Letter to the Editor, Courier-Islander, Published: Friday, February 19, 2010
I had a short conversation with a guy at the Superstore the other day over the display of fresh salmon. While he was eyeing the coho I mentioned that the farmed is cheaper. "Never touch the stuff," he said.
"Don't like the taste?" I asked. "Don't like the industry" he said. "It's destroying the wild stocks."
"But you have no problem with the commercial fishery?" I had to ask. "No" he said, and gave me a quizzical look wondering why I would ask such a question. As I walked away with the farmed Atlantic in my cart I was thinking once again about the irony of avoiding farmed salmon to save the wild ones.
The debate continues about what effect salmon farms have on our wild stocks. But there is no debate about the effect of the commercial fishery. It harms the wild stocks, by the tons!
Everyone knows the main cause of a decline in a fish population is due to over fishing. For salmon there are numerous other causes, most notably a loss of breeding habitat. And as a particular species becomes scarce, the price and the demand for that species increases. The fish farms are a result of the wild stock decline, not the cause. If the big salmon catches of the seventies would have remained, or increased even, to meet the demands of the eighties and beyond, we would not be farming salmon today. But of course there was a decline. With fewer wild salmon available, the price and demand for salmon on the world market inevitably increased. This was the situation in the eighties that opened the door to salmon farms, granting them economic feasibility.
Today, if it were not for the aquaculture industry, the price of salmon would be through the roof.
And I fear in such an environment our west coast salmon would be in greater danger than they are in now.
The well-intentioned consumer, wishing to conserve wild salmon by boycotting farmed salmon, is doing more harm then good.
John Marshall
