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Your last sentence, "we are on a crash course with biological and ecological
reality," says it all.
Ecologies of scale can intercept economies of scale, with very painful
results. Don't know why "we" don't get that.
From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [mailto:naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca]
On Behalf Of Eye Mac
Sent: December-13-12 11:17 AM
To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca
Subject: Re: [NatureNS] Down our throats: Fed-up with salmon feedlots
Hi John,
On 2012-12-12, at 10:26 PM, John and Nhung wrote:
Went through your article Chris, and you have concisely covered the
reservations on salmonid cage culture as well as anyone I've read.
Thanks, very kind of you to say so.
By the way, most of my working life was/ has been spent on aquaculture
research development in poorer societies, with a little initial work on
mollusc culture in this corner of the world. I got into it because (a)I saw
it as a way to reduce fishing pressure on wild stocks, and (b) it has
potential to feed hungry people.
So, a few sidebars from me:
n The food chain bit in your article is why I was never interested in
salmonid culture of any type. They are all carnivorous. Ya gotta catch
fish to feed fish, and that doesn't make environmental sense to me. We
should be eating those trash fish, not salmon. However, that isn't gonna
change unless we get a lot poorer.
n The corollary to this is that salmon are expensive to raise, so will
never be an important food for poor people.
n Personally, the presence of a couple of cages in an embayment doesn't
bother me, but the apparent ease with which such an operation can expand
many-fold and fast scares the hell out of me.
See below.
n Re. genetic contamination: (a) I always thought the idea of raising
Atlantic salmon on the west coast was a terrible one, because of the
potential for escape, reproduction, and competition with native species.
(b) I have heard the alarms raised about escapes of Atlantic salmon on this
coast and the potential to contaminate existing stocks, and am more
ambivalent here. Every species (and every population) evolves, through
natural selection on a genetically diverse population. If the genes of
escapees get introduced into a wild Atlantic Salmon stock, I kind of suspect
natural selection will operate, as usual. I have listened to the arguments,
but am still not very alarmed. I may be missing something, but personally
find there are plenty of more convincing arguments to raise cautions against
large-scale salmonid cage culture.
It's difficult to say unless one conducts some research to determine how
biologically and behaviourally different farmed salmon are from wild
populations. Perhaps not that much, in which case it may not be that
significant an issue.
The bigger concern, as I point out in this article, is if trans-genic fish
with genes from chinook salmon and ocean pout are released into the wild,
and then these genes end up infecting natural populations. Do we really want
such a thing to happen? It's fine to have fish that grow faster, are more
disease resistant and more cold tolerant, but what if this genetic
modification ends up producing some other undesirable effects? Once
introduced into wild populations there may then be no way back.
n To me, the scariest part of your article was the last bit, re. trade
agreements. I don't know the details, but don't governments have a
fundamental duty to protect our long-term interests?
One would think/hope so.
Corporations have a hard time restraining themselves. The consequence is to
incessantly grow the business, make it larger, make it more profitable,
reduce inefficiencies. This results in bigger farms, more fish, faster
growing times. Good is never enough, it must be better. Shareholders are
always deemed to want profit to increase. Such unending growth is the
ideology of cancer. We need governments with intestinal fortitude that will
strictly regulate the conduct of corporations. Otherwise, we are on a crash
course with biological and ecological reality.
Cheers!
Chris
Christopher Majka - writer, Rabble.ca
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Email: c.majka@ns.sympatico.ca
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/christophermajka
The significant problems of our time cannot be solved by the same level of
thinking that created them. - Albert Einstein
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