Why are salmon dying at sea?

The unique international scientific mission has set sail from Killybegs aboard the Irish Marine Institute’s research vessel RV Celtic Explorer.

The project, SALSEA-Merge, will investigate the migration and distribution of salmon in the North-East Atlantic. It will involve three marine surveys during 2008 and 2009, to be conducted by Irish, Faroese and Norwegian research vessels, and will use cutting edge DNA technology instead of conventional salmon tags.

Similar programmes are also planned for 2008 in both North America and Greenland. The €5.5 million project is funded by the European Union with contributions from North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation (NASCO) and the TOTAL Foundation.

The Irish Minister for Agriculture Fisheries and Food, Mr Brendan Smith said: “We are delighted to be associated with this unique adventure at sea,” he said. “Salmon act as ‘aquatic canaries’, picking up a wide range of biological signals relating to the health of the oceans, as they travel across vast tracts of the North Atlantic.”