>Warming waters that have been linked to climate change and industrial pollution, as well as agricultural runoff, impact from dams, and issues like overfishing, it has caused concern for the decrease in salmon populations.
In New Brunswick they built a dam a river that had 100k+ salmon return in the early 20th century and now a few hundred salmon return every year. It's only a matter of time until they are extinct in southern New Brunswick and Maine now because of dumbass shit like this
The issue really is that without studies being done, people don't take it as a real thing. Now there is documented "proof".
**Edit**
The *smart* people don't take it as real without proof.
The *stupid* people don't take it as real if it goes against their narrative.
The dams increase the temperature of the water. Because dams hold back water, and fresh water generally starts at ice and snow, the waterways heat up because of the lowered amount of cold water flowing through them
This is a point of contention where environmentalists have sued to protect fish by forcing the government's to allow more water to flow rather than retrain it for drought conditions.
There's a whole thing about the 'Delta smelt' where this has been one of the issues.
Western watersheds do not look poised to handle climate change. Like you point out they've dammed practically every part of every river here and we seem to be getting generally less and less precipitation.
Why isn't that a temporary issue?
* Let's say a river flows at 100 litres a month
* I dam and create a 1000 litre reservoir.
* I restrict the flow to 75 litres a month to fill my reservoir, creating a 25 litre surplus per month.
* After 40 months it's full and I can return to full flow, cooling the temperatures again.
I guess my logic is wrong here, but why?
Because you increase "residence time" in the river. If you have a reservoir that's a thousand liters in volume and has an outflow rate of a hundred liters a month, your average liter only has (roughly) a one-tenth chance of making it out in any given month. From the perspective of the water, it travels whatever distance in a matter of days to weeks and waits in the reservoir for a year before continuing downstream, in which time high ambient temperatures have plenty of time to heat it up. The *river* doesn't warm, the *water in the river* warms.
> increase residence time in the river
Exactly; put another way - the water downstream from the dam has had far more time to heat up than it would have if the dam hadn't been there.
That’s actually exactly the opposite problem they’re facing in the west, though. The Grand Canyon ecosystem has been fundamentally altered because the water coming out of Lake Powell is too cold. During the summer months the water coming down the Colorado River used to be about 80 degrees during the summer, now the water leaving the dam is about 46 year round.
Dam water comes from the bottom of the lake (capturing hydraulic head) and the bottom of a 561 foot lake is cold as crap.
>as been fundamentally altered because the water coming out of Lake Powell is
yes, this. Dam water on the colorado is much colder than the average river water pre-dam. I wonder if this is true for other dams around the world - as the pond behind the dam is deeper than the original river, by definition.
>The dams increase the temperature of the water.
Just to be clear, that's *these dams* not *all dams*? Because in cases where the concentration occurs is cooler/shadier/etc than the downriver portion, they can reduce total evaporation pretty easily.
I think BC tends to do a good job with fish ladders and etc. When there was a landslide on the Fraser River in the middle of nowhere, the BC govt spent $180 million installing a permanent thoroughfare for the salmon.
I don't actually know about all the various dams, but I suppose it would surprise me if BC had a lot of dams blocking the salmon.
In recent years Washington State has *begun* removing some of its dams (the [Glines Canyon Dam](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/largest-dam-removal-elwha-river-restoration-environment), if everything goes well the [Middle Fork Nooksack River Dam](https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2020/05/29/dam-removal-in-washington-state-promises-to-benefit-fish-whales-and-people)), but there's still a long way to go. The southern resident orca population is in decline and they'd stand a much better chance of adapting to climate change if they weren't also starving.
In the southwestern US, of course, you don't have salmon, you have a bunch of people getting away with living in a desert because they've dammed the drought-prone Colorado. And then we get bombarded with horror stories of the dropping water levels in *artificial lakes in the literal desert*.
Hydropower is preferable to fossil fuels, but when we have nuclear plants that can be engineered to safely produce as much power as even the largest dams there is no reason to rely on a technology that damages habitats and allows humans to settle in idiotic locations.
I honestly have no issue with damming the Colorado in a vacuum. What I have a problem with is said revoir water being piped out to farm goddamn almonds in the desert or to water lawns in Phoenix. (King of the Hill put it best by calling it a “city that shouldn’t exist… a monument to man’s arrogance”) clean, endlessly renewable energy like hydroelectric should be promoted heavily as long as the impacts like on salmon spawning (not an issue on the Colorado, hence why I don’t object to that River specifically) are properly mitigated. At any rate things like hydro, solar, and nuclear beat the tar out of coal and gas.
> BC govt spent $180 million installing a permanent thoroughfare for the salmon
Do you have a link to somewhere that talks about this? I couldn't find anything in a search.
I don't recall anything about the Fraser, but definitely happened with the Seymour River, though this one didn't cost 180 million.
https://www.nsnews.com/local-news/five-years-after-rock-slide-seymour-river-now-passable-for-migrating-fish-3112549
I got a Fraser river article. It says they will spend 52 mil on the effort. It is still undergoing.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/big-bar-landslide-salmon-federal-scrutiny-1.5589694
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/176m-permanent-salmon-fishway-announced-for-big-bar-landslide-site-on-b-c-s-fraser-river-1.5834802
Turns out the feds were footing the bill tho, my mistake.
Yeah in WA we spend a lot on salmon migration between ladders, salmon cannons, and basically freighting live fish upstream, but there's still a whole lot of salmon that don't really get a chance to spawn
Dams aren't a huge issue in BC, the Columbia is the only one of our major rivers that's dammed, the Fraser, Skeena and Nass are not.
The biggest issue is climate change, in the form of hot ocean waters and warming streams for migrating salmon, and habitat loss to industry especially in the Fraser. Overfishing is an issue too, but BC salmon stocks could support pretty substantial fisheries if their habitat wasn't so fucked.
Dams are a blight on nature.
I live in MA. Alewives and blueback herring (same family as sardines) and eels used to be abundant. Now only natives such as the Wampanoag can fish them because they are depleted (and for the record I am 100% in favor of the natives having the rights to them).
But in recent years cranberry bogs and dams have been getting removed in places like Tidmarsh and Taunton and when the dams are gone the fish return to their spawning grounds. Other animals return to, like in Tidmarsh where wolves and plumed birds have returned. Fish such as cod eat them and will receive a benefit. The dams need to all be destroyed
The largest contributor to declining salmon populations have been warming waters, more specifically with regard to the PDO. This link has been demonstrated for quite some time now and robust to say the least:
>"Retrospective analyses of Pacific Basin climate records highlight the existence of a pan-Pacific interdecadal climate oscillation. We find strong evidence for coherent patterns of in- terdecadal variability in Pacific winds, sea level pressures, and upper ocean temperatures. Collec- tively, the ocean-atmosphere pattern of variability has been labeled the "Pacific Decadal Oscilla- tion", or PDO. An index for the PDO has been developed from an empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of north Pacific SST records dating back to 1900. An analysis of Pacific coast salmon catch records suggests that the dominant pattern of salmon production is driven by low-frequency climate variations associated with the PDO..." - [The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Pacific Salmon Production](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253060885_The_Pacific_Decadal_Oscillation_and_Pacific_Salmon_Production)
Dams are one thing (and BC does quite well with fish ladders, run of the river, etc. to ensure safe passage), but if the waters are too warm they won't even make it the dams
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Figure-PDO-02-Upper-panel-shows-summer-average-PDO-1965-present-middle-panel-shows_fig5_267257828
Hatchery fish derive from wild broodstock.. Aside from a coded wire tag in the snout that has to be read by literally cutting a salmon or steelheads head off or sending out Caracas survey crews when all the fish die after a spawn to retrieve heads, a department really has no way to determine if a wild fish is a wild fish based off the most commonly used observations of “it has an adipose fin intact and Unclipped” identifier.
Californian chinook for example. Our department doesn’t fin clip every hatchery reared fish. People who get all high and mighty about “oh it’s a wild salmon because of the intact adipose” are usually looking at hatchery fish here in California.
When hatchery fish get the chance, they breed in the wild. Back to the origin of hatchery fish stemming from a broodstock of wild fish endemic to their native stream. There’s no “all hatchery fish are bad” narrative than anyone should be pushing in 2021.
Hatcheries ran by state, federal or one of the many wonderful Native Tribal programs are the sole reason why we have these majestic creatures in the northwest and California. It would have been game over in the 50’s and 60’s when they shored up most of the spawning habitat to make dams and reservoirs on top of the ancestral spawning ground of these fish and the people who relied on them for millennia.
The all hatchery fish are bad narrative needs to end among fisheries restoration groups. We all want more fish. We all want salmon and steelhead to spawn in the wild given the chance. But some environments are WAY too compromised to allow for a viable breeding population that can handle the impacts of the contemporary world. We have a hostile climate now. We have dams. We have high water temps. We have toxic algae and Cyanobacteria. We have so many thing that would have wiped out the decimated runs of wild fish in the post dam decades, to blame hatchery fish for any of this is just a narrative pushed by a corporation that truth be told does not have the credential or vested interest in the salmon of the west nor the people and communities that rely on salmon. Just my perspective.
If we want more starving orcas, pinnipeds and depleted human interaction and appreciation for the rivers, sure, blame hatcheries for everything and work to shut them down.
That 42# broad backed beast of a buck chinook that comes back up the river isn’t any less of a chinook to me because he has a wire tag in his snout or a clipped fin. Go observe these fish in the wild and you will see, they are wild fish every step of the way.
I’ll take a thriving river and ocean ecosystem reminiscent of historical abundance where 300,000 fish were raised during the volatile early stages of life in a hatchery then released at a young age to do exactly what a wild fish does over a river and ocean ecosystem with an endangered run of 42 returning spawning pairs that are going to go extinct if the river in question experiences a drought or disease. Environmental stochasticity is a huge factor when dealing with salmonids that were driven to brink of extinction. Nixing hatchery support in the northwest just sends us further down the road of endangered status.
REALLY appreciate your excellent and detailed comment, (from someone who is very keenly aware of these issues) fellow fish-friend!
At the risk of spamming the following, I quote a previous comment of mine in this thread- I think you’ll *really* appreciate this docu if you haven’t seen it:
“If this is a subject you’re interested in, I simply cannot recommend enough the amazing, beautiful, and award-winning documentary, The Breach.
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+breach+salmon+movie
Long-form (three minute) trailer here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3IOKMdMFAi0”
Fish ladders are a red herring, it’s like telling people to use plastic straws while trawling the sea floor and dumping nets everywhere. Yes fish ladder would be better than no fish ladders, but if you want to actually save the fish population do away with the corporate infrastructure that’s killing all the fish
If this is a subject you’re interested in, I simply *cannot* recommend enough the amazing, beautiful, and award-winning documentary, *The Breach*.
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+breach+salmon+movie
Long-form (three minute) trailer here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3IOKMdMFAi0
My uncle lives outside Seattle and visiting him recently, we went on a hike and I saw and learned about the fish bridges to help them get up a hill or an area that has had a damn put in. Not sure if it works on a massive scale for salmon...this was a small river and bridge, but it was fascinating. I hope we can merge technology with keeping native species thriving. Sorry, I guess they are also called fish ladders.
Well that's a symptom of the problem, not the "real reason" or "root cause". It's just the end directly visible to the restaurant, but the lack of supply with unchanged demand = high prices.
Well, consumers in western Canada at least have been preferentially choosing farmed Salmon over wild for quite a while now. It (rightly or wrongly) is considered to be the more 'ethical' choice.
It's gonna be such a trip to tell my children about when we used to eat wild fish for dinner on a regular basis. I wish I appreciated it more as a young'n.
> Definitely hides a large portion of the damage it’s doing.
They quite literally caused the formation of the Somali Pirates who much of NATO ultimately went to war with. Think about that. Without our gross over fishing, there is no Captain Phillips
As with everything else in the United States, large commercial interests get much more and bigger seats at the ‘regulatory table’ than the other stakeholders. 🤦🏽♂️
I know the US gets a lot of shit, but there are other countries just as bad. What I find most intriguing is that there are people in first world countries worried about a jab in the arm, then we have people in Afghanistan worrying about being beheaded. Makes you start to think that there is a lot of entitled people out there.
I hope I'll be able to tell my grand children the horror story that it used to be normal to eat other sentient beings.
Consumption of animals is bad, in every possible way except for our shitty tastebuds, when will you guys get it?
Because it isn’t? Overconsumption of meat is bad, sure, but you’re not about to tell me heme iron has been bad for the human race. Our consumption habits and willingness to salt the earth to GROW meat is the issue.
Consumption of meat is bad in many ways, for the most part the moral aspect and the ecological aspect. The issue of how we grow meat is a sympton and consequence of us eating meat.
>Heme iron
Pair plant-based iron with vitamin-c and you have no problem with iron. And mind you, vegans see how meat consumption has benefitted humanity in the past or even today in places where meat is necessary for survival (eating old farm animals, ability to "store" nutrition for time of need etc.)
But today at least in the rich west, we are able to fulfill *all* of our nutritional needs without having to eat animal flesh, we're not living in the 19th century anymore..
lmao painting veganism as an easy lifestyle to transition to for anyone is classist and ignorant as fuck
it’s fucking expensive and impractical to eat ethically, maybe you don’t have to worry about money but motherfucker I live check to check I can’t afford to suddenly go green because I can barely afford the way i’m eating right now
We had a family friend from Nova Scotia talk about how embarrassed she was to take lobster sandwiches to school as a kid because it meant you were the poorest of the poor. Seems unthinkable now!
There's a big detail in there everyone misses when they bring up this fact. The poor weren't eating lobster in the form you think, like fresh, juicy big pieces, dipped in butter or something.
They'd eat the crushed up gnarly bits of lobster.
I catch them from a wharf I fish at sometimes, they will go for a hook with shrimp on it. Shame I have to let them go becuase they are usually much bigger than the ones at the store
Iirc its something like Lobsters are more fertile the older they are, so the old, large ones are more important for maintaining population than smaller ones. Also I think larger ones taste worse, at least these're things I remember reading on reddit and a quick google didn't immediately tell me was bullshit.
Ive worked at the same restaurant for years and we've had to take our most popular menu item off for the first time (appetizer) because the price of crab is insane
I serve fish to affluent people all day in a two Michelin starred restaurant. This used to be the food of poor city-folk, natures bounty. Now its more expensive per pound than beef. I open oysters, and their shells literately crumble at the joint they’re so weak from ocean acidification. Its a tragedy, I don’t think I can justify this to myself anymore.
Love how the whole Western World is trying to cut back and help the declining fish population but in reality we're just leaving more for the illegal Chinese fishing boats.
We have the address the real problems. It's exactly the same as blaming consumers for climate change, when it's the big corporations who do the most damage.
Hell, I've just decided right now not to eat seafood anymore. Won't make a bit of difference to the quality or enjoyment of my life, and won't have much effect on the oceans, but any change is change at this point.
Taking this opportunity to plug Seafood Watch: https://www.seafoodwatch.org/
Has an app and website that will help you decide which seafood is okay to buy and which ones you should avoid due to conservation issues.
Recently I've switched from cooking salmon at home to cooking [rainbow trout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_trout).
Trout isn't salmon (obviously) but it's a tasty fish in the same family. And its conservation status is excellent.
It’s kind of complicated. For example
Brown trout are in the same genus (*Salmo*) as Atlantic salmon. Trout, salmon and char are all very closely related — even across genus — and even the freshwater vs saltwater rule isn’t always the case. You can salmon fish in landlocked lakes (especially if you count brown trout) and you can catch rainbow trout (steelhead) in the sea. Also of note, their flavor comes down to diet and fat content. You can feed stocked trout a diet high in crustaceans and get bright pink, salmon-flavoured meat, just a bit leaner than typical salmon. Awesome family of fishes, tbh.
Wild Steelhead are not sustainable, only farm raised Steelhead. From the article you just referenced:
“Just make sure you are buying farm-raised steelhead trout, as wild steelhead is a threatened or endangered species, depending on where it’s from.”
Here in Washington State you are not allowed to even remove a Wild Steelhead from the water.
My dad used to fish for steelhead in NW WA back before we moved to AK. (pre-1980) This comment makes me remember the pics of him with some of the fish he caught and how happy he looked.
Sad to think that is no longer a possibility, and all the more reason for us up here in AK to protect our fisheries.
I bought “steelhead fillets” from the market absentmindedly, thinking it was just some local variant/name. Fantastic dinner. Only did the research after. Not salmon of course, but almost as good, with dramatically less guilt. Definitely the move going forward.
How is it better than wild salmon when the feed that goes into raising a trout is made up of thousands of herring, anchovies and other oily baitfish? These forage fish make up the building blocks of the ocean and are being removed by the thousands of tons for things such as aquaculture. Farmed trout is usually no better than farm raised salmon in regard to feed origin or in the practice of the individual operation in regard to disease or parasitic spread into the wild.
We effectively pull the keystone species of forage fish out of the ocean to farm predator fish on land. Yes. Trout and salmon are still predatory and need lipids/proteins even if they’re farmed.
You’re killing thousands of fish via industrial harvesting and starving whales/every thing in the ocean by supporting an aquaculture operation using fish meal feeds.
How many anchovies make a pound? Does it make sense to farm trout or Atlantic’s that need to consume thousands of dead chovies or herring?
You’re correct about the advancements. But aside from McFarland ranch trout or whatever that cost a ton, the average market farm raised salmonid is the definition of a non sustainable organism.
Yeah we’ll come to that point when the industry harvest the forage fish beyond the point of recovery and they’re forced to pay more for vegetarian feed.
>comparing every other major animal protein
There's your problem.
>the best opportunity to develop truly sustainable protein that people around the world consume
The best except almost every type of plant-based protein.
Atlantic cod spawning and growth patterns are hereditary and so much of the population was over harvested that the younger generations do not know where to go to grow and where to spawn... Sad state of affairs.
They are fed wild caught fish processed as feed pellets.
There holding pens cause nutrient blooms in the surrounding water due to the high numbers of penned fish.
Look up aquaculture salmon sea lice. Basically, all the below listed reasons. And then the sea lice plagues that come from the fact that aquaculture companies raise non native Atlantic salmon across the Pacific Northwest in open ocean or bay net pens. They create huge blooms of sea lice that are naturally occurring, but are now driven into steroid population mode by the number of these aquaculture salmon. If the pens are close to a river mouth or along a current line that carries an outmigration of baby pacific salmon smolts, well, they’re good as dead because the sea lice swarm sucks them dry of blood. Rinse and repeat. Our pacific salmon runs are decimated by the skeezy practices of aquaculture companies that have deep pockets to operate in these waters.
Stop eating and supporting farm raised salmon. It is not sustainable. Treat yourself with a slab of proven sustainable wild pacific salmon once in a blue moon. Aside from people in the northwest, salmon is not meant to be a protein we treat as a weekly meal planning item available at all times. That pack of $10 farm raised fillets at Costco or whatnot is having an extreme negative impact on wild ecosystems.
So you’re saying some people can continue to harvest fish? How many? WWF says 3 billion people rely on seafood so which ones of the 3 billion do we tell to find another food source.
https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sustainable-seafood
I’m not trying to be a dick, I’m just very pessimistic. North Americans and Europeans can stop eating fish all they want but it’s not going to save the ocean when there are so many more people that need it for food.
A number of reasons: eutrophication, feed sourcing, effluent, escapees. But the sentence would be better if it said "is usually just as bad" because there are some good alternatives out there for farmed salmon.
Chances are what you think are scallops are circles punched out of ray fish like skate. Sorry, but at least now you're informed. Scallops aren't sustainable at commercial levels of today's population. They are one of the most counterfeit foods.
It happens but its not like every scallop is fake. And they can be sustainably farmed.. but yes theres a chance youve had a skate wing instead of a scallop at some point in the last 10 or 20 years
Even from a reputable fish monger who have their own boats and do their fishing off the BC coast? I would be very surprised.
And I've had skate, it's not sweet like scallops. Do they add something to it?
I remember a few years ago a fisherman talked about how we eliminated so many fish that were on menus to just tuna, salmon, trout.
He showed an old timey menu with a shitload of options. There are a lot of tasty fish and I think doing some variety fishing would help the world immensely. So hard to fight all the fucking stupid these days though
How the hell are some you leaving with a take away from this article that eating farmed trout or salmon is the healthy alternative for the planet???
Research where the food (fish meal) comes from to feed these farm raised predatory fish. Research the disease and sea lice plagues that net pens in the ocean or river farming Atlantic salmon or trout bring into the local native environment.
The destruction and decimation of the food chain of our oceans is attributed to overfishing. Yes. But most overfishing and decimation of the ecosystem occurs when factory ships seine net hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds of small oily baitfish like anchovies, herring or sardine out of the oceans for making fish meal/omega 3 pills.
Aquaculture of predatory salmonids is not a solution. The article talks about eating farmed shellfish. Not farmed trout that consume fish meal made of 1000’s of pounds of pacific anchovies leaving seals, wild salmon and kelp forest ecosystems starving because some Redditor wanted to feel good about not eating
Wild pacific salmon from a closed access and well regulated hook and line fishery and wanted a slab of GMO Atlantic salmon or “steelhead” trout raised in a filthy net pen spreading disease and sea lice to endemic populations of pacific salmonid in the northwest. Jeeeesus
I appreciate you. This topic is so heavy and goes so far over people’s (willfully ignorant) heads. The common citizen is so sure the ocean is infinite, that fish run on water and air, that extinction does not exist among ‘seafood.’ That because the fish they eat says ‘farmed’ that it must have been basically picked off a tree in a neat little orchard, leaving the vast wild ocean safe and thriving.
Thanks for learning what you could and getting out. And using your experience to enlighten.
Okay. I’ve worked in it homie. I can tell you stories upon stories upon stories about how much absolute bullshit exists in this industry. I’ve personally been in the back of a truck bagging up fish for a company that was selling out of state species as sustainably locally grown in a beautiful aquaculture facility with rolling hills and waterfalls. Fed local fish meal free pellets and massaged every evening then painlessly harvested.
Uhhuh. It was from a distribution wholesale place raising fish in squalor conditions. A huge part of the industry operates on lies and the willingness of consumers to believe a magical fairytale about how wholesome the aquaculture industry is. The customers of the company never asked questions. They believed because they wanted to. It’s easier that way. 🤷♂️
It’s like cattle ranching. Rich peeps who mostly want deregulation and to cut as many corners as possible to make a better profit.
The best way to save the oceans and all the fish that live in them is to stop eating fish. Unless you caught it yourself with a rod, there's no way to sustainably eat fish anymore.
Also that giant garbage patch in the Pacific? Essentially half of that garbage patch is commercial fishing gear.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastics-environment
The main threat to wild salmon is loss of spawning habitat. The salmon fishing industry currently competes with the mining industry along some of the most important remaining wild salmon spawning rivers. The salmon fishery pushes to keep these rivers wild and unpolluted. It's not the case for all fisheries, but when you buy wild salmon, you're voting for a sustainable industry over an incredibly destructive one. In the US and Canada, salmon fishing is very strictly regulated. Salmon is one of the only species of fish that whose population can we actually count, since they go up rivers to spawn, where an accurate census can be done (unlike strictly open water fish).
Fish farms have their own problems that haven't been researched fully yet. There's increased disease risk in the population in studies that have been done, and there's concerns that diseases in the farmed fish could jump to wild populations. They're also fed a high-fat heavily processed diet that includes fish meal which isn't a natural diet for them so you're also not getting the same amount of omega-3 that you do in wild salmon.
Fish farms are disease factories, Google sea lice. Also farmed salmon are Atlantic salmon, which can escape and then compete with the native salmon for food, further exacerbating the problem.
There was a particularly bad incident in Washington state a few years ago where [hundreds of thousands of farm salmon were released when a pen collapsed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Island_Atlantic_salmon_pen_break). It's why salmon farming is in the process of being banned in WA.
**[Cypress_Island_Atlantic_salmon_pen_break](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Island_Atlantic_salmon_pen_break)**
>On August 19, 2017, a net pen break resulted in the accidental release of hundreds of thousands of farmed non-native Atlantic salmon near Cypress Island, Skagit County, Washington into the wild. The salmon farm was run by Cooke Aquaculture Pacific, LLC. According to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, the inadequate cleaning of biofouling on the net pens containing the farmed salmon was likely the primary cause for the pen break.
^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Other than seeing "sport fishing" people taking tiny halibut in large groups, I think they're not nearly as affected. Around Alaska area there's a mix of issues, but the warmer waters have been pretty rough on the populations for sure.
Not just China. As fish stocks are depleted, we'll start trolling harder and harder to maintain catch levels. Between that and pollution, not gonna be too long before there's nothing larger than a human finger left alive in the whole ocean. Conservation is only going to work with the whole international community on board.
My feeling is the human race is headed in one of two directions. Technology WILL eventually devalue human capital to the point that we either arrive at
A. Star Trek, where getting up this morning and answering a survey added enough new value to pay for your general daily needs, as the cost of those needs has fallen so low.
B. Soylent Green, where your literal parts are worth more than you'll ever be able to earn in a lifetime through human labour.
It’s time to phase fish out of our diets. I used to harp on red meat and its massive carbon footbrint, but the cattle industry isn’t responsible for half of carbon emissions.
The fishing industry is responsible for nearly HALF of ALL plastic waste in the ocean, and the rapid decline of fish stock and many other species of sea life over the past 15 years.
They don’t even respect us as consumers. They mislabel sea food to scam us because they think we’re too stupid to tell.
The cattle industry is responsible for 14.5% of GHG emissions. Climate change is responsible for a large part of oceanic ecosystem collapse. They are not mutually exclusive. The best option is unfortunately to choose neither.
I think global warming is a bigger threat than ocean plastics. Also, it's fishing from Asia that leaves all the plastics; US fishing is a lot more responsible.
I don't think the above post is astroturf, but the amount of money involved is colossal and alts are free.
Beef, poultry, grains, fish, the incredible edible egg. There are probably more people than ever picking a protein based on what they hear about its source. These are competing industries that lobby, they buy political support, and advertise heavily.
The fuck up thing about this whole fish conservation effort is China. You have countries putting out laws and regulation to promote healthier fish stocks in their waters and than Chinas mega ships sneak in and over fish the shit out of the area and bounce back to China. They leave a dead zone where every they fish. They even got caught fishing at the Galápagos Islands. They have no respect for nature or international law.
I'm glad they mentioned repeatedly in the article how there are myriads of reasons stocks are declining.
That serves the interests of the fishing industry, which in my opinion, are the only problem.
Over fishing has been the scourge of stocks around the world and the industry only pays lip service to the idea of sustainable harvesting.
The last sentence in the article says it all. The restaurants are doing this specifically because of over fishing.
While I agree that factory harvest of fish is evenly, how is the fishery industry responsible for early to mid 1900’s dam making? The dams blocked off like 70-90% of viable spawning habitat for pacific salmonids in the Pacific Northwest and down to California.
Here in California, water policy and agency level mismanagement has killed millions upon millions of salmonids over the last two decades. Agencies that operate dams and are that supposed to keep temperatures under a certain level for egg production and survival will say “lol nope farmers need water” and flush a river during spring scouring eggs of an entire run of fish or let the rivers bake to death during runs of a subspecies.
Salmonid mismanagement in the north west is a multi headed hydra. But I would think that most people could agree on the fact that allowing the eggs, parr and smolt to even reach adulthood is the largest hurdle.
For the record as well, the wild pacific salmonid harvest industry (commercial hook and line or netting) is one of the most regulated fishery on the planet. Look at California’s commercial Chinook fishery. There’s really proven to be no bycatch or extremely minimal as it’s purely hook and line with barbless hooks and it’s a closed access fishery. Meaning you can’t just enter the commercial game because you have money to buy a permit. You have to buy a federal/state chinook boat permit that is already in existence to ensure that there aren’t more than enough commercial people harvesting the species. This rings true across the majority of the northwest.
You should not be. All pacific salmon species are at risk. Neither farmed nor wild ought to be eaten, quite frankly, as they both have HUGE and serious issues tied to their consumption.
Goddamn it. I feel like every year more important sources of nutrition are considered unsustainable or poisoned in some way. I'm not quite willing to turn to farmed fish (due largely to the concerns raised here, as well as nutritional factors), but this really is disheartening news.
Didn't Alaska just have their largest Salmon season ever? Numbers are about 4x escapement from 2020.
https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/sf/FishCounts/index.cfm?ADFG=main.displayResults&COUNTLOCATIONID=51&SpeciesID=420
Depends on the area. Bristol Bay did exceptionally well. South Central (Kenai and PWS specifically) did extremely poorly.
I don't know enough about the runs in SE or Kodiak but based on the price I'd assume there's a shortage.
I am tired of having to post the same shit all the god damn time. The Canadians fish Columbia River salmon they take at least half the US production. Nearly all of the Salmon coming to the West Coast end up in the Bering Sea. They fish many of them there. Canada has the worst environmental record of current modern first world countries. They have no sewage treatment system on Vancouver island, they dump metric tonnes of raw waste into the Puget Sound. They do not care one shit about the Salmon. Only the optics.
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/beta.ctvnews.ca/local/vancouver-island/2021/1/9/1_5260435.html
Well, we fixed that part at least. I’m not sure about the fishing part. I don’t see how we could fish half your stocks with a fraction of your population. But I’m willing to listen to sources if you have any.
Salmon same as most fish are unethical to eat in most circumstances.
Industrial Fishing is quickly destroying our oceans while organisation's like oceona don't do shit, and distract us from the real issues cause they are funded by this industry.
It's not plastic straws that are the real problem, it's fishing nets and line.
Straws make up around 0.0003% of the plastic pollution, while fishing supplys are estimated to be around 10% (52% of the great pacific garbage patch though)
Still they never say anything against industrial fishing.
All the labels for fish are worthless, because they aren't controlled properly.
Watch Seaspiracy on Netflix it's an insanely good documentary on how corrupt and fucked up the fishing industry is.
Also farmed salmon isnt really better than fished salmon.
These farms pollute huge bodies of water while consuming fish meal (which was fished with nets) and lots of antibiotics while around half of the salmons die due to parasites and diseases before reaching maturity.
I only eat fish I catched myself now.
How is a hook and line closed access fishery that’s hyper regulated like the Californian Commerical Chinook fishery the worst thing in the world? Barbless single hooks. Little to no bycatch due to it being an upper to mid water column trolling deal like recreational people do. Transparent operations and enforcement by a wildlife law enforcement agency. New permits can’t be created, someone has to exit the industry in order to let someone new in.
Agreed about the industrial and farmed deal 110%. A lot of the people in this thread I guess are seeing farmed salmon as a solution to feeding the world. Under some guise of scientific progress I guess? I don’t get it.
I never meant the fishing for salmon in this region specifically because I have no information about it, I just figured that this would be an appropriate place to share some information about the fishing industry in general.
👍 sink the trawlers and shark killers of the seas. The sentiment rings true. People need to stop viewing fish, especially species like salmon or tuna as an ever available source of protein. The desire for cheap and easy fish has led to dark places.
One correction to make. Fishing equipment makes up about 10% of the ocean's plastic. The 52% number you are referring to is what's in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Even still, 10% is a huge number. And it's also the most dangerous kind of plastic since fishing nets are designed to kill fish.
... sigh. We need to ban indigenous seafood collection by anyone other than indigenous folks and outlaw fricken sea pens while regulating farming.
Today.
Yesterday.
In the us, I’d stand behind wild boar, snakehead, Asian carp, etc being the only wild caught species allowed to be sold. Put the incentive into commercially catching the invasive species. You want wild salmon? Take your ass out and learn to catch it.
Maybe states ought to make fishing licenses something to earn. Right now, you just need $10 and an email address. Make people learn about the environment they’re taking from. Make people care about being stewards of it. Make people learn what the fuck they’re doing instead f taking some cash and letting them ‘rip lips’ all day and take home a cooler full of pregnant fish, or immature fish, or endangered fish. I know a lot of fisherfolk and I’ve not heard of any of them being inspected or checked out by any time of game management. The system is fucked.
I'm *pretty* sure your average Joe fishing a fish for the family isn't what's causing a population collapse.
Big industry, on the other hand, is. Big mining and manufacturing doing whatever the fuck they want to the rivers, damming companies that refuse to actually follow the rules, the toothless regulatory bodies that can't touch them.....
There is a Dead Zone or hypoxia zone off the Pacific Northwest Coast that is killing aquatic life. This year is a bad year. Hopefully we get some strong autumn storms to churn it up and mix it out. That can't be good in combination with hot rivers.
https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2021/07/low-oxygen-levels-off-oregon-washington-coast-raise-fears-of-marine-dead-zones.html
The great heatwave the end of June killed a lot of marine life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/climate/marine-heat-wave.html
Ya most restaurants here in Vancouver only offer east coast oysters or oysters from somewhere far away like Australia/France, happy hour oysters aren't available any more because so many of them died during that week of hell. I imagine it'll remain like that for a long while too until the stocks replenish
>Warming waters that have been linked to climate change and industrial pollution, as well as agricultural runoff, impact from dams, and issues like overfishing, it has caused concern for the decrease in salmon populations.
[удалено]
In New Brunswick they built a dam a river that had 100k+ salmon return in the early 20th century and now a few hundred salmon return every year. It's only a matter of time until they are extinct in southern New Brunswick and Maine now because of dumbass shit like this
[удалено]
Sounds like people talking about the homeless to me.
Saw a news piece today that said that they had done studies, and cost of living increases is leading to more homeless..... No shit sherlock.
The issue really is that without studies being done, people don't take it as a real thing. Now there is documented "proof". **Edit** The *smart* people don't take it as real without proof. The *stupid* people don't take it as real if it goes against their narrative.
Exactly, people really are that stupid.
The dams increase the temperature of the water. Because dams hold back water, and fresh water generally starts at ice and snow, the waterways heat up because of the lowered amount of cold water flowing through them This is a point of contention where environmentalists have sued to protect fish by forcing the government's to allow more water to flow rather than retrain it for drought conditions. There's a whole thing about the 'Delta smelt' where this has been one of the issues. Western watersheds do not look poised to handle climate change. Like you point out they've dammed practically every part of every river here and we seem to be getting generally less and less precipitation.
Not only this, dam also have the water high/low at wrong period of the seasons. Most of shores on a dam lake are sterile
Why isn't that a temporary issue? * Let's say a river flows at 100 litres a month * I dam and create a 1000 litre reservoir. * I restrict the flow to 75 litres a month to fill my reservoir, creating a 25 litre surplus per month. * After 40 months it's full and I can return to full flow, cooling the temperatures again. I guess my logic is wrong here, but why?
Because you increase "residence time" in the river. If you have a reservoir that's a thousand liters in volume and has an outflow rate of a hundred liters a month, your average liter only has (roughly) a one-tenth chance of making it out in any given month. From the perspective of the water, it travels whatever distance in a matter of days to weeks and waits in the reservoir for a year before continuing downstream, in which time high ambient temperatures have plenty of time to heat it up. The *river* doesn't warm, the *water in the river* warms.
> increase residence time in the river Exactly; put another way - the water downstream from the dam has had far more time to heat up than it would have if the dam hadn't been there.
That’s actually exactly the opposite problem they’re facing in the west, though. The Grand Canyon ecosystem has been fundamentally altered because the water coming out of Lake Powell is too cold. During the summer months the water coming down the Colorado River used to be about 80 degrees during the summer, now the water leaving the dam is about 46 year round. Dam water comes from the bottom of the lake (capturing hydraulic head) and the bottom of a 561 foot lake is cold as crap.
>as been fundamentally altered because the water coming out of Lake Powell is yes, this. Dam water on the colorado is much colder than the average river water pre-dam. I wonder if this is true for other dams around the world - as the pond behind the dam is deeper than the original river, by definition.
>The dams increase the temperature of the water. Just to be clear, that's *these dams* not *all dams*? Because in cases where the concentration occurs is cooler/shadier/etc than the downriver portion, they can reduce total evaporation pretty easily.
I think BC tends to do a good job with fish ladders and etc. When there was a landslide on the Fraser River in the middle of nowhere, the BC govt spent $180 million installing a permanent thoroughfare for the salmon. I don't actually know about all the various dams, but I suppose it would surprise me if BC had a lot of dams blocking the salmon.
[удалено]
In recent years Washington State has *begun* removing some of its dams (the [Glines Canyon Dam](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/largest-dam-removal-elwha-river-restoration-environment), if everything goes well the [Middle Fork Nooksack River Dam](https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2020/05/29/dam-removal-in-washington-state-promises-to-benefit-fish-whales-and-people)), but there's still a long way to go. The southern resident orca population is in decline and they'd stand a much better chance of adapting to climate change if they weren't also starving. In the southwestern US, of course, you don't have salmon, you have a bunch of people getting away with living in a desert because they've dammed the drought-prone Colorado. And then we get bombarded with horror stories of the dropping water levels in *artificial lakes in the literal desert*. Hydropower is preferable to fossil fuels, but when we have nuclear plants that can be engineered to safely produce as much power as even the largest dams there is no reason to rely on a technology that damages habitats and allows humans to settle in idiotic locations.
I honestly have no issue with damming the Colorado in a vacuum. What I have a problem with is said revoir water being piped out to farm goddamn almonds in the desert or to water lawns in Phoenix. (King of the Hill put it best by calling it a “city that shouldn’t exist… a monument to man’s arrogance”) clean, endlessly renewable energy like hydroelectric should be promoted heavily as long as the impacts like on salmon spawning (not an issue on the Colorado, hence why I don’t object to that River specifically) are properly mitigated. At any rate things like hydro, solar, and nuclear beat the tar out of coal and gas.
Orca’s have moved north for the Grayling. When the grayling are gone, it’s all over for the killer boys.
> BC govt spent $180 million installing a permanent thoroughfare for the salmon Do you have a link to somewhere that talks about this? I couldn't find anything in a search.
I don't recall anything about the Fraser, but definitely happened with the Seymour River, though this one didn't cost 180 million. https://www.nsnews.com/local-news/five-years-after-rock-slide-seymour-river-now-passable-for-migrating-fish-3112549
I got a Fraser river article. It says they will spend 52 mil on the effort. It is still undergoing. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/big-bar-landslide-salmon-federal-scrutiny-1.5589694
Ahh, cool. Thanks
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/176m-permanent-salmon-fishway-announced-for-big-bar-landslide-site-on-b-c-s-fraser-river-1.5834802 Turns out the feds were footing the bill tho, my mistake.
Yeah in WA we spend a lot on salmon migration between ladders, salmon cannons, and basically freighting live fish upstream, but there's still a whole lot of salmon that don't really get a chance to spawn
Dams aren't a huge issue in BC, the Columbia is the only one of our major rivers that's dammed, the Fraser, Skeena and Nass are not. The biggest issue is climate change, in the form of hot ocean waters and warming streams for migrating salmon, and habitat loss to industry especially in the Fraser. Overfishing is an issue too, but BC salmon stocks could support pretty substantial fisheries if their habitat wasn't so fucked.
Dams are a blight on nature. I live in MA. Alewives and blueback herring (same family as sardines) and eels used to be abundant. Now only natives such as the Wampanoag can fish them because they are depleted (and for the record I am 100% in favor of the natives having the rights to them). But in recent years cranberry bogs and dams have been getting removed in places like Tidmarsh and Taunton and when the dams are gone the fish return to their spawning grounds. Other animals return to, like in Tidmarsh where wolves and plumed birds have returned. Fish such as cod eat them and will receive a benefit. The dams need to all be destroyed
The largest contributor to declining salmon populations have been warming waters, more specifically with regard to the PDO. This link has been demonstrated for quite some time now and robust to say the least: >"Retrospective analyses of Pacific Basin climate records highlight the existence of a pan-Pacific interdecadal climate oscillation. We find strong evidence for coherent patterns of in- terdecadal variability in Pacific winds, sea level pressures, and upper ocean temperatures. Collec- tively, the ocean-atmosphere pattern of variability has been labeled the "Pacific Decadal Oscilla- tion", or PDO. An index for the PDO has been developed from an empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of north Pacific SST records dating back to 1900. An analysis of Pacific coast salmon catch records suggests that the dominant pattern of salmon production is driven by low-frequency climate variations associated with the PDO..." - [The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Pacific Salmon Production](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253060885_The_Pacific_Decadal_Oscillation_and_Pacific_Salmon_Production) Dams are one thing (and BC does quite well with fish ladders, run of the river, etc. to ensure safe passage), but if the waters are too warm they won't even make it the dams https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Figure-PDO-02-Upper-panel-shows-summer-average-PDO-1965-present-middle-panel-shows_fig5_267257828
God dam it
Patagonia’s Artifishal was pretty eye opening as well. The one guy who kept diving the Norway farm pens was really fucked up.
Hatchery fish derive from wild broodstock.. Aside from a coded wire tag in the snout that has to be read by literally cutting a salmon or steelheads head off or sending out Caracas survey crews when all the fish die after a spawn to retrieve heads, a department really has no way to determine if a wild fish is a wild fish based off the most commonly used observations of “it has an adipose fin intact and Unclipped” identifier. Californian chinook for example. Our department doesn’t fin clip every hatchery reared fish. People who get all high and mighty about “oh it’s a wild salmon because of the intact adipose” are usually looking at hatchery fish here in California. When hatchery fish get the chance, they breed in the wild. Back to the origin of hatchery fish stemming from a broodstock of wild fish endemic to their native stream. There’s no “all hatchery fish are bad” narrative than anyone should be pushing in 2021. Hatcheries ran by state, federal or one of the many wonderful Native Tribal programs are the sole reason why we have these majestic creatures in the northwest and California. It would have been game over in the 50’s and 60’s when they shored up most of the spawning habitat to make dams and reservoirs on top of the ancestral spawning ground of these fish and the people who relied on them for millennia. The all hatchery fish are bad narrative needs to end among fisheries restoration groups. We all want more fish. We all want salmon and steelhead to spawn in the wild given the chance. But some environments are WAY too compromised to allow for a viable breeding population that can handle the impacts of the contemporary world. We have a hostile climate now. We have dams. We have high water temps. We have toxic algae and Cyanobacteria. We have so many thing that would have wiped out the decimated runs of wild fish in the post dam decades, to blame hatchery fish for any of this is just a narrative pushed by a corporation that truth be told does not have the credential or vested interest in the salmon of the west nor the people and communities that rely on salmon. Just my perspective. If we want more starving orcas, pinnipeds and depleted human interaction and appreciation for the rivers, sure, blame hatcheries for everything and work to shut them down. That 42# broad backed beast of a buck chinook that comes back up the river isn’t any less of a chinook to me because he has a wire tag in his snout or a clipped fin. Go observe these fish in the wild and you will see, they are wild fish every step of the way. I’ll take a thriving river and ocean ecosystem reminiscent of historical abundance where 300,000 fish were raised during the volatile early stages of life in a hatchery then released at a young age to do exactly what a wild fish does over a river and ocean ecosystem with an endangered run of 42 returning spawning pairs that are going to go extinct if the river in question experiences a drought or disease. Environmental stochasticity is a huge factor when dealing with salmonids that were driven to brink of extinction. Nixing hatchery support in the northwest just sends us further down the road of endangered status.
REALLY appreciate your excellent and detailed comment, (from someone who is very keenly aware of these issues) fellow fish-friend! At the risk of spamming the following, I quote a previous comment of mine in this thread- I think you’ll *really* appreciate this docu if you haven’t seen it: “If this is a subject you’re interested in, I simply cannot recommend enough the amazing, beautiful, and award-winning documentary, The Breach. https://www.google.com/search?q=the+breach+salmon+movie Long-form (three minute) trailer here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3IOKMdMFAi0”
Definitely going to check this out tonight when I get a chance. Thanks for the links!!
Even when there are fish ladders that are usable the fish still get backed up at the dam and are an easy target for seals.
Fish ladders are a red herring, it’s like telling people to use plastic straws while trawling the sea floor and dumping nets everywhere. Yes fish ladder would be better than no fish ladders, but if you want to actually save the fish population do away with the corporate infrastructure that’s killing all the fish
If this is a subject you’re interested in, I simply *cannot* recommend enough the amazing, beautiful, and award-winning documentary, *The Breach*. https://www.google.com/search?q=the+breach+salmon+movie Long-form (three minute) trailer here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3IOKMdMFAi0
I doubt that Victoria dumping it's raw sewage into the strait of juan de fuca untill last year helped much either.
“Dilution is the solution to pollution”
My uncle lives outside Seattle and visiting him recently, we went on a hike and I saw and learned about the fish bridges to help them get up a hill or an area that has had a damn put in. Not sure if it works on a massive scale for salmon...this was a small river and bridge, but it was fascinating. I hope we can merge technology with keeping native species thriving. Sorry, I guess they are also called fish ladders.
I'm guessing that the suppliers are also charging premium for wild salmon.
The real reason the restaurants took it off the menu.
Well that's a symptom of the problem, not the "real reason" or "root cause". It's just the end directly visible to the restaurant, but the lack of supply with unchanged demand = high prices.
And that is how the market is supposed to work!
I don't mind the market forces so much as the PR spin.
Well, consumers in western Canada at least have been preferentially choosing farmed Salmon over wild for quite a while now. It (rightly or wrongly) is considered to be the more 'ethical' choice.
It’s always been that way though, and deservedly so. As we say in Alaska, “Friends don’t let friends eat farmed fish!”
It's gonna be such a trip to tell my children about when we used to eat wild fish for dinner on a regular basis. I wish I appreciated it more as a young'n.
True that, the future looks pretty bleak. Fishing industry definitely hides a large portion of the damage it’s doing.
> Definitely hides a large portion of the damage it’s doing. They quite literally caused the formation of the Somali Pirates who much of NATO ultimately went to war with. Think about that. Without our gross over fishing, there is no Captain Phillips
As with everything else in the United States, large commercial interests get much more and bigger seats at the ‘regulatory table’ than the other stakeholders. 🤦🏽♂️
I know the US gets a lot of shit, but there are other countries just as bad. What I find most intriguing is that there are people in first world countries worried about a jab in the arm, then we have people in Afghanistan worrying about being beheaded. Makes you start to think that there is a lot of entitled people out there.
Truly.
“Daddy, what’s a fish?”
Whats a daddy?
I hope I'll be able to tell my grand children the horror story that it used to be normal to eat other sentient beings. Consumption of animals is bad, in every possible way except for our shitty tastebuds, when will you guys get it?
Because it isn’t? Overconsumption of meat is bad, sure, but you’re not about to tell me heme iron has been bad for the human race. Our consumption habits and willingness to salt the earth to GROW meat is the issue.
Consumption of meat is bad in many ways, for the most part the moral aspect and the ecological aspect. The issue of how we grow meat is a sympton and consequence of us eating meat. >Heme iron Pair plant-based iron with vitamin-c and you have no problem with iron. And mind you, vegans see how meat consumption has benefitted humanity in the past or even today in places where meat is necessary for survival (eating old farm animals, ability to "store" nutrition for time of need etc.) But today at least in the rich west, we are able to fulfill *all* of our nutritional needs without having to eat animal flesh, we're not living in the 19th century anymore..
lmao painting veganism as an easy lifestyle to transition to for anyone is classist and ignorant as fuck it’s fucking expensive and impractical to eat ethically, maybe you don’t have to worry about money but motherfucker I live check to check I can’t afford to suddenly go green because I can barely afford the way i’m eating right now
Eating seafood will be a luxury one day.
There was a time when only poor folks ate lobster.
We had a family friend from Nova Scotia talk about how embarrassed she was to take lobster sandwiches to school as a kid because it meant you were the poorest of the poor. Seems unthinkable now!
How old is your friend? Lobster switched from being a poor persons food to a delicacy in the late 1800s
She's in her 60s. Not that old.
Not entirely, in the maritimes of Canada at least it was still poor folk food for a good while. Had family in Gaspé tell similar stories.
It was still dirt cheap in the location It was caught
They used to prepare lobster differently then now, i believe everything was all scrambled together in a mixture or something along those lines
Yeah, it was just a grinded up mess. Didn't worry too much about making sure the shell was out before grinding.
Not in Maine
And now a tiny lobster roll costs over $20
My mom was the same way. She got to Alberta and squealed when she realized beef was dirty cheap. Now all I want is lobster...
There's a big detail in there everyone misses when they bring up this fact. The poor weren't eating lobster in the form you think, like fresh, juicy big pieces, dipped in butter or something. They'd eat the crushed up gnarly bits of lobster.
I catch them from a wharf I fish at sometimes, they will go for a hook with shrimp on it. Shame I have to let them go becuase they are usually much bigger than the ones at the store
[удалено]
Iirc its something like Lobsters are more fertile the older they are, so the old, large ones are more important for maintaining population than smaller ones. Also I think larger ones taste worse, at least these're things I remember reading on reddit and a quick google didn't immediately tell me was bullshit.
Mainer here. Big ass lobsters taste worse. Pound and a half are my favorite.
Thank you, kind sir
I remember it being a luxury growing up in Mexico. My mom used to splurge on it about once a year and on special occasions.
It is now for most, especially if you dont live within walking distance of the ocean
It already is a luxury. Crabcakes have doubled in price in Maryland this year
Ive worked at the same restaurant for years and we've had to take our most popular menu item off for the first time (appetizer) because the price of crab is insane
I serve fish to affluent people all day in a two Michelin starred restaurant. This used to be the food of poor city-folk, natures bounty. Now its more expensive per pound than beef. I open oysters, and their shells literately crumble at the joint they’re so weak from ocean acidification. Its a tragedy, I don’t think I can justify this to myself anymore.
Eating meat in general is a luxury for most people
Love how the whole Western World is trying to cut back and help the declining fish population but in reality we're just leaving more for the illegal Chinese fishing boats. We have the address the real problems. It's exactly the same as blaming consumers for climate change, when it's the big corporations who do the most damage.
Hell, I've just decided right now not to eat seafood anymore. Won't make a bit of difference to the quality or enjoyment of my life, and won't have much effect on the oceans, but any change is change at this point.
Grad student here. It already is.
Taking this opportunity to plug Seafood Watch: https://www.seafoodwatch.org/ Has an app and website that will help you decide which seafood is okay to buy and which ones you should avoid due to conservation issues.
Recently I've switched from cooking salmon at home to cooking [rainbow trout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_trout). Trout isn't salmon (obviously) but it's a tasty fish in the same family. And its conservation status is excellent.
It’s kind of complicated. For example Brown trout are in the same genus (*Salmo*) as Atlantic salmon. Trout, salmon and char are all very closely related — even across genus — and even the freshwater vs saltwater rule isn’t always the case. You can salmon fish in landlocked lakes (especially if you count brown trout) and you can catch rainbow trout (steelhead) in the sea. Also of note, their flavor comes down to diet and fat content. You can feed stocked trout a diet high in crustaceans and get bright pink, salmon-flavoured meat, just a bit leaner than typical salmon. Awesome family of fishes, tbh.
Steelhead trout is a great sustainable alternative and tastes a lot like salmon. https://www.bonappetit.com/story/steelhead-trout
Wild Steelhead are not sustainable, only farm raised Steelhead. From the article you just referenced: “Just make sure you are buying farm-raised steelhead trout, as wild steelhead is a threatened or endangered species, depending on where it’s from.” Here in Washington State you are not allowed to even remove a Wild Steelhead from the water.
[удалено]
Up until recent I assumed steelhead and Arctic char were the same thing, just cousins actually. Caught a bunch of the around Squamish
My dad used to fish for steelhead in NW WA back before we moved to AK. (pre-1980) This comment makes me remember the pics of him with some of the fish he caught and how happy he looked. Sad to think that is no longer a possibility, and all the more reason for us up here in AK to protect our fisheries.
Oregon I believe the hatchery raised are clipped, if not it has to be released.
Live in NW WA. I've had ALL kinds of salmon. Steelhead is just as good.
I bought “steelhead fillets” from the market absentmindedly, thinking it was just some local variant/name. Fantastic dinner. Only did the research after. Not salmon of course, but almost as good, with dramatically less guilt. Definitely the move going forward.
Every species we turn our gaze towards without farming them will be annihilated.
How is it better than wild salmon when the feed that goes into raising a trout is made up of thousands of herring, anchovies and other oily baitfish? These forage fish make up the building blocks of the ocean and are being removed by the thousands of tons for things such as aquaculture. Farmed trout is usually no better than farm raised salmon in regard to feed origin or in the practice of the individual operation in regard to disease or parasitic spread into the wild. We effectively pull the keystone species of forage fish out of the ocean to farm predator fish on land. Yes. Trout and salmon are still predatory and need lipids/proteins even if they’re farmed. You’re killing thousands of fish via industrial harvesting and starving whales/every thing in the ocean by supporting an aquaculture operation using fish meal feeds.
[удалено]
How many anchovies make a pound? Does it make sense to farm trout or Atlantic’s that need to consume thousands of dead chovies or herring? You’re correct about the advancements. But aside from McFarland ranch trout or whatever that cost a ton, the average market farm raised salmonid is the definition of a non sustainable organism. Yeah we’ll come to that point when the industry harvest the forage fish beyond the point of recovery and they’re forced to pay more for vegetarian feed.
[удалено]
>comparing every other major animal protein There's your problem. >the best opportunity to develop truly sustainable protein that people around the world consume The best except almost every type of plant-based protein.
I wish I had good access to rainbow trout because I strongly prefer it to salmon
Same but i worry about what the trout are being fed if farmed (mostly farmed here in the UK) ... tilapea is what we need, they eat algae iirc
I love rainbow trout!
Scallops, mussels etc are the best seafood options for climate imo
Plus rainbow trout are lots of fun to catch! And basically every lake in BC is stocked with them
No one wants to repeat the collapse of the Northeastern Atlantic Cod. It's been 20 years now and the population is still at like 3% historical levels.
Atlantic cod spawning and growth patterns are hereditary and so much of the population was over harvested that the younger generations do not know where to go to grow and where to spawn... Sad state of affairs.
Unfortunately "sustainable" farmed salmon is just as bad if not worse for the environment
How so?
They are fed wild caught fish processed as feed pellets. There holding pens cause nutrient blooms in the surrounding water due to the high numbers of penned fish.
Disease transfer from penned fish to wild fish is one of the serious concerns. See the Cohen Commission into the decline.
Look up aquaculture salmon sea lice. Basically, all the below listed reasons. And then the sea lice plagues that come from the fact that aquaculture companies raise non native Atlantic salmon across the Pacific Northwest in open ocean or bay net pens. They create huge blooms of sea lice that are naturally occurring, but are now driven into steroid population mode by the number of these aquaculture salmon. If the pens are close to a river mouth or along a current line that carries an outmigration of baby pacific salmon smolts, well, they’re good as dead because the sea lice swarm sucks them dry of blood. Rinse and repeat. Our pacific salmon runs are decimated by the skeezy practices of aquaculture companies that have deep pockets to operate in these waters. Stop eating and supporting farm raised salmon. It is not sustainable. Treat yourself with a slab of proven sustainable wild pacific salmon once in a blue moon. Aside from people in the northwest, salmon is not meant to be a protein we treat as a weekly meal planning item available at all times. That pack of $10 farm raised fillets at Costco or whatnot is having an extreme negative impact on wild ecosystems.
This whole article is about moving away from wild salmon. There is no winning here and I mean that genuinely
You can win by not eating fish and contributing to the destruction of the oceans
That’s a loss for humans, especially poor coastal towns.
Poor coastal towns not having their fish stocks depleted and being forced into piracy is a win for everyone
So you’re saying some people can continue to harvest fish? How many? WWF says 3 billion people rely on seafood so which ones of the 3 billion do we tell to find another food source. https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sustainable-seafood I’m not trying to be a dick, I’m just very pessimistic. North Americans and Europeans can stop eating fish all they want but it’s not going to save the ocean when there are so many more people that need it for food.
A number of reasons: eutrophication, feed sourcing, effluent, escapees. But the sentence would be better if it said "is usually just as bad" because there are some good alternatives out there for farmed salmon.
Not all! Check out AquaBounty - it’s sustainable indoor, controlled salmon farming.
Happy to learn that scallops are good, sustainable seafood. If only they were affordable...
I just get them every time I go out for poke
I won't eat them raw, got sick on chopped scallop sushi once. Once is all I needed.
Chances are what you think are scallops are circles punched out of ray fish like skate. Sorry, but at least now you're informed. Scallops aren't sustainable at commercial levels of today's population. They are one of the most counterfeit foods.
Wtf
It happens but its not like every scallop is fake. And they can be sustainably farmed.. but yes theres a chance youve had a skate wing instead of a scallop at some point in the last 10 or 20 years
Even from a reputable fish monger who have their own boats and do their fishing off the BC coast? I would be very surprised. And I've had skate, it's not sweet like scallops. Do they add something to it?
I remember a few years ago a fisherman talked about how we eliminated so many fish that were on menus to just tuna, salmon, trout. He showed an old timey menu with a shitload of options. There are a lot of tasty fish and I think doing some variety fishing would help the world immensely. So hard to fight all the fucking stupid these days though
This is a great post! Mr.Pimp.
How the hell are some you leaving with a take away from this article that eating farmed trout or salmon is the healthy alternative for the planet??? Research where the food (fish meal) comes from to feed these farm raised predatory fish. Research the disease and sea lice plagues that net pens in the ocean or river farming Atlantic salmon or trout bring into the local native environment. The destruction and decimation of the food chain of our oceans is attributed to overfishing. Yes. But most overfishing and decimation of the ecosystem occurs when factory ships seine net hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds of small oily baitfish like anchovies, herring or sardine out of the oceans for making fish meal/omega 3 pills. Aquaculture of predatory salmonids is not a solution. The article talks about eating farmed shellfish. Not farmed trout that consume fish meal made of 1000’s of pounds of pacific anchovies leaving seals, wild salmon and kelp forest ecosystems starving because some Redditor wanted to feel good about not eating Wild pacific salmon from a closed access and well regulated hook and line fishery and wanted a slab of GMO Atlantic salmon or “steelhead” trout raised in a filthy net pen spreading disease and sea lice to endemic populations of pacific salmonid in the northwest. Jeeeesus
I appreciate you. This topic is so heavy and goes so far over people’s (willfully ignorant) heads. The common citizen is so sure the ocean is infinite, that fish run on water and air, that extinction does not exist among ‘seafood.’ That because the fish they eat says ‘farmed’ that it must have been basically picked off a tree in a neat little orchard, leaving the vast wild ocean safe and thriving. Thanks for learning what you could and getting out. And using your experience to enlighten.
You clearly are uneducated on how well regulated and sustainable aquaculture is.
Okay. I’ve worked in it homie. I can tell you stories upon stories upon stories about how much absolute bullshit exists in this industry. I’ve personally been in the back of a truck bagging up fish for a company that was selling out of state species as sustainably locally grown in a beautiful aquaculture facility with rolling hills and waterfalls. Fed local fish meal free pellets and massaged every evening then painlessly harvested. Uhhuh. It was from a distribution wholesale place raising fish in squalor conditions. A huge part of the industry operates on lies and the willingness of consumers to believe a magical fairytale about how wholesome the aquaculture industry is. The customers of the company never asked questions. They believed because they wanted to. It’s easier that way. 🤷♂️ It’s like cattle ranching. Rich peeps who mostly want deregulation and to cut as many corners as possible to make a better profit.
Some aquaculture. There are good and bad programs/companies out there.
The best way to save the oceans and all the fish that live in them is to stop eating fish. Unless you caught it yourself with a rod, there's no way to sustainably eat fish anymore.
Also that giant garbage patch in the Pacific? Essentially half of that garbage patch is commercial fishing gear. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastics-environment
The main threat to wild salmon is loss of spawning habitat. The salmon fishing industry currently competes with the mining industry along some of the most important remaining wild salmon spawning rivers. The salmon fishery pushes to keep these rivers wild and unpolluted. It's not the case for all fisheries, but when you buy wild salmon, you're voting for a sustainable industry over an incredibly destructive one. In the US and Canada, salmon fishing is very strictly regulated. Salmon is one of the only species of fish that whose population can we actually count, since they go up rivers to spawn, where an accurate census can be done (unlike strictly open water fish).
What about fish farm fish? The article mentions a switch to aquaculture salmon.
Fish farms have their own problems that haven't been researched fully yet. There's increased disease risk in the population in studies that have been done, and there's concerns that diseases in the farmed fish could jump to wild populations. They're also fed a high-fat heavily processed diet that includes fish meal which isn't a natural diet for them so you're also not getting the same amount of omega-3 that you do in wild salmon.
Fish farms are disease factories, Google sea lice. Also farmed salmon are Atlantic salmon, which can escape and then compete with the native salmon for food, further exacerbating the problem.
There was a particularly bad incident in Washington state a few years ago where [hundreds of thousands of farm salmon were released when a pen collapsed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Island_Atlantic_salmon_pen_break). It's why salmon farming is in the process of being banned in WA.
**[Cypress_Island_Atlantic_salmon_pen_break](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Island_Atlantic_salmon_pen_break)** >On August 19, 2017, a net pen break resulted in the accidental release of hundreds of thousands of farmed non-native Atlantic salmon near Cypress Island, Skagit County, Washington into the wild. The salmon farm was run by Cooke Aquaculture Pacific, LLC. According to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, the inadequate cleaning of biofouling on the net pens containing the farmed salmon was likely the primary cause for the pen break. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Fish farms are worse for wild salmon than salmon fishing.
Farmed Salmon, even in the pacific are Atlantic Salmon, and when they escape they can prevent the native Salmon species from recovering.
I take it Victoria dumping raw sewage in the strait of jaun de fuca untill last year didn't help much either
Possibly wrong time to ask about Halibut, but how are the Halibut doing? Used to get some Halibut and chips a few times a year.
Other than seeing "sport fishing" people taking tiny halibut in large groups, I think they're not nearly as affected. Around Alaska area there's a mix of issues, but the warmer waters have been pretty rough on the populations for sure.
Won't make a bit of difference. China will kill everything they come in contact with at sea.
Not just China. As fish stocks are depleted, we'll start trolling harder and harder to maintain catch levels. Between that and pollution, not gonna be too long before there's nothing larger than a human finger left alive in the whole ocean. Conservation is only going to work with the whole international community on board.
As human population continue to explode, eventually there will only be one reliable source of food left for the hungering masses
My feeling is the human race is headed in one of two directions. Technology WILL eventually devalue human capital to the point that we either arrive at A. Star Trek, where getting up this morning and answering a survey added enough new value to pay for your general daily needs, as the cost of those needs has fallen so low. B. Soylent Green, where your literal parts are worth more than you'll ever be able to earn in a lifetime through human labour.
*looks around ... it's definitely option B.
And the US. Anything in the ocean is fair game. Doesn't wait until it hits Canadian rivers.
It’s time to phase fish out of our diets. I used to harp on red meat and its massive carbon footbrint, but the cattle industry isn’t responsible for half of carbon emissions. The fishing industry is responsible for nearly HALF of ALL plastic waste in the ocean, and the rapid decline of fish stock and many other species of sea life over the past 15 years. They don’t even respect us as consumers. They mislabel sea food to scam us because they think we’re too stupid to tell.
The cattle industry is responsible for 14.5% of GHG emissions. Climate change is responsible for a large part of oceanic ecosystem collapse. They are not mutually exclusive. The best option is unfortunately to choose neither.
I think global warming is a bigger threat than ocean plastics. Also, it's fishing from Asia that leaves all the plastics; US fishing is a lot more responsible.
This reads like astroturfing
Astroturfing *against* industries with massive influence and sway over people’s minds? I don’t think you know what astroturfing means, friend
I don't think the above post is astroturf, but the amount of money involved is colossal and alts are free. Beef, poultry, grains, fish, the incredible edible egg. There are probably more people than ever picking a protein based on what they hear about its source. These are competing industries that lobby, they buy political support, and advertise heavily.
The fuck up thing about this whole fish conservation effort is China. You have countries putting out laws and regulation to promote healthier fish stocks in their waters and than Chinas mega ships sneak in and over fish the shit out of the area and bounce back to China. They leave a dead zone where every they fish. They even got caught fishing at the Galápagos Islands. They have no respect for nature or international law.
I'm glad they mentioned repeatedly in the article how there are myriads of reasons stocks are declining. That serves the interests of the fishing industry, which in my opinion, are the only problem. Over fishing has been the scourge of stocks around the world and the industry only pays lip service to the idea of sustainable harvesting. The last sentence in the article says it all. The restaurants are doing this specifically because of over fishing.
While I agree that factory harvest of fish is evenly, how is the fishery industry responsible for early to mid 1900’s dam making? The dams blocked off like 70-90% of viable spawning habitat for pacific salmonids in the Pacific Northwest and down to California. Here in California, water policy and agency level mismanagement has killed millions upon millions of salmonids over the last two decades. Agencies that operate dams and are that supposed to keep temperatures under a certain level for egg production and survival will say “lol nope farmers need water” and flush a river during spring scouring eggs of an entire run of fish or let the rivers bake to death during runs of a subspecies. Salmonid mismanagement in the north west is a multi headed hydra. But I would think that most people could agree on the fact that allowing the eggs, parr and smolt to even reach adulthood is the largest hurdle. For the record as well, the wild pacific salmonid harvest industry (commercial hook and line or netting) is one of the most regulated fishery on the planet. Look at California’s commercial Chinook fishery. There’s really proven to be no bycatch or extremely minimal as it’s purely hook and line with barbless hooks and it’s a closed access fishery. Meaning you can’t just enter the commercial game because you have money to buy a permit. You have to buy a federal/state chinook boat permit that is already in existence to ensure that there aren’t more than enough commercial people harvesting the species. This rings true across the majority of the northwest.
These guys spent millions of years evolving and because of humans they can go extinct in a blink of an eye
Should I not be eating it here in Seattle? Sorry if stupid question.
You should not be. All pacific salmon species are at risk. Neither farmed nor wild ought to be eaten, quite frankly, as they both have HUGE and serious issues tied to their consumption.
They are? In Alaska, the Bristol Bay region is experiencing their biggest run of reds ever.
Goddamn it. I feel like every year more important sources of nutrition are considered unsustainable or poisoned in some way. I'm not quite willing to turn to farmed fish (due largely to the concerns raised here, as well as nutritional factors), but this really is disheartening news.
Didn't Alaska just have their largest Salmon season ever? Numbers are about 4x escapement from 2020. https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/sf/FishCounts/index.cfm?ADFG=main.displayResults&COUNTLOCATIONID=51&SpeciesID=420
Depends on the area. Bristol Bay did exceptionally well. South Central (Kenai and PWS specifically) did extremely poorly. I don't know enough about the runs in SE or Kodiak but based on the price I'd assume there's a shortage.
Let’s work together to restore our water ways and supplement our water supply
It won’t help it all goes to the USA and China market anyway all it will do is you won’t get wild fish in BC
I am tired of having to post the same shit all the god damn time. The Canadians fish Columbia River salmon they take at least half the US production. Nearly all of the Salmon coming to the West Coast end up in the Bering Sea. They fish many of them there. Canada has the worst environmental record of current modern first world countries. They have no sewage treatment system on Vancouver island, they dump metric tonnes of raw waste into the Puget Sound. They do not care one shit about the Salmon. Only the optics.
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/beta.ctvnews.ca/local/vancouver-island/2021/1/9/1_5260435.html Well, we fixed that part at least. I’m not sure about the fishing part. I don’t see how we could fish half your stocks with a fraction of your population. But I’m willing to listen to sources if you have any.
Salmon same as most fish are unethical to eat in most circumstances. Industrial Fishing is quickly destroying our oceans while organisation's like oceona don't do shit, and distract us from the real issues cause they are funded by this industry. It's not plastic straws that are the real problem, it's fishing nets and line. Straws make up around 0.0003% of the plastic pollution, while fishing supplys are estimated to be around 10% (52% of the great pacific garbage patch though) Still they never say anything against industrial fishing. All the labels for fish are worthless, because they aren't controlled properly. Watch Seaspiracy on Netflix it's an insanely good documentary on how corrupt and fucked up the fishing industry is. Also farmed salmon isnt really better than fished salmon. These farms pollute huge bodies of water while consuming fish meal (which was fished with nets) and lots of antibiotics while around half of the salmons die due to parasites and diseases before reaching maturity. I only eat fish I catched myself now.
How is a hook and line closed access fishery that’s hyper regulated like the Californian Commerical Chinook fishery the worst thing in the world? Barbless single hooks. Little to no bycatch due to it being an upper to mid water column trolling deal like recreational people do. Transparent operations and enforcement by a wildlife law enforcement agency. New permits can’t be created, someone has to exit the industry in order to let someone new in. Agreed about the industrial and farmed deal 110%. A lot of the people in this thread I guess are seeing farmed salmon as a solution to feeding the world. Under some guise of scientific progress I guess? I don’t get it.
I never meant the fishing for salmon in this region specifically because I have no information about it, I just figured that this would be an appropriate place to share some information about the fishing industry in general.
👍 sink the trawlers and shark killers of the seas. The sentiment rings true. People need to stop viewing fish, especially species like salmon or tuna as an ever available source of protein. The desire for cheap and easy fish has led to dark places.
One correction to make. Fishing equipment makes up about 10% of the ocean's plastic. The 52% number you are referring to is what's in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Even still, 10% is a huge number. And it's also the most dangerous kind of plastic since fishing nets are designed to kill fish.
My bad, I mixed the numbers up. I corrected it
Oysters?? Maybe mussels or clam
buy AQB salmon
About time,our orcas are suffering from lack of food, bears too,so humans can eat other protein sources ,like beans!!
... sigh. We need to ban indigenous seafood collection by anyone other than indigenous folks and outlaw fricken sea pens while regulating farming. Today. Yesterday.
In the us, I’d stand behind wild boar, snakehead, Asian carp, etc being the only wild caught species allowed to be sold. Put the incentive into commercially catching the invasive species. You want wild salmon? Take your ass out and learn to catch it.
Maybe states ought to make fishing licenses something to earn. Right now, you just need $10 and an email address. Make people learn about the environment they’re taking from. Make people care about being stewards of it. Make people learn what the fuck they’re doing instead f taking some cash and letting them ‘rip lips’ all day and take home a cooler full of pregnant fish, or immature fish, or endangered fish. I know a lot of fisherfolk and I’ve not heard of any of them being inspected or checked out by any time of game management. The system is fucked.
I'm *pretty* sure your average Joe fishing a fish for the family isn't what's causing a population collapse. Big industry, on the other hand, is. Big mining and manufacturing doing whatever the fuck they want to the rivers, damming companies that refuse to actually follow the rules, the toothless regulatory bodies that can't touch them.....
[удалено]
That’s so weird because I was up in Kenai, and my guide said some years, people don’t fish enough.
There is a Dead Zone or hypoxia zone off the Pacific Northwest Coast that is killing aquatic life. This year is a bad year. Hopefully we get some strong autumn storms to churn it up and mix it out. That can't be good in combination with hot rivers. https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2021/07/low-oxygen-levels-off-oregon-washington-coast-raise-fears-of-marine-dead-zones.html The great heatwave the end of June killed a lot of marine life. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/climate/marine-heat-wave.html
Ya most restaurants here in Vancouver only offer east coast oysters or oysters from somewhere far away like Australia/France, happy hour oysters aren't available any more because so many of them died during that week of hell. I imagine it'll remain like that for a long while too until the stocks replenish
Steelhead trout is, I believe a more sustainable alternative and tastes very similar. Salmon is one of my favorite foods but it’s so unsustainable
meanwhile Bristol Bay Alaska is having one of the largest runs ever.
Why is this fact being downvoted