More Research Is Needed Into Deleterious Impact of Fish Farms On Wild Stocks of Salmon and Sea Trout

Summary

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THERE is at present an application before Argyll and Bute Council for a new marine salmon farming unit at Eilean Grianain, north of Carradale by Campbeltown. This is a controversial planning issue, with fish farming being the focus of significant discontent throughout the northern hemisphere owing to its potential to impact wild salmon and sea trout stocks, and the environment on which they depend. However, local press reports seem to have portrayed this debate purely in terms of the jobs which fish farming would bring to the area, versus the disruption to the scenery that would result from a salmon farm being established in an area of pristine coastline.

Peer-reviewed scientific evidence from Canada, Norway, Ireland and Scotland has shown categorically that salmon farming can have a significant impact on wild salmonids, principally by transferring unnatural numbers of parasitic sea lice from farmed to juvenile wild fish, many of which die as a result; by fish farm escapees running local rivers and inter-breeding with wild salmon, so diluting gene banks which have evolved since the Ice Age; and by pharmaceutical chemicals and waste products polluting the immediate environment, in some instances causing human disease through eating contaminated shellfish.

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Extract

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More Research Is Needed Into Deleterious Impact of Fish Farms On Wild Stocks of Salmon and Sea Trout

It appears to those of us fighting to preserve wild fish populations in Scotland th...

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