Callander McDowell
Callander McDowell
reLAKSation no 424
Spot the Difference: Spot the Difference competitions are often found in puzzle books and magazines. They can provide a few moments diversion and as such we have included one on our website for your entertainment.
(askix.com/avav)
The solution can be found at the bottom of the page
Having spent a few moment’s relaxation, we would like you to attempt another version of spot the difference. Below are two statements. Can you spot the difference between them?
1. When farmed salmon escape from ocean pens, they threaten wild salmon and other fish by competing with them for food and spawning grounds.
2. Considerable scientific evidence demonstrates that the presence of hatchery raised salmon can …change the habitat of wild fish by competing for food resources and space.
Surprisingly, both statements have been taken from the Seafood Watch website. The first appears on the Salmon Fact Card, a handout that is clearly opposed to farmed salmon. Besides the fact about escaped salmon, Seafood Watch also highlight the release of waste; the use of fishmeal as food; the prevalence of parasites and disease as well as the use of treatments. Most outrageously, the Fact Card suggests that consumers may be eating residues of pesticides and antibiotics that are used to treat salmon and these may affect the health of consumers or interfere with medicines that they are taking!!! This fact card is designed to scare consumers into following Seafood Watch’s advice which is that the best choice is wild salmon from Alaska.
The second statement is buried in a 117 page report produced to support the sustainability recommendation of wild Pacific salmon. The 2008 report states that:
Unlike most marine fisheries, the commercial salmon industry extensively benefits by using hatcheries to augment landings. Following a period of low salmon harvests during the 1970’s, Alaska instituted a fisheries augmentation oriented hatchery programme that has grown to be amongst the worlds largest. The State contains twenty nine private, two state and two federal hatcheries, which released nearly 1.5 billion salmon in 2002.
Considerable scientific evidence demonstrates that the presence of hatchery raised salmon can degrade wild salmon habitat. Cultured fish change the habitat of wild fish by competing for food resources and space.
The report uses terms such as augmentation and supplementation but these do not disguise the fact that ‘wild’ Alaskan salmon are farmed and farmed in exactly the same way as conventionally farmed salmon. The difference is that farmed salmon are kept in ocean pens until they are ready to harvest whilst hatchery reared wild salmon are released into the oceans to cause havoc amongst truly wild fish populations by out-competing them for food. As these fish are hatchery raised they are stronger and larger than their wild cousins and because they are so many more of them than would occur naturally, they dominate the feeding grounds. The returning harvest may be sustainable, but the potential damage from this form of management remains well out of sight in the ocean depths.
We are prompted to raise this less well known fact about wild Pacific salmon after Seafood Watch launched their Super Green List which connects human health with that of the oceans. One of their recommendations as being the ‘best of the best’ is wild caught salmon from Alaska.
Seafood Watch say that: Pacific salmon in Alaska is among the most intensively managed species in the world, with excellent monitoring of both the fish populations and the fishery. Alaskan salmon dominates the West Coast salmon market. Over the past 20 years, Alaska has landed roughly 10 times as much salmon as California, Oregon and Washington combined. Freshwater habitats in Alaska have remained relatively pristine, and salmon originating in Alaska does not face the same damming, deforestation and development challenges as those in California and the Pacific Northwest. The current abundance of Alaska salmon and its habitat reflects the success of the state’s management practices. For these reasons, wild-caught salmon from Alaska is ranked as a “Best Choice.”
Unfortunately, because they have easy access to the media through their extensive promotional network, the Seafood Watch Green List was widely circulated throughout the mainstream media. Their view of what is sustainable, however dubious, has become accepted as the norm and is no longer questioned. For example, the Guardian newspaper this week published a feature article about turning vegetarian. This was in response to the Stern Review which recommended that to lessen the effects of climate change we should forgo eating meat since meat production uses a lot of water and creates vast amounts of greenhouse gases. In the middle of this article about beef, the author Laura Barton writes ‘Our oceans are over-fished and polluted by commercial fish farms’!!! Fuelled by the dubious nonsense emanating from by Seafood Watch and similar NGOs, sea based aquaculture has become the target for all the ocean’s ills.
We wouldn’t be surprised if aquaculture was even blamed for the world’s largest rubbish dump that stretches from Hawaii to Japan that consists of a plastic soup that covers an area of sea twice the size of continental United States. This soup is held in place by underwater currents and consists of an estimated 100 million tonnes of flotsam. About one fifth of this junk has fallen off ships and includes items such as kayaks, footballs, Lego blocks and, of course, carrier bags whilst the rest is thought to have come from the land.
This plastic soup first came to public attention in 2008, as reported by the Independent newspaper, yet surprisingly the marine environmentalists have remained strangely silent on the subject. Instead, they are more concerned that farmed fish are depositing their waste in the sea (just like their wild cousins) than whether the oceans are being slowly strangled by a build up of plastic waste. Greenpeace International have a section of their website devoted to ‘unsustainable’ aquaculture but don’t seem tomake any reference to the 100 million tonnes of plastic swirling round the Pacific Ocean.
Even when aquaculture producers try to take positive action to minimise the effects of production, they come in for criticism. The Times has reported that environmental groups have attacked plans to establish Scotland’s first offshore salmon farms, claiming that the industry is unsustainable and that the measure could further harm seas already at risk. Marine Harvest has announced plans to develop four sites in open sea near the Outer Hebrides. Critics have previously attacked salmon farms for being located too near wild salmon rivers leading to alleged reports of sea lice transmission and local pollution. The new sites are remote and well away from spawning grounds.
Whilst the Salmon Fishery Boards, who are major critics of salmon farming, have welcomed this initiative, the environmental groups have not. Duncan McLaren of Friends of the Earth said that farming carnivorous fish is unsustainable as it takes 5kg of wild fish to produce every 1 kg of farmed salmon. In addition, moving off-shore simply means that the problem of pollution is moved from one place to another. James Reynolds of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds also raised concerns about the sustainability of salmon farming, questioning the use of fishmeal to take the fish to harvest size.
The news of Marine Harvest’s plans emerged at the same time as the Environment Agency who acts as the official pollution watchdog, announced that only five of the 6,114 rivers in England and Wales are in pristine condition. The report found that 117 rivers are amongst the dirtiest in Europe, whilst 742 are considered to be in a poor condition. 3,654 of the rivers are given a moderate rating whilst the rest are good.
The Government is legally required to ensure that 95% of rivers are in good ecological condition by 2015 and currently only 26% fall into this category. It is estimated that if the current rate of improvement continues, then by the date required, only another 5% of rivers will meet the criteria. Yet, despite the appalling state of this national resource, the environmental lobby has remained largely reticent to demand change. Tom Le Quense of the WWF told the Guardian that unless action is taken then we are storing up problems for the future. The RSPB who have raised concerns about Marine Harvest’s plans could only manage ‘it’s disappointing.’
We are pleased to report that the environmental lobby has clearly decided what is important and what is not. The worst affected rivers are those in urban areas so it seems that it’s quite acceptable for the public to live alongside foul and polluted rivers as long as they don’t harm the environment by eating farmed salmon!!
However, the environmental lobby is not in total agreement as to how to deal with the aquaculture industry. The WWF, having helped establish the Marine Stewardship Council are now tackling the issue of fish farming with the formation of the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. This move is not widely accepted as according to the Times, more than 70 human rights and environmental groups from around the world have signed a letter expressing outrage at the launch of the ASC. “WWF needs to explain why they are happy to engage with industry, but have repeatedly rejected calls for meetings from over 70 groups?” said Juan Jose Lopez, Coordinator of the Latin American Mangrove Network. “The proposed certification by WWF promises to legitimise environmentally and socially damaging forms of aquaculture in the name of cheap salmon. It's high time that WWF stops 'Pandering' to the interests of big business, and instead begins to listen to the voices of real people” said Natasha Ahmad of the ASIA secretariat.
The problem is that the United Nation’s Food & Agricultural Organisation have said that the world must produce two thirds more food than it does today over the next forty years. This will be necessary to feed an additional 2.3 billion people by 2050. There are simply not enough fish in the sea, whether certified sustainable or not, to meet this increasing demand for fish. This is why producing more farmed fish is so important. Unfortunately, the environmental lobby have no answer to this population growth and the need to increase the supply of food.
Unfortunately, aquaculture continues to be vilified by the environmental lobby whatever it does to appease their concerns. Now in a worrying development, Pete Bridson, a researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, has been appointed to the Standards Oversight Committee that oversees the development of the Global Aquaculture Alliance Best Aquaculture Practices programme. According to IntraFish, Mr Bridson is responsible at Monterey Bay Aquarium for generating sustainability recommendations for farmed seafood through its Seafood Watch. We already know his views on salmon farming as laid out in the Seafood Watch Salmon Fact Card. Is Mr Bridson really the best qualified person to be helping set the best aquaculture practice, since if his view on salmon farming is to be followed, the best aquaculture practice seems to be not to be farming at all!
