04/19/2007

Escaped Salmon

The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries has yesterday (Wednesday, April 18th) released details of all the farmed fish escapes recorded and reported last year, quoting companies, dates of incident, locations and weight of individual fish. In total, 48 companies were responsible for 60 separate escape incidents involving 1.17 million escapees during 2006; mostly Atlantic salmon (860,763) but also a substantial amount of cod (272,422) and some rainbow trout and halibut. Some companies were only involved in a few individual fish escapes, but the unenviable #1 ranking was reached by a company which saw 261,718 fish escape from its cages. We publish below full details. Global leader Marine Harvest came in 6th position. “Allowing fish to escape in itself is not illegal, but escapes can be a sign of irresponsible management,” Jens Christian Holm of the Directorate of Fisheries commented in a statement. “Given the recent flood of escapes in Norway, it looks like the Norwegian Government has a long way to go to meet their goal of ‘Zero Escapes’,” commented Don Staniford, European Representative of the Pure Salmon Campaign. “Over 4 million escapees in Norway since 2001 hardly inspires confidence in the Norwegian salmon farming industry.” The latest figures give further argumentation for aquaculture critics who advocate the tagging of all farmed fish for traceability purpose and the adoption of closed containment or land-based systems (as opposed to ocean cage) aquaculture. Last month, scientists from the Bergen-based Institute of Marine Research (IMR) published a report which also advocated that - “as soon as possible” - systems be established to genetically trace escaped fish back to specific fish farms and regions; they also established a correlation between catches of escaped salmon and salmon prices in the year before…