I wrote this article two years ago for a newsletter I was publishing. As we face a very important issue in the Gulf of Mexico, the issue of farmed fish needs to be revisited. I hope this creates awareness and opens up dialogue. For my nutrition colleagues reading this blog, we can be such an important part of the solution...provided we disseminate the real facts.
Despite our current love affair with salmon, our relationship with this cold-water fish has not always been productive. As recently as 30 years ago, it was reported that as much as 80% of a year’s supply was commercially fished out of the water. Despite an awareness of a need for better fishing practices and attention to sustainability, recent salmon fisheries were shut down along the Pacific Coast due to drastic drops in supplies.
As salmon gains favor as the fish with the highest known concentration of the coveted omega-3 fatty acids,
threats on its numbers, and its ability to sustain itself, are only likely to increase. One answer to maintaining salmon populations has been to farm them. However, fish farming has not been an industry that has been met with open arms. Current popular wisdom—and professional recommendations—tend to lean toward “wild Alaskan salmon” as the ultimate in seafood choices. However, it is just not that simple.
It is not at all a Free Willy scenario.
It is important to understand what “wild” really means. These “wild” salmon we envision with a lifetime of free ocean swimming are not all that likely to start life as a salmon egg hatching free of human contact and growing into an adult that has lived a life free of farms, pesticides, or any human mishandling.
Salmon are a migratory fish. In an ideal scenario, they would have free access to both oceans, where they
would spend most of their time, and rivers, where they swim to reproduce. Unfortunately, as many rivers the salmon used for spawning were dammed to be used for generating hydroelectric power, the salmon lost their breeding ground. In order to keep the prized fish from completely losing reproductive ground, salmon hatcheries were developed. It is here that salmon eggs are collected and hatched, and where a very high percentage of “wild” salmon begin their lives.
Actually, the process is a little more involved. Adult salmon are killed. Their eggs and sperm are collected
and combined, and the fish resulting from this process are raised in the hatchery (in a tank or a concrete
pond) for about 2 years. They are then released into the oceans, and can legally be called “wild.” As Mark
Powell, Vice President for Fish Conservation at the Ocean Conservancy and creator of the blog, “Blogfish”
describes it, “a ‘wild’ salmon may live half its life in a pond and the next half swimming in the open ocean, compared to a ‘farmed’ salmon that lives half its life in a pond and the next half in an open-ocean net pen. When in captivity, the ‘wild’and ‘farmed’ salmon are in nearly identical conditions….. Also certain is that if you eat so-called "wild" salmon you have probably paid wild fish prices for fish that were spawned in a bucket and did some hard time in a concrete pond. ”
Based on this description, the terms “wild” and “farmed” merely describe what part of a fish’s life was spent
in captivity. The percentage of “wild” salmon that are actually hatchery-derived varies from region to region,
but as reported by blogfish, is 25% of Alaskan and British Columbia salmon, and at least 75% of salmon from Washington, Oregon, and California. Even the prestigious, expensive Copper River salmon is not exempt; as much as 24% of Copper River salmon in the market originated in hatcheries. Powell writes, “For a scientist, there are three main types of salmon, wild, farmed, and hatchery. But fishermen and the seafood industry call salmon wild if they're caught in the ocean, no matter how long they actually lived free.”
What this translates into, is that a label denoting “wild Alaskan salmon” is telling you that you have a 75% chance of having a fish that did not spend any of its life in any artificial confinement, as a hatchling, or as an adult. You are not guaranteed that this fish spent 100% of its life in the wild before being caught. The best bet
for wild salmon, according to blogfish, is the Copper River king variety, which is almost 100% wild.
Why would hatchery-bred fish be labeled as wild? Salmon populations have been declining for decades.
Much of the research about why, implicates damming of rivers that they need to have access to in order to
spawn. Hatcheries were originally developed as a means to maintain salmon populations, but it’s been difficult to produce evidence that this practice is actually effective. Rather than address the real issue, “wild” was redefined to include hatchery-bred fish, in order to create the impression that salmon populations are healthy, rather than declining. Unfortunately, words can only do so much. This past season, reality hit hard when Pacific fisheries had to close the salmon catch because populations were too low.
What is it about hatchery salmon that endangers the truly wild Salmon? Numerous issues, according to Salmon Nation, an organization dedicated to protecting salmon integrity. Initially, hatchery salmon were fed a mixture of fish offal, horse meat, tripe, and condemned pork and beef that ultimately spread disease throughout the populations of fish these hatchery fingerlings interacted with once they were released.
In 1960, feed was changed to pellets made from fishmeal. This new pellet drastically increased the numbers of fingerlings that survived to a size where they could be released into local rivers. However, in the numbers they were being released, they were competing for available food with truly wild salmon.
There has been a tendency on the part of hatcheries to assume that salmon are interchangeable from river to
river. Aquascientists have learned, however, that each strain of salmon, over hundreds of thousands of years, has developed immune systems specifically capable of defending against parasites and diseases found in the waters in which it is native. Fish whose parents were native to one river simply do not have the natural defenses to successfully survive the elements of a neighboring river. Indiscriminate release of salmon into a variety of environments results in a decreased immune resistance which is perpetuated into wild salmon as interbreeding occurs. The result is overall decreased survival rates, and ultimately dimished salmon populations.
The point of this article is not to determine which is better, wild or farmed salmon. Those debates exist in
abundance in other printed and electronic media. The purpose is to challenge whether or not nutrition specialists are helping or exacerbating the problem of declining salmon populations by not looking closer at facts before making recommendations and understanding labeling laws. It is true, salmon is the densest source of omega-3 fatty acids compared to other fish. And it is true, a truly wild salmon is nutritionally superior to any kind of salmon that spent any of its life in captivity.
Could it also be true, however, that promoting the perception that a wild salmon is something that it may
not be, only puts more pressure on a declining population of fish that is already struggling to survive?
One thing we CAN do, is to encourage consumption of a wide variety of fish. Salmon is not the only fish that contains omega-3’s.
We can also educate about the issue of hatcheries. If the demand for a product declines, it puts pressure on the industry that depends on sales of that product to adapt its practices in order to sustain itself.
The current situation has resulted from multiple detrimental policies affecting salmon and the habitat they depend on. It supports the argument that waiting for policy makers to figure out how to fix the problem may not be a viable solution. Reducing demand for a product that encourages ineffective policies to continue, in other words, voting with our collective purchases, may be the best sustainability strategy of all.
REFERENCES
http://www.salmonnation.com/essays/hatcheries.html
http://www.nativefishsociety.org/conservation/biblio/wild_vs_hatchery/index.html
http://www.blogfishx.blogspot.com/
