Salmon; Notes on Wild, Farmed
+ The Island of Dr. Moreau,
by John Lavelle
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My grandfather made his living by catching wild salmon off the West Coast of Ireland, back when it was unequivocally the benighted edge of Europe.
Today, at Nordic Preserves, we sell farmed Irish salmon that have been raised in the same waters he fished.
Salmon is a good looking fish; a handsome, beautiful, magnificent looking fish. It also has an origin story that would put a marvel superhero to shame.
Salmon hatch as fry from the gravel beds of freshwater rivers. After six months or so, they grow into parr. Another six months, and they have developed into smolt. They are now ready to head out on their trek to the ocean, where their destiny is to spend years in the deep, hundreds of miles abroad, growing fat on herring and krill.
The principal reason salmon head out to the sea is to grow brawny and robust. There is more abundance and variety of food in the oceans for the salmon than in the rivers, and the calorie content is higher. Fish can grow faster and get much bigger in saltwater than they can in freshwater. Big fish eat little fish, so the bigger they are, the less likely they are to be eaten, plus bigger females have more eggs. A wealth of eggs will produce more fry, which makes possible the survival of the species.
Fish that migrate from freshwater to saltwater and back again are classified as anadromous. Anadromous from the Greek, 'to course up.' After reaching maturity far away from the rivers of their youth, the time spent in the ocean is specific to each particular salmon species but maxes out at around seven years; the salmon leave the open sea and run upstream. They will often swim hundreds of feet above sea level as they journey home to spawn, struggling to complete an onerous odyssey, seeking the place of their birth and their death.
The story of the salmons' migration is endemic. Burned into my brain and most likely yours, too, is an image of salmon leaping into the claws of hungry bears fishing at the edge of whitewater rapids in some antediluvian wilderness; a visualization of such quintessence that we use it as the logo for Nordic Preserves.
This iconic saga is the story of the wild salmon. However, another narrative needs telling to complete the picture of the salmon we consume - that of the farmed salmon.
The farmed Irish salmon that we stock at the store come from pens placed in the Atlantic waters surrounding Clare Island, a stone's throw from where my grandfather lived out his whole life. This rocky outpost has a sheltered coastline with optimal water temperatures, an Acadia for the growing salmon. Lightly stocked pens encourage the fish, raised on an organic feed from sustainable sources free from GMOs, to act as they would in the deep blue.
Salmon fish farming began in the 1960s but became an industry proper in Norway and Chile in the 1980s and '90s. It takes around three years to raise a farmed salmon. The first year the fish are in freshwater; relocated after that to open seawater pens where they remain until they reach a harvestable size. It's manifest that Salmon farming has a bad rep. Some Farms have been guilty of fouling the oceans, promoting infections, and increasing sea lice. But does raising sustainable salmon in open ocean farms deserve such opprobrium? There is a running commentary chattering away in the debate over sustainability and food poverty that "wild" is good and "farmed" is bad. Notwithstanding, no less than the Bard of Stratford himself, speaking through Hamlet, cautions us that there is nothing either good or bad, but "thinking makes it so." Maybe our thinking needs to be calibrated to encourage a more precise understanding of the debate.
The demand for seafood is increasing across the planet. People aren't going to be putting their fish knives away anytime soon. In 2018, in the United States, salmon's total supply from aquatic farms was around two and a half million tonnes. Wild-caught salmon stood at about one million tonnes.
Therefore, aquatic salmon farms aid wild marine ecosystems because they ease the stress on wild salmon populations. We shouldn't think of "wild versus farmed" but, perhaps, "wild and farmed," working together toward real sustainability.
I would be remiss if I neglected to mention the 'feed conversion ratio,' which tells us how much food is needed to produce a pound of salmon. The feed-conversion ratio of farmed salmon is superior to wild salmon; they are easier to fatten up because they are fed regularly and with the exact amount of calories. They don't have to work as hard as the wild salmon do in tracking down their daily bread. Efficiency is always a plus for sustainability.
A new but niche trend in salmon farming is closed land-based aquaculture. Salmon farms have sprung up inland miles from the oceans. The salmon mature in concrete pens. A land-based aqua farm mediates some aspects of aquaculture's problems; fish and sea lice cannot escape into the sea and cause problems to the native salmon population. But closed land-based aqua farms have their issues with more significant water usage. The water in the oceans is plentiful and free, in farms costly and scarce. And greenhouse emissions, the production of feed being a heavy-duty emitter of greenhouse gases.
And there is another spanner in the works of our heroic fish story that could gum up the beauty of our entire narrative - genetically engineered salmon. With genes taken from the Atlantic and Chinook salmon and mixed up together with an eel cousin called Ocean Pout, a new salmon species is in commercial production. Even though this sounds like something hideous that has escaped from 'The Island of Dr. Moreau,' the fish is a rather ordinary-looking one, a bit like a platonic ideal of a salmon. Genetically engineered salmon has the commercial advantage of growing twice as fast as regular salmon, substantially reducing the price per pound ratio of production costs. This species, so far, is not allowed to be farmed in ocean pens.
Aqua-culturists point out that farming, cows, pigs, and other such land animals is far more freshwater intensive and carries a far greater carbon footprint than aqua farming. Causing less damage to the environment is a positive selling point for the farmed fish industry and something the public should recognize. However, genetically altered fish can be confusing. It would seem to favor transparency to label the fish as an engineered animal—the F.D.A has decided that "genetically altered salmon is not materially different from food derived from other Atlantic salmon"; therefore, it needs no special labeling. When gene-altered salmon arrives at the market, consumers wishing to avoid genetically engineered food will have to bin all farmed salmon to ensure they are not unknowingly eating genetically altered salmon.
As we have seen, aquaculture is a relatively young 'up and comer' which can help feed the billions of hungry humans inhabiting planet earth. Wild salmon populations in our seas are overtaxed, overstressed, overfished, and exhausted. To make sure that the future remains populated by our saga's heroes -the wild salmon- they will need to be aided by their more mundane farmed cousins.
There's "the elephant in the ocean pen" to consider, and that's the economics of the salmon industry. At Nordic Preserves, premium wild salmon is about two and a half times the cost of aquatic farmed salmon, and closed land-based farmed salmon about double the price of aquatic farmed salmon. What something costs often eclipses the sustainability debate, and the argument, despite our better angels, is often won or lost at the cash register.
Where my family came from, salmon was a readily available and tasty source of food and pleasure. Facing a future where world water shortages and food insecurity are distinct and difficult issues, I think it essential to explore all aspects of the salmon fishery industry, including sustainable salmon farming.
Skilled enthusiasts and industry experts are working to pave the way out of past mistakes into the future; toward food security for the many, not just the elite. "Wild and Farmed" as of now enjoy great potential for a long-lasting and prosperous relationship.
Genetically altered salmon? Who ate Dolly? Perhaps that product will one day come out of the shadows and declare its true origin on a label.
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