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Runaway Salmon Stir Conservation Worries
The details are obscure, but sometime during a ferocious storm around Christmas, 300,000 farmed salmon owned by the Meridian Salmon Group disappeared from their cages in the sea near Uyea, a tiny island in the Shetlands. Their current whereabouts are unknown.
Tom Whittles, a Scottish government spokesman, said the tempest — with winds that reached as much as 100 miles per hour — washed 11 cages full of fish out to sea. After a search operation aided by government aircraft, the cages were finally recovered last week. But the fish themselves were not, according to the Scottish Salmon Producers Organization.
Conservationists worry about such escapes, partly because farmed fish are genetically less diverse than wild fish; interbreeding would have the effect of reducing the diversity and fitness of the offspring, making the wild salmon population more susceptible to disease.
Farmed salmon have also been known to infect their wild cousins with diseases and parasites. The Pure Salmon Campaign, which is no longer active, has reported that millions of farmed salmon escape into the wild each year.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/runaway-salmon-stir-conservation-worries/
Tom Whittles, a Scottish government spokesman, said the tempest — with winds that reached as much as 100 miles per hour — washed 11 cages full of fish out to sea. After a search operation aided by government aircraft, the cages were finally recovered last week. But the fish themselves were not, according to the Scottish Salmon Producers Organization.
Conservationists worry about such escapes, partly because farmed fish are genetically less diverse than wild fish; interbreeding would have the effect of reducing the diversity and fitness of the offspring, making the wild salmon population more susceptible to disease.
Farmed salmon have also been known to infect their wild cousins with diseases and parasites. The Pure Salmon Campaign, which is no longer active, has reported that millions of farmed salmon escape into the wild each year.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/runaway-salmon-stir-conservation-worries/
