A book we should read

[btree]

I just steamed through a short-ish (~250pg) text by Peter A Robson called Salmon Farming The Whole Story (ISBN-13: 978-1-894974-07-3; ISBN-10: 1-894974-07-7)

While I certainly do not yet have a fully formed set of opinions and theories with regards to the plight of the wild stocks of pacific salmon and the highly charged environmental/political issues around salmon farming, I certainly invite anyone with a couple evenings to spare to read this book, and then read all they can listed in the extensive bibliography.

Link to buying the text from amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Salmon-Farming.../dp/1894974077

Links to summaries / reviews of the book:
http://www.heritagehouse.ca/press_re...ming_press.htm
http://salmonfarming.blogspot.com/

The book explains how salmon farms have worked in the past both in BC and in other waters. It also covers topics such as fish health, pathogens and their vectors, site selection for farms, feed use and composition for farmed salmon, waste and pollution resulting from salmon farms, health benefits and risks from eating both wild and farmed salmon as well as terrestrial animals (cows, chickens, pigs etc.) and of course fish lice.

References include such superstars as David Suzuki and research coming out of various ENGO's associated with his presence, of course Alex Morton and her allies, various government agencies and ministries from Canada, the USA as well as European countries, BC salmon farmers association, industry publications, sports fishing publications, as well as dozens of scientists from industry, governments and other agencies.

The main thing I got out of the book is that we are seriously lacking research to be able to arrive at many rational conclusions. Major influences on wild salmon include, of course, salmon farming, but also, and perhaps more importantly and more dramatically, fish hatcheries and salmon ranching practices.

Fish hatcheries run the risk of seriously altering the genetics of many unique and specifically adapted populations of wild salmon due to occurrences of interbreeding.

Salmon ranching, in my opinion, is the number one influencing factor when it comes to salmon survival in the ocean due to dramatic increases in competition for food in the North Pacific. That's not really part of the book, but it's certainly been a shocking part of my education thus far.

Link to article introducing some of the numbers on salmon ranching:
http://www.certifiedorganic.bc.ca/rc...-pgs14-15c.pdf

Alaska alone releases billions, yes BILLIONS! of smolts from net pens into the North Pacific. These fish are much like farmed fish and their hatchery cousins in that they are not genetically diverse, but they are good at eating lots and lots of food that would otherwise be eaten by wild stocks thus leading the declining survival rates in wild stocks. Plus, as a bonus, there is the potential for interbreeding with wild stocks which affects their delicately balanced genetic makeup evolved over thousands of years. And then there is Japan and Russia... scary what they are doing...

Any way, by way of some twisted semantics, these fish, both from our hatcheries and their net-pen ranches, are then called "wild" in the supermarket when, if you were to examine their genetics, you would find that they are anything but wild and differ little from farmed salmon in accumulated pollutants (ex. PCB's) beneficial nutrients (ex. Omega-3 fats) and genetics (in that populations of hatchery, ranch and farm salmon all come from a small brood stock and therefore are not genetically diverse and do not represent the same genetic strains as the local wild stocks) but they have eaten a lot of food that would otherwise support our wild stocks.

But any way, enough of my ranting. I'll leave you with this. I certainly do not defend salmon farms past or present, though you may see the book as slightly slanted in favour of them, but I certainly think we need to learn a whole lot more, re-examine our individual and collective assumptions and focus on bigger issues and become less polarized and more collaborative.

I'm as dubious about the benefits of our hatcheries and stocking practices as I am of salmon farms, and I abhor the concept salmon ranching.

Perhaps, one day we can get beyond sea lice and focus on over consumption of the planet on the whole, global warming, habitat destruction both in our local rivers and waterways or massive alterations to the North Pacific ecosystem and overall salmon food supply which have thus far been shown to have much greater influences on salmon populations...

But as I echo, we know too little and say too much.

[chauchey]

Salmon ranching seems to me a reasonable alternative to salmon farming, and a far more echo friendly alternative. But I've only gotten to the concept of it, and haven't looked past that yet because of time. But it seems a good one, at least comparitavely.
I'm a huge fan of hatcheries. I think they are underutilized and should they be used to their full extent, would be able to produce a far more genetically diverse run of salmon gear towards sport fisherman. The fewer fish are released, the less they are able to sample from.
But the real tragedy is going to be the damming of spawning streams. If there's anything that can kill a species, its limiting their ability to reproduce.

[btree]

Salmon ranching seems to me a reasonable alternative to salmon farming, and a far more echo friendly alternative. But I've only gotten to the concept of it, and haven't looked past that yet because of time. But it seems a good one, at least comparitavely.
I'm a huge fan of hatcheries. I think they are underutilized and should they be used to their full extent, would be able to produce a far more genetically diverse run of salmon gear towards sport fisherman. The fewer fish are released, the less they are able to sample from.
But the real tragedy is going to be the damming of spawning streams. If there's anything that can kill a species, its limiting their ability to reproduce.

Assuming you are on the side of preserving and even enhancing wild salmon stocks, I will offer these remarks. I'll post more in topic specific threads as I learn more about the issues.

Well, for Salmon Ranching, if you look into impacts for food competition with young to adult salmon in the North Pacific, perhaps you'd have a different opinion since ranched salmon eat lots of ocean food that wild salmon could be eating, and it is thought to have serious negative impacts on survival of wild stocks contributing to starvation.

Secondly, hatcheries are not consistently taking genetically diverse or environmentally appropriate brood stock, plus there are many cases of fertilization processes that further limit and narrow the genetic strain(s) being release by our hatcheries and these practices have serious potential for contaminating wild gene pools through interbreeding. However, if hatchery practices improve in regards to genetics, they could be of great benefit to restoring or complimenting wild stocks.

Finally, I fully agree with your comment on the influence habitat has on wild stocks, and I think it should be the number one issue focused on, second would be food and habitat competition between wild stocks and enhancement stocks, ranched and hatchery fish. I fully realize that this will require a complete restructuring of our province, which will never happen because if costs too much, which I think is bull@^&#. We are just to lazy and selfish.

I realize my arguements are narrowly focused on the preservation and restoration of wild stocks and neglects to care for those otherwise employed in any industry- farming, ranching (both aquatic and terrestrial), forestry, mining, oil and gas, and those associated with heavy industry and urbanization. I realize my approach appears naive and idealistic, but it's where I'm starting in this forum since I assume 99% of us here, as sports fishers, are on the side of the wild fish and not any other industry.

Thanks for comments though. I welcome the dialogue and am interested in hearing more from you and others.

[whitewater_cowboy]

While hatcheries are not the answer, they could improve their methods to increase genetic diversity. There is nothing to say they can't divide a females eggs and fertilise with a number of males. Granted this takes natural selection out of the equation, but, on rivers like the Stamp, well, most east coast Vancouver Island streams, the concept of a 'wild' fish is simply fantasy. Ceasing hatchery operations would only intensify angling pressure on fragile remaining native stocks. I certainly can't argue the fact that perhaps too many fish maybe stocked. There has to be some middle ground. As to the fish farms, go ahead, in concrete land-based pools...pump the seawater in and filtre the outflow for contaminants. If that's too expensive...TOUGH!

[btree]

While hatcheries are not the answer, they could improve their methods to increase genetic diversity. There is nothing to say they can't divide a females eggs and fertilise with a number of males. Granted this takes natural selection out of the equation, but, on rivers like the Stamp, well, most east coast Vancouver Island streams, the concept of a 'wild' fish is simply fantasy. Ceasing hatchery operations would only intensify angling pressure on fragile remaining native stocks. I certainly can't argue the fact that perhaps too many fish maybe stocked. There has to be some middle ground. As to the fish farms, go ahead, in concrete land-based pools...pump the seawater in and filtre the outflow for contaminants. If that's too expensive...TOUGH!

A lot of the problems with genetic diversity is the choices of brood stock - often they are fish not from that system, and equally as often, the fish are taken from only one time during a run, thus limiting the diversity of when fish return to the hatchery. So if we have low flows, during the run, there are rarely late and early fish to keep things going. Plus the gene pool used by hatcheries is just too shallow in general and of fish not evolved to do well in that stream, and the hatcheries remove most of the bi-product biomass (dead fish from the stream) which are integral to the overall health of the stream/ecosystem/fry. But really, the wild fish are F&$#ed either way - either we dont have hatcheries and all the wild fish get caught, or we have hatcheries and then we catch mostly hatchery fish, but the hatchery fish compete with wild fish for food, thus reducing the wild fish populations at sea.

Perhaps to really draw attention to this issue, all hatchery production and fishing for salmonids on Island and south coast rivers should cease, and licensing should depend on participation in habitat enhancement projects.

Oh ya, and forestry, realestate development, urbanization, road building, heavy industry and mining need to cease completely and regress, oh ya and the overall human population needs to decrease dramatically. Or we could just build a time machine

But as far as real and possible solutions go, perhaps fish farms should be moved in land, but it we do that now, the international farms companies will just leave and do it in other countries. Now that may be all fine and dandy until we find that, say in the case of russia or alaska, our fish migrate in those waters as well... so perhaps it's best to improve what aquatic fish farming we have and keep our friends close, but our enemies closer

All that being said, we're still a decade or more away from having any comclusive evidence/research to go on. Reading newspapers is the last place I'd look for anything remotely related to the truth... get a subscription or some access to academic publications, or take some courses at your local college. I'll see if I can put together a bibliography/list of readings that we all can access so we can have well formed opinions rather than a collections of sensational headlines.

[btree]

There has to be some middle ground. As to the fish farms, go ahead, in concrete land-based pools...pump the seawater in and filtre the outflow for contaminants. If that's too expensive...TOUGH!

Look into the topic of "aquaponics" - it's an emerging field that VIU is working on - growing plants (human food) with fish poop, while also farming fish.

Plants growing off fish water!

[chauchey]

I think a difficult but good solution would be....

1) Suspend all fish retention programs for 8 years. Catch and release only. No nets. No retention for sport fisherman.

2) Remove salmon farms off our coasts, period.

3) Fine tune the hatchery process's and fund then adiquetly so that they don't do things half way.

If we did those 3 things, I think we would see a real tangible rebound of the fishery for everyone involved.

*and now is when I wake up*

Edit: I'd like to add that I read in a fly mag this month that the Mic Mac Indians in Quebec have voluntarily waved their right(signed agreement) to net for 4 years to allow the atlantic salmon stocks to rebound. I'm astounded, and encouraged!

[whitewater_cowboy]

Years ago I read about the Native hatchery on the Sol Duc River using wild brood stock captured through angling to seed the river. They chose only the largest males and females. One females eggs were divided and fertilized by several different males. Methods of this nature should improve hatchery stock and while clearly it isn't perfect, it would certainly address many of the problems with hatchery stock here. Using pools on the site to allow fish to mature would allow the hatchery to take early and later arriving populations in an effort of maintaining their genetics in the run. I repeat, this isn't natural selection and certainly won't mitigate thousands of years of adaptation to a watershed.

I quite agree with you in the sentiment that man has seriously over-inhabited the world and I believe this is the main problem behind global warming. It isn't about burning fossil fuels (they do contribute), it's about the modification of the landscape to suit our infestation... rip down the trees for agriculture and concrete jungles then wonder why the natural world is suffering. And all those excessive number of mouths to feed... Really, it speaks volumes for the tenacity of the species that we have any salmonoids left whatsoever. Maybe the gov't should cease funding families with 'baby bonuses'. Considering the overpopulation of the world, why do we encourage people to breed? Now if the gov't were to include that money with the money that we all spend on licenses for the priviledge to fish, there should be ample funds for improved hatchery operations, habitat restoration and further investigation of fish farm methods...hell, there should be enough just from our license dollars. Why isn't all that money dumped back into the resource? We already pay our taxes like the rest of the population, why does this money appear to disappear into general gov't coffers? Democracy is an illusion.

[btree]

Nice replies there guys - I fully agree.
I'm hoping to figure out a few things about genetic diversity.
It's frustrating to watch things happen when there are so many cheap and common sense solutions to so many issues. But tell that to industry...