Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist (29 page)

Let’s look at the laundry list of complaints activists make on a daily basis about what I maintain is one of the cleanest industries on the planet and one that produces the healthiest food in the world.

Salmon farms are polluting the ocean with fish waste.

Activists compare salmon farms to “cities of 500,000 people, dumping their raw sewage” into the environment.
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The primary reason for concern about untreated human waste is disease transfer, not the waste itself. For centuries before sewage was treated, diseases such as cholera and typhoid were transmitted by water contaminated with human waste. Once human waste is treated and sterilized, it is a perfectly good fertilizer, and fish waste is no different except that there are no diseases that can be transmitted from fish to people. Fish waste consists of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, potassium, nitrogen, phosphorous, calcium, iron, zinc, and the other nutrients essential for life.

It is possible to have too much of a good thing. If a fish farm is situated in shallow water where there is no tidal flushing and the farm is heavily stocked, it can cause the form of pollution known as eutrophication, or simply too many nutrients. Excess nutrients cause excess plankton (algae) growth, depleting the water of oxygen when the plankton die. The lack of oxygen kills fish and reduces a farm’s productivity. One of the best features of fish farms is that they are self-regulating in this regard. If a salmon farmer pollutes the water at the farm site, it is the fish in the pens that will suffer the most harm. Fish that live outside the pens can swim away, but the farmed fish must live or die in an enclosed area. They are like the proverbial canary in a coal mine in that they suffer first, the farmer either adjusts or goes broke, and the pollution ends.

If a farm is properly located where there are strong tidal currents, the nutrients are dispersed widely and actually increase the the area’s productivity. It is no secret that prawn and crab fishermen often set their traps close to fish farms due to the abundance of marine life in their vicinity. What would I do with a wheelbarrow full of fish waste? I’d spread it on my vegetable and flower gardens, knowing it would make them grow faster and produce more food and blooms.

In this case the activists are employing the propagandist tool of using words like sewage and waste that conjure up foul smells and negative impressions, as if fish waste were some kind of toxic chemical when it is actually beneficial where farms are properly sited. In the great food chains of life, one species’ waste is another species’ food. Three cheers for fish poop.

Farmed salmon may escape and breed with wild salmon and even displace the wild fish.

To cut to the chase I sum this one up as follows, “Some people are more worried about which fish are mating up a river than where their own kids are at night.” The concern is that if a farmed fish escapes and mates with a wild fish the offspring will be inferior and unable to compete in the wild. Then there is another concern that if a farmed fish escapes it will overpower the wild fish and displace it, which will result in an inferior stock of fish. Activists can’t have it both ways. Either the farmed salmon are inferior and won’t be able to compete, or they’re superior and will outcompete. Or they could just blend in. In fact the critics are wrong on both counts because in the wild the rule is the fittest will survive. If the escaped farm fish really were more fit, then they would deserve to survive. Transplanted chinook and coho salmon from the North Pacific have adjusted to the Great Lakes and they thrive there. Rainbow trout from the Pacific Northwest—from British Columbia in particular—are now well established in lakes and rivers around the world. People generally feel happy about this because they like to catch and eat the salmon and trout.

Most of the farmed salmon raised in British Columbia and Washington State are Atlantic salmon. It isn’t possible for them to breed with Pacific salmon, so there is no genetic concern as is the case in Norway and Scotland, where farmed Atlantic escapees could breed with their wild cousins. But activists fear Atlantic salmon might become established in the Pacific and displace the native species. After 15 years, during which time thousands of Atlantic salmon have escaped, there is no evidence that the Atlantics have become permanently established. This is likely to remain the case as there have been many attempts around the world to establish Atlantic salmon outside their natural range and all have failed. It would appear that, unlike Pacific salmon, Atlantic salmon are difficult, if not impossible, to transplant.

Even if Atlantic salmon were to become established, would it be such a bad thing? There are already eight species of salmonids in Pacific Northwest rivers and they don’t “displace” one another. Perhaps a ninth species would simply add to biodiversity. The oyster farming industry in the Pacific Northwest is based upon the cultivation of Japanese oysters in the ocean. In some warmer inlets they have become established as self-perpetuating populations. In other words they have become naturalized and it seems to me this is a pretty natural state of affairs. There is no evidence that the Japanese oysters are displacing native species of shellfish.

In Norway and Scotland activists charge that escaped Atlantic salmon will wipe out the wild stocks. They neglect to mention the reason salmon farming was invented in Norway was because the wild salmon had been so badly overfished that there weren’t enough to satisfy the demand. If anything, the salmon farms allow some of the fishing pressure to be taken off the wild stocks so they might rebuild. In a recent agreement Greenland has stopped commercial fishing for Atlantic salmon with financial support from Denmark and the US.
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One can only hope this will increase ocean survival so that more fish will return to spawn in their native rivers in Europe and on the Atlantic Coast of North America. In the absence of the salmon farming industry, this agreement would have been more difficult to achieve.

Salmon are fed large amounts of antibiotics that spread into the sea.

During salmon farming’s early years, it was common to medicate fish fairly regularly to control a number of diseases to which they were susceptible. Today, antibiotics are used very seldom because vaccines have been developed for most diseases. Whereas pigs and chickens are on antibiotics for over 50 percent of their lives, salmon are on medicated feed for only 3 percent of their lives. Many salmon farms are now completely antibiotic-free and some even qualify for organic status.

It amazes me that activists are so negative about the use of modern medicine in animal husbandry. It is perfectly reasonable for veterinarians to prescribe medication for diseased livestock, and reasonable to use low-dose antibiotic feed to promote rapid and healthy animal growth. These practices partly account for why our agriculture fluorishes today. It would be nice if there were no diseases in this world; but such a world is a fantasy that could never be real.

Salmon farms spread disease to wild fish.

The anti-fish farm set give people the impression that salmon farms somehow manufacture diseases and then spread them to wild fish. In fact the reverse is true. All the diseases that farm fish contract come from the wild. Farm fish go into the ocean disease-free from hatcheries and sometimes contract the natural diseases from the waters around them. If the disease outbreak is severe, they can be treated and cured, unlike wild fish, which get diseases and transfer them to both other wild fish and to farm fish.

Salmon farms are spreading sea lice to wild fish, causing their populations to plummet.

This is the claim anti-salmon activists are pursuing most aggressively today. It is a completely trumped-up fabrication, repeated so often that the media, and thence the public, tend to believe it.

The story goes like this: sea lice, which are a mildly parasitic relative of shrimp and crabs, attach themselves to farmed salmon and breed on them so prolifically that the pens become a reservoir for infecting wild fish swimming by. Lice from salmon farms attack and kill juvenile pink salmon when they come out of the rivers and go to sea. In 2002 a large run of pink salmon returning to spawn in rivers near the Broughton Archipelago, on British Columbia’s central coast, crashed to less than 10 percent of its previous size. This is blamed on sea lice.

It is a great story for the activists, as it argues that the fish farming industry is a direct threat to the wild salmon populations. Whereas the aquaculture industry argues, correctly in my view, that farming helps take the pressure off wild stocks by providing a farmed product, the activists now have an argument that suggests the opposite is the case. Let’s examine the facts.

There is no direct evidence that lice from salmon farms harm wild salmon stocks. The crash of 2002 was clearly a natural phenomenon caused by overpopulation in the 2000 year-class of salmon. The salmon simply ate themselves out of house and home and collapsed. This pattern occurs in most populations of wild species; it is a typical boom and bust cycle. The activists never mention that the 2000 and 2001 pink salmon populations were the highest recorded since records have been kept. They don’t mention that salmon farms were established for 15 years before the crash occurred. And they certainly don’t talk about the fact that in a number of years before salmon farms existed on the coast the populations were even lower than in the crash year of 2002. You can be doubly sure they will never volunteer the fact that in 2003, 2004, 2009, and 2010 the population rebounded, quickly coming back to a level higher than the 50-year average for the region. Meanwhile the activists continue to claim sea lice from salmon farms are “threatening wild pink salmon with extinction.”
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This debate has raged in British Columbia for more than 10 years, culminating in the publication of an article by the anti-salmon farm activists in the influential magazine
Science
in 2007.
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It reads in part:

Rather than benefiting wild fish, industrial aquaculture may
^{contribute to declines in ocean fisheries and ecosystems. Farm
salmon are commonly infected with salmon lice (}
Lepeophtheirus
^salmonis
), which are native ectoparasitic copepods. We show
^{that recurrent louse infestations of wild juvenile pink salmon
(}
Oncorhynchus gorbuscha
), all associated with salmon farms,
^{have depressed wild pink salmon populations and placed them
on a trajectory toward rapid local extinction. The louse-induced
mortality of pink salmon is commonly over 80% and exceeds previous
fishing mortality.}
If outbreaks continue, then local extinction
^{is certain}
[my emphasis], and a 99% collapse in pink salmon population abundance
^{is expected in four salmon generations.}

One year later, fisheries scientists from the Pacific Biological Station of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans replied:

Krkosek
et al.
(
Reports
, 14 December 2007, p. 1772) claimed that sea lice spread from salmon farms ‘placed wild pink salmon populations on a trajectory toward rapid local extinction.’ Their prediction is inconsistent with observed pink salmon returns and overstates the risks from sea lice and salmon farming.
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In other words, in typically understated language, the fisheries experts did not agree that the evidence supported the conclusion that pink salmon would become extinct because of salmon farms.

The media have been particularly irresponsible in their reports on this subject. It seems quite obvious that they enjoy helping to create the myth, rarely if ever presenting the facts listed above. As a group the news media have given the anti-salmon farm activists nearly all the airtime and ignored scientists with real credentials and long experience in the field. They have given credence to the illogical musings of Alexandra Morton, an expatriate American who claims to be a biologist, though her credentials in marine biology have been disputed, and deservedly so in my estimation. She has been fashioned as a kind of earth mother, who cares so deeply for the salmon while resorting to ridiculous fabrications, which are dutifully reported by an uncritical provincial and national media. I have dealt with controversial environmental issues for a long time, so I know you can’t always simply blame the media. In this case, however, I believe it is justified. Only a couple of small, local newspapers in the salmon-farming region have attempted to provide some balance to the one-sided reporting.

There is no doubt that salmon farms, sea lice, and wild salmon exist in the ocean. Sea lice do attach themselves to farmed salmon, and a percentage of wild pink salmon fry do have sea lice on them as they pass by salmon farms. So where are the sea lice coming from? It turns out that wild salmon were infested with sea lice long before salmon farms existed. Government-funded research has shown that sea lice are present in the billions on many other species of wild fish besides salmon. Sticklebacks, which abound near the outlets of the streams the pink salmon come down, are loaded with lice. They and other wild species are the most likely source of sea lice that attach to the wild salmon. This same research has found no evidence that the lice on the wild salmon cause any damage to the population. Yet hysteria seems to rule the day.