Check out this link for a disturbing story about the farming of salmon in BC.

Doesn't sound all that bad to me if disease isn't a problem. The fishy feces has to be small compared to the raw human sewage dumped into the strait by vancouver island. Could be the lesser of two evils when compared to commercial netters.

Sounds like our State will put the buy back program of commercial fishing licenses in high speed, when the new fish farms get up to full production. I can only imagine the price for commercial and Indian caught fish will drop low enough to make it not worth there time and $ to to drag out the nets. The disease part of fish farms suck, but I'm guessing it will not impact anymore than the rate it is now, if it does the excess fish that were commercial caught should make up for the deficit.

The market for salmon is soft right now and has been in the past because there is a world wide salmon glut because of these "farms" in South America and Australia. Every country is farming salmon now.

Some of the concerns expressed are real but a few are a bit misplaced.

Hatchery fish have, in general, much fewer diseases than wild fish. Hatchery fish are inoculated and fed special diets to make them more disease resistant. Wild fish usually test positive for a wide variety of diseases and often have a heavy parasite load. So there is no direct threat to wild salmon. However, if a wild fish gets hit with a disease, it drops out of the school and generally dies. If a hatchery fish gets hit, it infects the rest of the school since it's confined to net pens. Plus, with the high densities, the disease travels quickly in nets and can inflict high mortality on the entire brood. It's possible this could have an effect on wild stocks but not likely.

There is a high likeihood that with the expansion of salmon farms, the price of salmon will drop considerably. This is both good news and bad, depending on who you are. Most consumers will think this is great. Commerical fishmen should be justifiably concerned. Sport anglers might have more to catch if the commerical catch drops because of reduced consumer demand for expensive "wild" (not pen raised) salmon. For some of us, that would be okay.

However, if the price of whole salmon continues to drop, look for the Tribal folks to increase their take of salmon strickly for their eggs. Since the price of salmon eggs is not likely to go down much with the increase in salmon farms, they may continue to fetch a high price. We've already seen this all over the Oly Peninsula with the harvest of chum salmon. The females are netted and the males are returned to the river (albeit dead).

Regardless of these factors, it's just a matter of time before Atlantic salmon (escaped pen raised salmon) become firmly established on the Pacific Coast. This shouldn't be a huge problem (my opinion) since their life history is very similar to a coho salmon but Atlantics seem to be even less tolerant of poor habitat conditions. I suspect they won't be much of a factor anywhere. But having a non-native species compete for space and resources, especially in the juvenile stages, is probably not helpful for salmon/steelhead recovery in the PNW. It's just one more thing for our native salmon to overcome.

I for one am all for salmon farming. Anything to hasten the demise of the commercial fisherman is fine with me after what they did to us in March on the Columbia And what if a locally adapted population of atlantic salmon did develop? That would be a fishery worth fishing - I caught one of these babys on a fly and they are beyond awesome - agressive beyound belief - they will chase a dry fly clear across a pool, and fight like hell - in the air all the time. If any kind of salmon can re-populate our polluted rivers under today's decimated habitat conditions I would be amazed - I'm sure if you brought a typical wild fish forward from a hundred years ago and put it a stream of today it would kak immediately And pollution, from fish shait? C'mon, there are probably not 10% of the salmon that used to swim in our waters 100 years ago around today - should be lots of capacity for a little extra fish excrement. This is just plain not a problem compared to all the point and non-point pollution contributed by all of us non-natives. How about more salmon farms and less people?

Right on spawnout. Thte farmed fish are great tasting and cut out some market for netters! Amen.

For every action there is and equal and opposite reaction. Remember when hatcheries were the answere to all are problems. I have a feeling that in twenty or thirty years we will be singing a differnt tune about net pen fish. I hope I am wrong and farmed salmon are the answer to the problem of supplying fish for market but only time will tell.