Marine biologist weighs in on the farmed salmon vs wild salmon debate

So you are like me and sometimes you enjoy the delights of

salmon

sushi, but you wonder if this

farmed

salmon

or

wild

salmon and which one should I eat, which is better for me health-wise and also which is better for the environment? atmosphere. I've heard some vaguely disturbing things about salmon farming, but what's true and what's not, whether I should eat salmon, these were some of the questions that plagued me because, although I'm a

marine

biologist

, I didn't really know much about this pink fish. what I was eating, so I did a lot of research in the scientific literature, news articles, documentaries, government reports, you name it, and there was a lot of information to overcome a lot of misinformation, a lot of lies that covered political, ecological, social, financial and business issues.

Kingdoms, you name it, but I ingested all this information,

debate

d it internally, and came to my own personal conclusion about what salmon I will eat in the future, but I wanted to make the most of all this effort and that's why today I'm sharing with you the Lessons I have learned. I'm not going to be able to cover all the complexity because this is a huge topic, so for this video I'm going to focus primarily on Environmental Aspects of Wild Salmon Farming vs. Salmon Farming because, as a

marine

biologist

, I think this is the most interesting and the most important.

At the end of the day, I realized that eating

farmed

salmon is pretty much the same as eating any type of meat. from a big land farm has the same problems like the use of antibiotics, pesticides, hormones and all that jazz, so if you avoid eating meat products that come from big farms because of all these problems, you should avoid eating farmed salmon, but if you eat meat. that comes from a big farm, you really shouldn't have a problem eating farmed salmon, but if we're talking about impact on the environment, especially when it comes to farmed salmon versus

wild

salmon, and what's the best option if you care about the planet, that's when the story starts to get really juicy, but I just want to give you useful and simple information to help you make the best decision the next time you see salmon on the supermarket shelves and if, like me, you worry about the ocean and you want to help. protect it and I am going to do so by debunking three of the main lies we are commonly told about salmon in general: the first is that we should all eat salmon for its health benefits;

The second is that farmed salmon is an organic food. friendly and sustainable alternative to wild salmon from cart and the third is that wild salmon C is in fact 100% natural and wild salmon now the reason why salmon is a pretty big topic is that it is a ubiquitous type of protein that Consumed by millions of tonnes each year around the world, it is this delicious buttery fish that we all enjoy and is a multi-billion dollar industry that is expected to grow in the future due to increasing global demand. You know, the general trend around the world is that people have more disposable income to spend on higher quality foods and there is a growing awareness about the benefits of leading healthier lifestyles and salmon is often marketed as one one of the healthiest types of protein we can eat and it's certainly low in saturated fat and has vitamins. and minerals and in particular it has a high concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that our bodies need, but the lie here is that we all need to consume salmon in particular to get these omega-3 fatty acids that we can actually get. omega-3 from other different types of fish and shellfish, including things like mackerel, sardines, herring, anchovy, oysters, muscles, but we can also get all the omega-3 we need from plant sources, the potencies which are chia seeds, beans, soybeans. nuts and even seaweed, which I think will be a hugely sustainable growth industry in the future, but not everyone on the planet needs to consume salmon for its health benefits.

Now please indulge me in the following because we as humans often tend to think of fish purely as a food source, resource or commodity because that is how most of us interact with fish as a portion of protein that reaches our plates, but I think the core of this discussion is to remember that salmon is wild. animals living beings that have been part of this intricate planet in which we have lived for millions of years and what a life they lead return exactly to the same river in which they were born after spending years in the Sea and traveling thousands of kilometers on their exhausting trips Climbing those rivers, often battling raging rapids to spawn for the next generation, is literally the stuff of legends and their lives are so deeply intertwined with each other that they provide food for dozens of other species, including bears and birds, the life cycle of the salmon is the transformation. of the ocean into living beings that reach the coast and become the largest trees in the world, far from simply being a piece of nutrient-rich protein that ends up on our plate.

Salmon are the backbone of vibrant forest and river communities basically throughout the north. northern hemisphere, but salmon have also been an important fish for us as humans for thousands of years and have formed central components of certain cultures throughout the northern hemisphere to this day, where they constitute the multi-billion dollar industry they represent in terms of subsistence recreational. and commercial fishing and there's a lot of money involved and when there's a lot of money involved the industry is involved and so it enters the era of salmon farming and this is where it's starting to get really controversial now.

I think the initial idea of ​​salmon farming was great, you know? The wild salmon population simply cannot sustain the current level of global consumption and demand, so wild salmon in particular suffered a pretty steep decline due to things like overfishing, but also things related to habitat destruction due to the dams and all that history, but essentially salmon farming. It was seen as a way to continue supplying global demand while reducing pressure on wild salmon populations. I mean, we farm on land to supply ourselves with enough food, so why not do the same in the sea? There are a number of excellent and truly sustainable seafood species currently being grown in agricultural facilities around the world, but salmon is one of them.

Now the people who work on and profit from salmon farms continue to repeat the story that farmed salmon is an environmentally friendly and sustainable alternative to Wild Cart. salmon, but this is definitely a claim we need to question because up to 70% of salmon consumed worldwide comes from faraway farms, so it's a big deal and most farmed salmon only comes from two countries. Norway consistently produces just over 50% of the world's farmed salmon supply in Chile sits around 25% and there are a few other countries that produce small quantities, but essentially a very small area is responsible for supplying almost the entire world's supply of salmon. salmon.

Well what are the conditions on these salmon farms now very briefly for those who don't know that the vast majority of salmon farming is done in the ocean in these large open net pens so essentially the fish swim in the ocean but they are confined by these large networks. and these nets need to be put in sheltered, protected areas because they need to be protected from big waves and storm surges and things like that, and that's why the Norwegian FS are a great place for salmon farms, but also things like coastal bays and inlets they are popular. places for these salmon net pens now in these protected ecosystems these nets are filled to the brim, we are talking about more than three fully grown fish of approximately 75 cm in the space of 1 M cubed, so that is a lot of fish and A lot of fish means a lot of fish excrement and all of their excrement sinks to the bottom of the ocean where it forms like this toxic sludge that destroys any type of ecosystem under these nets and in some serious cases all these nutrients from fish. poop and the extra food and the pellets and everything forms elal flowers and these elal flowers consume all the oxygen in the water and suffocate all the wildlife in the area, including the salmon on the farm.

Imagine yours suffocating you. I think it's one of the worst. Examples of this come from Maui Harbor in Tasmania, where we have this big bay full of salmon farms and this tiny outlet where all the extra nutrients and excrement are supposed to flow out to sea, which they obviously don't. The ecosystem has experienced severe oxygen depletion, bringing one species in particular, the Moran's stingray, to the brink of extinction. Sounds really sustainable, doesn't it now similarly with terrestrial agriculture that crowds a lot of animals into one space and what surely happens is the spread of diseases and pests, and in the case of salmon in particular , this manifests itself as a lice infestation.

The cup pods that attach to the salmon and feed on its mucus, skin tissue and muscle, are not very pleasant and these infestations can become really serious and not just cause problems. for the salmon themselves, but these Li will spread to other natural populations of salmon in the area, as well as other fish, so it causes negative consequences for the entire ecosystem, so we are starting to see that life in these necks is not very pleasant. We have these fish that are in really crowded conditions and this is a species that generally likes to spend most of its life swimming alone.

There are lights feeding on them so it's not so pleasant and you can't blame them for trying to escape. the first opportunity, which is what they do, many times these neck pains will fail and you will have thousands of farmed salmon escaping into the ecosystem around them and then they will start to compete with natural salmon for food resources, there is the potential for them to reproduce. natural salmon and reduce their genetic fitness, so that is a disaster in itself, so to conclude this section on salmon farming, we have the destruction of the ecosystem, we have almost the extinction of other natural species, we have negative consequences for the Wild salmon populations, not to mention the terrible conditions in which farmed salmon are found, seem like a sustainable and ecological alternative.

I don't believe it. I am not convinced and in fact this industry has found itself in trouble and there have been SO many calls from various environmental agencies around the world to stop these open grid problems and move these operations to land recirculation tank systems. In fact, in British Columbia there are plans in the pipeline for a complete transition from open ocean nets to these land-based systems in Additionally, Monter Bay Seafood Watch, which is a great resource if you're trying to find sustainable seafood options, recommends avoiding all the salmon that comes from these open net pens, but he recommends eating salmon from these terrestrial recirculating systems, although there are There are not many of them in this seafood watch that also recommends eating us wild salmon C, so let's talk a little about that because this is another matter entirely, excuse the pun, now the next section only really focuses on what is happening in North America, but this is where we encounter the trixi LIE of many that if you are eating wild salmon from a quart, you are eating 100% natural wild salmon.

Let's talk about salmon farms. Now, as humans, for some reason we believe we have absolute dominion. over this planet and everything that lives on it, I am God, so when salmon numbers began to decline in North America due to things like overfishing and damnation, instead of thinking to ourselves, it seems that we are out of balance with the world around us and we should alter our behavior, no, instead they came up with the idea of ​​repopulating wild rivers with salmon that were born and raised in captivity on dry land. This crazy idea was invented in the 1870s and since then the US government has spent billions of dollars of taxpayer money to hatch and raise juvenile salmon in hundreds of US state hatcheries across the country. , these captive bred juvenile salmon are then released into the rivers where they are allowed to live their lives they go out to sea they return to the river in an attempt to replace the large numbers of wild salmon that were being killed and as far as I can tell this it's really just a plan to keep Fishers and Fisheries happy.

You know, the US government wants to ensure that there are enough fish in the river so that we can continue to catch as many as we want and they are spending a lot of money onit. One article I saw estimated that the government spends between $250 and $650 for each salmon that returns to the river as an adult to be caught, you know, I think. These hatcheries mean well, they are trying to stop the decline of wild salmon and they are trying to bolster their populations with these farmed red fish, but unfortunately the latest evidence shows that not only are they not meeting this goal, they are actually achieving the opposite. effect and negative impact on natural populations of truly wild salmon.

I mean, you have these fish that are bred in captivity and then released into rivers. They are genetically different from wild salmon and are less fit. You know, they're kind of brought on. in these tanks and therefore are not as able to survive in the wild, they compete with wild salmon for food and then also breed with wild salmon, which reduces the genetic fitness of all, so they do not I know, I feel like I like, if you follow this whole thought experiment to the end, I don't know how they could have come to the conclusion that this would have been beneficial for a wild sermon, so what can a person do and I know they don't you will do it?

I like this because I didn't like it when I came to this conclusion, but we all need to reduce our consumption and demand for salmon on a global scale. After all this research, I have come to believe that there are no truly sustainable or eco-friendly salmon options at this time and We, as a global community who share this planet with millions of other species, actually just need to take stock of the impact we are having on those other species and we all just need to reduce our consumption of salmon and potentially even eliminate it from our diet, especially if You are like me, I live in South Africa so all of our salmon is imported and probably comes from somewhere far away from Norway which is destroying the Norwegian fjords and this is something I can no longer get behind, so as much as it saddens me, I have made a personal decision to eliminate salmon from my diet, I am not going to consume it anymore because it simply does not align with the values ​​that I hold dear and you all have to make your own decision, you all have to decide what is most important to me.

Is it more important to just enjoy the salmon and not think about it or is it more important for you to realize what is going on behind the scenes and realize that that simple piece of fish is causing the destruction of the ecosystem and the extinction of species and just all these crazy negative impacts and that's something you have to decide for yourself so I'm really curious to hear your take on the topic. Let me know in the comments below. Obviously, this is a very controversial topic. There will be many. of differing opinions um, but you know I've followed the evidence to a conclusion that I know for me personally resonates and makes sense and aligns with my values, but let me know below if you've come to a different conclusion or what you think.

If you eat salmon or are going to continue eating salmon, stop eating salmon. I'm just really curious, so let me know and on that note I'll see you in the next video.