Sea Lice and Fish Farms

Stated in the interesting post from Clint.... "Is our goal to feed a large number of people? Or is our goal to create or to serve a luxury market?" Interesting article for sure...How many think the current price of Farmed Atlantic Salmon is serving the "large number of people" or " a luxury market"?
Absolutely on mark, fi. Most of the rest of the population of the world can't afford North American farmed Atlantic salmon. Maybe they could afford the forage fish that went into the production of farmed fish food - which is reduced in volume when making FF food and converted in FF salmon flesh. Like I said earlier - Wonderful stuff - what a PR firm can pump-out...
 
Maybe they could afford the forage fish that went into the production of farmed fish food - which is reduced in volume when making FF food and converted in FF salmon flesh.
I dont understand this statement, could you elaborate on this?
Are we now saying that the making of fish food is from the death of forage fish. So feed manufacturing is killing off forage fish for ingredients?
 
I dont understand this statement, could you elaborate on this? Are we now saying that the making of fish food is from the death of forage fish. So feed manufacturing is killing off forage fish for ingredients?
Not sure how readily live forage fish do - going through the pellet extrusion process. I would hope they would be dead before they went into the processing, or the IFAW would have another campaign. Not sure why this is new news for you bones.
 
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It's not but the way it is worded it makes it sound like the manufacturers are killing forage fish for the making of pellets. Which is not true.
 
I would assume that shortly after they are caught - they die in the holds of the boats transporting the forage fish to the plant. Do you disagree with this assumption? I'm not seeing where I suggested that the actual death happened at the plant itself - is there a relevance to where the fish die?
 
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I disagree with the sentence. Because it sounds more like there killing forage fish to make fish food for farmed salmon. This isn't true. Fishy food is made from fish scrapes which can come from processing or by catch, etc.
 
Did you look into this Bones? Can you provide proof of what you claim?
 
Use of more fish trimmings

In 2015, 32 percent of the marine ingredients used in EWOS feeds were from fish trimmings. That is an increase of almost 10 percent in five years. This raw material has become available as a result of supplier development programmes and screening from Cargill Innovation.

"Trimmings and by-products from fish are an ideal raw material for fish feed," Wathne said. "It is the natural food for fish, it can often be sourced locally and it upcycles materials that would have otherwise gone to waste into healthy and delicious food."


Is this good enough?
 
AA Thanks for the overview
I can tell you from a lifetime of staring into streams that assessing out migration from salmon escapements is the most corky dorky way of enumeration fry possible. It is absolutely in accurate. Remember the acid rain, dydimo algae, insect extermination stuff we discussed before? You might want to educate yourself a little on that subject. This is where there is a huge hole in the fish farm sea lice case. There is no proof that healthy fish are leaving our streams and any proof I find indicates they are not. I'm willing to believe it all but am a person who needs facts and not hype to believe.
So do you have any solid proof?
 
My pleasure, bones:

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/aquaculture/faqs/faq_feeds.html
"4. Where does fishmeal and fish oil come from?About ¾ of the fishmeal and oil are produced from the harvest of small, open-ocean (pelagic) fish such as anchovies, herring, menhaden, capelin, anchovy, pilchard, sardines, and mackerel."

http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/09/post-3-forage-fish-fish-farm-feed-stats.html
"Post 3: Forage Fish - Fish Farm Feed Stats - 10.2 Billion Forage Fish Killed to feed BC Fish Farms, alone, Not Counting Atlantic Canada - And Marine Harvest Operates in 23 Countries, Updated Oct 2, 201"

http://www.thefishsite.com/articles/1068/the-fish-feed-story/
"To produce one kg of salmon, we need around 180 g of fish oil. To extract 180 g of fish oil, we need 2.5 kg1) of forage fish. From these 2.5 kg, we also get approx. 560 g of fishmeal, of which 180 g goes into the fish feed."

http://www.thefishsite.com/fishnews...still-remain-in-fish-oil-fish-meal-fisheries/
"GLOBAL - The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) has found in its annual sustainability overview of reduction fisheries for 2016 that only 3.8 per cent of the total catch volume of reduction fisheries comes from stocks in very good condition. "

http://www.skretting.com/en-AU/faqs/how-much-wild-fish-is-used-to-feed-a-farmed-fish/
"The main forage fish species that are caught for use as fishmeal and fish oil in Skretting Australia feeds are Anchovy from Peru and Chile. These fisheries are responsible for supplying a large proportion of the world’s supply of fishmeal and fish oil."

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15103.full.pdf
"The ratio of wild fisheries inputs to farmed fish output has fallen to 0.63 for the aquaculturesector as a whole but remains as high as 5.0 for Atlantic salmon"

The above references are a mix of industry, governmental, NGO and peer-reviewed references. From your own post - ~70% of the ingredients in the feed are marine (forage fish) based. Not sure where your argument is with admitting that forage fish are still caught and used in making farm fish feed.
 
AA Thanks for the overview
I can tell you from a lifetime of staring into streams that assessing out migration from salmon escapements is the most corky dorky way of enumeration fry possible. It is absolutely in accurate. Remember the acid rain, dydimo algae, insect extermination stuff we discussed before? You might want to educate yourself a little on that subject. This is where there is a huge hole in the fish farm sea lice case. There is no proof that healthy fish are leaving our streams and any proof I find indicates they are not. I'm willing to believe it all but am a person who needs facts and not hype to believe.
So do you have any solid proof?
Did you check-out the links I posted? And AGAIN - it is up to industry to prove they aren't having an impact - not me or you, Fishmyster.
 
Did you check-out the links I posted? And AGAIN - it is up to industry to prove they aren't having an impact - not me or you, Fishmyster.
Our discussion was that I don't believe fish farms have caused the decline in our fish stocks. My skepticism was because there was no evedince that healthy fish even got out of our rivers (which I know there wasn't). You were going to help me see the light. It had nothing to do with industry proving anything. Just me knowing there has been death and doom in stream productivity for twenty years and you believing farms are the culprit. None in the myriad of reports you post do I find concrete evidence there has been healthy fry leaving our streams.
Please help me find this crucial evidence.
 
I posted a link to the State of the Ocean 2015 back in November. Here is a link to that post.
I noticed this on DFO's website today and thought I would post it up for those that like to read such things. It's a long read but there is a lot of info in there. Looks like it can out this past September.

State of the Physical, Biological and Selected Fishery Resources of Pacific Canadian Marine Ecosystems in 2015
Peter C. Chandler, Stephanie A. King and R. Ian Perry (Editors)

Abstract
Fisheries and Oceans Canada is responsible for the management and protection of marine resources on the Pacific coast of Canada. An annual State of the Pacific Ocean meeting is held to review the physical, biological and selected fishery resources and present the results of the most recent year’s monitoring in the context of previous observations and expected future conditions. The workshop to review conditions in 2015 was held March 1 and 2, 2016 at the Vancouver Island Conference Centre in Nanaimo, B.C. The waters off Canada’s west coast experience strong seasonality and considerable freshwater influence and include relatively protected regions such as the Strait of Georgia as well as areas fully exposed to the open ocean conditions of the Pacific. The region supports ecologically and economically important resident and migratory populations of invertebrates, groundfish, pelagic fishes, marine mammals and seabirds.

Observations of the marine environment in 2015 identified the continued presence of a large pool of very warm water in the Northeast Pacific Ocean (colloquially known as the “Blob”) with surface waters over 3 °C above normal at its peak in July. The equatorial water of the eastern Pacific also began to warm and by the fall of 2015 a strong El Niño was building. By the end of 2015 the warm surface water anomaly in the Northeast Pacific Ocean had decreased to about 1 °C above normal, while the subsurface waters to a depth of 100 m still remained significantly warmer than normal. These ocean conditions influenced the weather experienced during 2015, and impacted the biological ecosystems on regional and local scales, including changes at the base of the food web such as exceptional blooms of phytoplankton, unusually high abundances of gelatinous zooplankton, and range extension northwards of plankton and fish species more commonly found further south.

A special session at the meeting was convened to focus on the monitoring and research being undertaken on the freshwater conditions relevant to the health of anadromous fish populations.

http://waves-vagues.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/365564.pdf


SALISH SEA COHO SALMON DECLINES – IS THE PROBLEM IN THE OCEAN OR FRESH WATER?
There is a paper in this pdf that looks at this question on page 209. It looks at Black Creek where they count smolts and returning adults. The takeaway is to look for the ratio of smolt to adult and that will tell you what is happening. I volunteer on a river that is very close to Black Creek and I'm finding similar results. IMHO the problem is in the SOG or when they pass by the fish farms. The question is, are the fish farms 100% of the problem..... I don't think so as it appears to me that it's a case of death by 1000 cuts. There are some cuts that we can do something about and some that we cannot. The trick is to know what to do and where we can make an impact. That's one of the reasons I support getting the fish farms off the salmon migration routes as soon as possible.
http://waves-vagues.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/365564.pdf
 
AA i'm only challenging the words "forage fish" when people read this they make there first decision and believe that we catch fish to make fish food, which isnt the case. they are not going to google this and find out that fish pellets are made from "forage fish not for human consumption".


"The availability of fish meal and fish oil has been relatively constant at 5-7 million tonnes of fish meal and 1 million tonnes of fish oil.

The majority of this is derived from small pelagic fish like anchovy, sardines and capelin, whilst an increasing amount is derived from by-products and trimmings from seafood caught for direct human consumption. Salmon farming is the most efficient way to transform these marine nutrients into healthy food for people to eat and enjoy.

EWOS has become more efficient in the use of marine ingredients in salmon feed: our annual demand for these raw materials has been stable for the past 10 years, despite a large increase in annual feed production over the same period. While EWOS global feed sales have increased 66% since 2002 to more than 1 million tonnes per year, the total amount of fish meal and fish oil used has always been close to 400,000 tonnes per year. Moreover, through our investment in R&D, we have the expertise to continue this trend where necessary."
 
Well - it is encouraging that the industry has reduced it's proportion of forage fish in feed over time.

However, large amounts of forage fish are still used in the production of feed for farmed salmon. Overall that need will not diminish much - as production biomass of farmed fish increases.

Overall, it is a loss of fish protein converting forage fish into farmed Atlantic salmon flesh - and you won't feed most of the world's population using Atlantic salmon.

I also take issue with the label "not for human consumption" label being applied by the industry for it's own benefit. It is true that some fish may be unfit due to contamination by something - or not being well looked after in the transport - but much of the world consumes forage fishes, or would given the chance. Herring has been used for many, many generation by humans - along with many other species. Just because a fish is small and destined to be rolled into the farm fish feed production - does not make it: unfit for human consumption.

Apparently we are just supposed to go blindly along with the PR firms' assertions and let that sleeing dog lie. I refuse to do so. I know that many forage fishes are quite yummy and well suited for human consumption - regardless of the claims of the industrys' PR firms.
 
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Our discussion was that I don't believe fish farms have caused the decline in our fish stocks. My skepticism was because there was no evedince that healthy fish even got out of our rivers (which I know there wasn't). You were going to help me see the light. It had nothing to do with industry proving anything. Just me knowing there has been death and doom in stream productivity for twenty years and you believing farms are the culprit. None in the myriad of reports you post do I find concrete evidence there has been healthy fry leaving our streams. Please help me find this crucial evidence.
I think GLG answered this for me. Thanks, GLG!
 
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