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I thought this part was interesting: > More recently, Atlantic salmon have escaped fish farms in Washington by the thousands, apparently without gaining a finh
by curtis 9y ago
I thought this part was interesting:
> More recently, Atlantic salmon have escaped fish farms in Washington by the thousands, apparently without gaining a finhold in the wild:
> * 1996: 107,000 fish swim free after an anchor line fails on a salmon farm
> * 1997: 369,000 fish escape while a salmon farm is towed away from a toxic algae bloom
> * 1999: 115,000 fish break loose from a net-pen during a strong tidal current
- electic 9y agoIt is too bad the reason for why they never take hold is never really outlined in the article. Is it the environment? Or some other species that prevents eggs from taking hold? Either way, sounds like most most of these will also share the same fate.
- cptskippy 9y agoAre Atlantic salmon not migratory like Pacific salmon? Pacific salmon are born in fresh water rivers and travel downstream to the river. When it's time to mate, they migrate back up fresh water streams they were born in to mate and then die. If you were farm born and raised then where would you migrate to mate?
- ksec 9y agoGood Question. But do they not get fished / killed before they mate? As one of the point of farming them is that dont get to fresh water and decrease the risk of parasites.
- madhadron 9y agoAbout the only thing Atlantic salmon have in common with Pacific salmon is being called salmon and being a member of the trout family.
- cptskippy 9y agoFrom what I've found in my extensive research (5 minutes of Googling), Atlantic salmon still migrate to fresh water sources however unlike their Pacific counterparts they don't die after spawning. Someone should tag and release a bunch of farm raised salmon and see what happens to them.
- Eric_WVGG 9y agoThe article mentions that they have difficulty feeding in Pacific waters. “Stomachs full of wood chips, or empty”
- jmts 9y agoI'd hazard a guess that that's because they're farm born fish that have been released into the wild, than because they're in pacific waters. Previously they have simply eaten whatever pellets got thrown into their pen. Now they don't know what to eat.
- pvaldes 9y agoAs expected, because genetics (and being domestic animals without survival skills)
- vpeters25 9y agoBased on what happened in the south of Chile, I think they might want to wait a couple more decades before claiming escaped salmon didn't gain finhold in the wild: My uncle was among the pioneers of salmon farming in the south of Chile on the early 70s. A storm destroyed their first farm causing salmon to escape to the ocean. The escaped salmon (chinook) started showing back in noticeable numbers just around 10 years ago.
- mcguire 9y agoOTOH, up until 1991, they were trying to deliberately introduce Atlantic salmon.