Stand Up for Pacific Salmon
Stand Up for Pacific Salmon
By Betty Jo Pritchett
Alaska Conservation Alliance is an umbrella group for approximately 40 member groups with a collective membership of 38,000 Alaskans across the state. Our member groups are each very unique and work on a multitude of issues that run the spectrum of all things conservation. Most of the campaigns and initiatives that they participate in are extremely important to Alaska.
One of the Alliance’s member groups, Prince William Soundkeeper, is currently participating in a campaign called ‘Stand up for Pacific Salmon’. The program asks consumers to boycott Atlantic-farmed Salmon and to ask their retailers to do the same. ‘Stand Up for Pacific Salmon’ is striving to bring awareness to the issue of net pen farming, to promote Pacific salmon, and to implore Costco, Safeway, Trader Joe’s, Tesco, Kroger and Super Value to stop selling Atlantic salmon. They are asking those retail giants to follow the lead of Target who in January, voluntarily pulled Atlantic farmed salmon from their shelves.
Currently there is no such thing as wild Atlantic salmon in the US markets. ALL Atlantic salmon labeled as such is farmed using a technique called net-pen salmon farming. This technique employs the use of floating pens in the ocean where salmon are raised to maturity. According to a report called ‘Net-Pen Salmon Farms: A Global Problem’ sponsored jointly by the Fraser RiverKeeper and Wild Salmon Circle, net-pen salmon farms devastate wild salmon stock with sea lice and disease. Theses ‘farms’, each consisting of 500,000 to 750,000 salmon, also pollute the oceans with huge amounts of waste consisting of feces, uneaten food pellets, drugs and residues, pesticides, fungicides and additives including toxic metals. According to the report:
‘The waste left behind can leave the seabed unlivable for other marine life for up to five years after farms have relocated.’
Unfortunately, many of these farms are in protected areas that are migratory habitats for wild salmon. Atlantic salmon is a highly invasive species that has escaped the farms in the past and is a threat to the wild Pacific salmon populations. In Alaska, keeping our wild salmon stocks healthy and thriving is incredibly important.
