Yes, we made it through your whole comment!! It was actually a good read.

It’s unfortunate that you find some of the information presented in this blog about Alaska’s fishing industry “disturbing”, but you’ll be hard pressed to find any information presented in this blog that is incorrect. This blog simply provides information that the average reader rarely gets to view – thanks to some pretty slick marketing campaigns and lobbyists for Alaska salmon. A good example of how well this campaign works is actually evident in your comment, “fish farms depend on antibiotics to keep fish healthy”. This is simply not true – but you have been hooked into the “farmed salmon is bad” campaign and choose to repeat it. If you are close to the Alaska industry, you’ll also know that Alaska ranched salmon are indeed treated with antibiotics should the fish become ill – but does that mean you “depend” on them? Probably not. Besides, cultured salmon (including Alaska) are typically vaccinated to help combat disease and this has greatly reduced the need to treat with therapeutants.

Lastly, your comments about hatchery salmon outnumbering wild salmon in 2008 is really concerning – that is why this blog stresses the need for science based management to review the risk of pumping billions (Alaska, Japan and Russia release over 5 billion each year) of salmon into the ocean to compete for food with wild fish. If you don’t study it, then there’s no risk, right?

You refer to Alaska’s salmon as “the best managed” fishery. We would suggest that the you can’t point to millions of returning hatchery fish as “good management”. That is a white wash – and your admission that 2008 saw a high proportion of hatchery fish return in some areas as compared to wild salmon only proves that point.

Have a merry Christmas Chris.

And to answer your question as to how to tell if a salmon is wild born, the only way a laymen could tell is by where it was caught in relation to hatcheries or wild streams. Any marks upon the body are negligible, having fished for both wild and hatchery fish I have noticed NO DIFFERENCE between them. The bodies are very easy to get damaged while being caught and just as easy during processing to get the fish to market which I would attribute any scars to. I would also like to add that most fish that are sent to a famous place such as Pikes Place would have natural born salmon most likely due to timing of the salmon run returns.

Something else that I would like to point out is that during the 2008 salmon season the reason the hatchery percentage of fish is so high is because the natural stocks did not return as strong and were not commercially harvested, leaving only areas that produced hatchery fish. Previous to 2008 natural fish stocks were much stronger and were a higher percentage of the total Alaskan Salmon catch.
If you have made it this far in this comment I thankyou, the last thing I would like to say is that Alaska’s salmon runs are the strongest and best managed in the world, I have been to many colleges with marine biology programs that applaud Alaska’s fisheries management.

We understand that, for some, the topic of salmon ranching in Alaska stirs up some emotion. It is not a topic that people like to discuss, and that in itself, speaks volumes. And yes, we agree that you should keep an “open mind” when reading any information you are getting via the internet. That is why this blog was created – to give people some perspective they rarely receive about aquaculture.

As we point out several times in this blog, we support salmon aquaculture which includes farming, ranching and enhancement. We also feel that a one-sided attack on one production method (ie, farming) doesn’t help ensure salmon aquaculture does what it was always intended to do – supply healthy and sustainable protein for future generations.

Salmon farming and salmon ranching have obvious benefits, and risks. When either businesses attempt to ignore those risks, thereby not addressing those risks, it’s a problem. I would suggest that you, like many, have focussed on the risks of “ocean pen salmon farming” and ignored the risk of “open ocean salmon ranching”. This blog simply brings those risks to the attention of the consumer. Sorry if this has offended you.

We also agree with you that “hatchery’s provide…fisheries sustainability”. Without ranching salmon, Alaska would certainly overfish and wipe out wild salmon stocks. But at the end of the day, it is also about economic opportunity – and there’s nothing wrong with that.

One last thing; lack of vaccination of the Alaska product is not something to brag about. The release of billions of potentially sick fish into the sea is a real risk to ocean life. Something else we need to think about.

Check its fins. If there is any eroding or scarring on the fins it is most likely that they were at one time it tanks, raceways or cages. When trout and salmon are crowded into and grown in man made enclosures their fins are almost always damaged and the scaring of the fins lasts until the day they die.

Now if you purchase your salmon in fillets in a supermarket you won’t see any fins, however, if you purchase in a seafood market, like Pike’s Place, you can check out the fins.

You’ve asked about the information regarding the health and wild and farmed salmon. We have copied a link to the paper (Friesen et al. 2008) below. It is a follow up paper to Hites et al. and accounts for the new salmon diets that have been engineered over the last few years. There are a few charts in this study which make it a little easier to pick out the highlights.

http://www.aseanbiotechnology.info/Abstract/21027734.pdf