FISH FARMS FUCK FISH
problems, problems:
Fish farming can cause more ecological problems than it can solve.
Bloody ironic:
Fish being Pescivores eat other fish. Fish are industrally caught and made into fish meal pellets to feed the farmed fish leaving depleated stocks for the wild fish to feed on….mental !
World Wildlife Fund:
It takes more than 3 tonnes of wild fish flesh, in pellet form, to create just 1 tonne of wild salmon.
In the shit:
So what happens to all that fish poo down at the farm.
The tide does not flush it out. Some sea lochs and costal bays have witnessed a crash in their bio-diversity due to huge levels of salmon poo.
Toxic Algal Blooms:
Scallop fisheries along Scotlands West Coast have been suspended in the summer months for a few years due to toxic algal blooms.
The Great Escape:
In 2005 almost a millon salmon escaped from salmon farms along Scotlands west coast outnumbering wild salmon numbers along said coastal waters.
When these fish are free what are the consequences?
Some will make it to wild rivers and breed with wild salmon, the outcome being hybrid salmon lurking in our waters.
If you go fishing ( and I am not talking about paying to fish in some privately owned loch ) you would expect anything that you catch to be wild, surely, but even if you buy “wild” salmon…..is it really?
Escapee farmed fish will transmit parasites to the wild community.
Powerful chemicals ( so strong they are not allowed to be used in any other food production ) are used to treat sea lice in the fish farms but what do these chemicals do to the eco-system?
It fucks it up.
Great post Tracy!
I think in the last couple of years things have got better, and there is a definite push towards more ethical and smaller scale ‘organic’ fish farming, but there is certainly still a long way to go.
From what I’ve read, it IS possible to farm fish such as salmon on an economically viable scale, without causing pollution and abusing the seas (although the feed is still a big issue) and some farmers are using these much more ecologically sound practices, but like all intensive farming there will always be ecological impacts.
Fish farms definitely do fuck fish, but if a solution to the food issue can be found, and famrers take their responsibilities seriously, I can see farming being less problematic than over fishing of wild stocks in the future!
Anyway - fucking great post