 Since 1980 the salmon farrming industry around the North Atlantic Ocean has increased nearly exponentially. Crowded together in cages, farmed salmon are subject to epidemic outbreaks of diseases and parasites that can impact wild Atlantic salmon. In freshwater, salmon escaping from hatcheries can displace young wild salmon, jeopardizing the future of the species in that watershed. In Canada, Auditor General offices of the Federal Gov't and provinces have provided the most critical and demanding look at aquaculture industries - holding them up to the standards they need to meet - and doing a better job than other government agencies. Check these reports: In 2008 two studies have been released that need special mention: - 114 page report detailing The Incidence and Impact of Escaped Farmed Salmon in Nature . ASF's Dr. Fred Whoriskey is one of the co-authors. click here to download the .pdf
- Prevalence of Escaped Farmed Salmon in Eastern North America. click here - both Dr. Fred Whoriskey and ASF's researcher Jonathan Carr are co-authors.
Since 1992, ASF has been monitoring the Magaguadavic River in southwest New Brunswick as an Index River for Aquaculture Interactions. The river is near the centre of the marine grow-out areas for New Brunswick, and also has several hatcheries on tributaries that have had a succession of 'leakages' of fry, parr and smolts into the river. As aquaculture has increased, the numbers of wild salmon have declined - from 293 in 1992 to 6 in 2009. In only a single year since 1993 have more wild than aquaculture salmon come into the Magaguadavic. For a chart of the decline and impact of aquaculture salmon click here Many farm escapees move to rivers near and far, to migrate upstream in order to spawn. With critically low numbers of wild Atlantic salmon in many rivers, this raises the potential problems for:
- Genetic swamping of wild Atlantic salmon populations through interbreeding
- Competition for habitat from less well adapted but larger aquaculture fish
- Transfer of disease
- Transfer of genes of less adaptable populations - for example the introduction of European genes into North American salmon. Click here
ASF's Policy Statement on Aquaculture can be downloaded
For tens of thousands of years, Atlantic salmon have adapted to conditions within a specific river and along a specific migration route. Aquaculture salmon genetically interacting with wild salmon jeopardize the survivability of these wild populations.
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