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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Argyll News: Farmed salmon: employment saviour or ecological …: Fin fish farming in Scotland started around f.. [link to post]

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Argyll News: Farmed salmon: employment saviour or ecological … [link to post]

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