One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, No Fish

No fish in less than five decades :(   A study published yesterday in the journal Science predicts that by 2048 the global seafood industry will collapse.  It's the first comprehensive look at the worldwide damage wrought by industrial fishing.  The scientists compiled data on all of the 7,800 species of seafood available around the planet, from records dating back to the age of the Roman empire to modern scientific experiments and data provided by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

According to the lead researcher from Dalhousie University in Halifax, “If we were to continue exactly what we've been doing over the last 50 years for the next 50 years, 100 per cent of seafood will be collapsed. ... And this includes everything from mussels to cod and swordfish.”

About 29 per cent of worldwide seafood species has already reached a “collapsed” state, where catches of that variety have declined to less than 10 per cent of average fishing output. At that level, populations start losing the ability to multiply.

Salmon on Drugs

Which leads me to a topic close to home, the plight of BC's wild salmon.  According to the Western Canada Wilderness Committee due to over-fishing, fish farms, global warming and habitat alteration through logging, mining, oil and gas exploration, agriculture and dams, over 100 stocks of salmon have already gone extinct in British Columbia and another 700 are at risk. 

This is incredibly depressing, since the problem is getting worse.  Those mostly to blame?   Salmon fish farms off the BC coast (and the consumers that buy their farmed Atlantic salmon).  Why focus on the fish farms over the other threats?  First, it's something that could be easily solved, and secondly it's having a serious deleterious effect.  According to a new study published in the proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences, parasites from fish farms are causing up to a 95% mortality in wild juvenile salmon.

As of last year there were 121 salmon farm tenures in the province with over 80 farms operating along the coast.  Open-netcage fish farming is a controversial practice and has raised serious environmental concerns around the world.  The David Suzuki Foundation notes that there are several problems associated with open-netcage salmon farming:

• Sewage from farms pollutes surrounding waters.
• Drugs, including antibiotics, are required to keep farmed fish healthy.
• Escapes of farmed fish (alien species) threaten native wild fish.
• Net loss: Farmed fish are fed pellets made from other fish - depleting other fish species on a global scale.

More specifically, far from providing a clean, environmentally sound and sustainable industry open-net cage salmon farming has been beset by disease outbreaks, sea lice, toxic algae blooms, escapes, pollution, inadequate regulations, parasite infestations, chemical contamination and serious health concerns.

YUCK!  Why in God's name would any intelligent person purchase farmed salmon?  It's bad for the environment and your health, and is full of food coloring (a dye called astaxanthin), drugs (antibiotics including oxytetracycline and sulfa drugs), and toxins (polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, dieldrin, DDT and toxaphene):

• Farmed salmon have ten times the level of dangerous toxins such as PCBs and dioxins as do their wild counterparts;
• Fish farms in BC collectively discharge pollution into the ocean that is equivalent to the raw sewage from a city of 500,00 inhabitants;
• In the Broughton Archipelago on the Northern tip of Vancouver Island sea lice from fish farms in the area have nearly wiped out 7 genetically distinct runs of wild pink salmon that must migrate past these fish farms

For more info, check out the Sierra Club of Canada's site on conserving wild salmon.

To date, neither the federal nor BC governments have done anything to remediate the situation. Help counter the activities of lobbyists and their PAC money.  Take action and write: Federal Fisheries Minister, The Honorable Loyola Hearn, at Min@dfo-mpo.gc.ca (sign an easy online petition) and BC Minister of Agriculture and Lands, The Honorable Pat Bell, at AL.Minister@gov.bc.ca 

What else can you do? Don't eat farmed salmon.  Here's a great list of restaurants that serve only wild salmon.  (NOTE: I am profoundly disappointed by whoever the head chef is at Bacchus at the Wedgewood hotel -- they serve farmed salmon.)