A case of lice

So. Call me spoiled, but I will only eat wild salmon. The farmed stuff just doesn’t look like real food sometimes and it’s so fatty and unflavorful. I’d much rather find a random local fish that has actually been caught from the sea (sustainably, of course).  Living in the UK that kind of means not eating salmon; it’s hard to find the wild stuff and even if you do, it looks like it’s done a few rounds on the plane over from Alaska before landing in the frozen/fresh section. Hermph.

But, see, farmed salmon aren’t just bad-tasting, they are also bad for the wild stocks. A bunch of experts came out today with a statement of how lice from farmed salmon (EW) is killing baby wild salmons as they swim by. This is bad bad bad. A 2005 paper found the juvys had 73 times the number of lice when passing close to a farm compared with other places on their migration route. Furthermore, the farm area had 30,000 times more lice than non-farmy sea water. EWWWWWWW.

Thing is, we are not just talking about what ends up on my plate or how much it’s gonna cost. Spawning salmon are a BEDROCK of the ecology of the forests where they breed and die. Grizzly bears eat them. Their decomposing bodies actually fertilize the whole bloody forest. Loosing this important source of energy would be devastating for the whole ecosystem.

SO. If there was a way to reduce the harm of farmed fish - by raising them in totally closed pens, as opposed to the cheaper open nets most often used, you should do it right? It will reduce the transfer of lice, prevent “spills" of farmed Atlantic salmon into the habitat of native Pacific salmon, keep in the antibiotics, drugs and....did I mention LICE? I mean you’re eating it people…