these problems outside of Norway, where tougher legislation prevents some of the abuse that we see in Chile or this country, needs to be addressed before salmon farming in general can compete on ecologically sound footings.
Salmon poop can be cleared, probably a profitable fertiliser, lice treatment could be done in contained vats, and anti-predator controls can be non-lethal, and that would be a start in the right direction. With lowing the densities within cages, lowering the use of chemicals and antibiotics and lowering the use of up to five tonnes of live fish to produce one tonne of salmon (some third World people could be starving just because we like salmon), might just make the industry sustainable and environmentally friendly.
But why concentrate on salmon; polyculture, where several species are farmed can actually increase profits and reduce pollution and lastly, producing herbivores would be far more ecologically sound! This is far more important than a simple maths exercise.
November 23rd, 2009 at 6:54 pm
I’m not defending salmon farming and I am fully aware of the issues discussed, however I find the reportage of recent film show to be somewhat less than partial – Would you print verbatum everything Nick Griffin said if he showed a BNP movie in the Corran Halls? I somehow doubt it?
I was simply responding to your statement: “in on-land farms which are known to decrease transmission of diseases and parasites as well as reducing escapes and the need for lethal and non-lethal predator control.” I am curious to know what size these farms would be, whether they be raceways or tanks, where the 100% power would come from, what sort of filtration would you propose for the inlet and outlets? What I’m saying is that on the face of it everything you say seems sound and ‘right-on’ but to suggest the on shore relocation of large scale commercial salmon units is an environmentally friendly option is simply fantasy.
….and I would suggest that you may have more than one or two NIMBYs to convince too.
November 24th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I’d like to thank Eric for coming back on this and it is not my intention to antagonise or put people off from joining in, in fact I actively encourage it.
At the risk of alienating some environmentalists I am in favour of aquaculture, but it needs to be right; with minimal risks and openness and honesty from the industry. Fishermen are “hunter gathers”, they hold an important position in our society for providing food but this should and must not be at the cost of future sustainability of our ecosystems, many of which are vulnerable and are only just beginning to be fully understood.
With our current populations, farming has been the only way in which we have been able to proliferate and I believe is the way forward if we are not going to “outgrow” ourselves into extinction (maybe not in our lifetime, but if we carry on as is…sometime soon, the warning signs are already well documented).
I take on board the related problems of build, power, and planning but here we must look at the overall bigger picture; we need food, which uses energy, but we also need biodiversity, our lives through biotechnology and ecosystem interactions might just depend upon it. For example, it would make more ecological sense to eat deer rather than cows, for many reasons, first deer have no natural predators, terrestrial ecosystems can be damaged by overgrazing and they produce less methane than cows, so farming them could be “greener” in the long term. In addition to this, much of our pharmaceuticals come from soils, the use of which is just about exhausted, the marine environment is where the next big pharmaceutical industry break through is being focused which may include dealing with swine-flu or similar, we destroy this at our peril.
We need to be careful, plan with discretion and for the long term; unfortunately our current political system fails this long term objective…our ultimate survival.
December 4th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
At last something we agree on – I’d quite happily eat venison instead of beef.
However:
“first deer have no natural predators” – we’ll not any more, surely your argument for biodiversity would include the reintroduction of tertiary predators? Do cattle in the UK have any natural predators?
“terrestrial ecosystems can be damaged by overgrazing” – surely cattle being ruminants should be preferred as more efficient grazers?