Salmon farms destroying wild salmon populations globally

Tor-Eddie Fossbakk The study is based on research by two Canadian marine biologists, Jennifer Ford and Ransom Myers, and showed dramatic declines in the abundance of wild salmon populations whose migration takes them past salmon farms in Canada, Ireland and Scotland. The scientists write in the report that the survival of wild populations has been reduced by more than fifty percent. This means that less than half of the juvenile salmon from those populations that would have survived to come back and reproduce actually come back because they are killed by some mechanism that has to do with salmon farming. The study did not look to the causes of the declines, but refers to prior discussions in a series of studies over the last decade that have linked disease, interbreeding of escaped salmon and lice from farmed fish with reductions. The latest research by Ford covered a period from 2003 to 2006 and looked at a large region off British Columbia, which has a substantial salmon aquaculture industry. Here she found only pink salmon that passed by salmon farms showed sharp declines.