Latest Aquaculture of salmon Stories

By Silverstein, Jeff Our nation's inland waters and coasts provide a wide variety of seafood with diverse health benefits. Fish are high in protein and low in fat, and they have an excellent balance of nutritious fatty acids. As per capita consumption of seafood rises in the United States and throughout the world, ARS scientists across the country are exploring research and development solutions to some of aquaculture's biggest challenges: developing domesticated lines of aquatic animals for...

Hatchery controversy takes on new significance as salmon populations crashA recent study indicates that wild salmon may account for just 10 percent of California's fall-run chinook salmon population, while the vast majority of the fish come from hatcheries. The findings are especially troubling in light of the disastrous decline in the population this year, which will probably force the closure of the 2008 season for commercial and recreational salmon fishing. The role of hatcheries in the...

Looking out over the low green mountains jutting through miles of placid waterways here in southern Chile, it is hard to imagine that anything could be amiss. But beneath the rows of neatly laid netting around the fish farms just off the shore, the salmon are dying. A virus called infectious salmon anemia, or ISA, is killing millions of salmon destined for export to Japan, Europe and the United States. The spreading plague has sent shivers through Chile's third-largest industry, which has...

By Vicki Smith Deep in the coalfields of Southern West Virginia, in tanks filled with pure, cold water from under a long-shuttered mine, Atlantic salmon swim. They start as tiny pink eggs with two black dots for eyes. They surge from fry to fingerling to full-grown in less than a year in a carefully controlled, disease-free environment where antibiotics, hormones and other contaminants are nonexistent. They are trucked out live, ending up on dinner plates up and down the East Coast. That, at...

Researchers have new evidence that as the density of salmon farms increases, they can drive nearby wild salmon runs to extinction. The problem is sea lice, a natural parasite that normally attaches to adult salmon with little ill effect and has little contact with vulnerable juvenile salmon. All that changes, however, when fish farms move in.A study in the journal Science to be published Friday shows that sea lice infestations around salmon farms in British Columbia's Broughton Archipelago...

When shopping for salmon, which do you choose, wild or farmed? Opinion is wildly divided on whether wild Pacific salmon is superior to farm-raised Atlantic salmon. Sustainability advocates generally favor wild fish. Advocates for farm-raised (sometimes called, chicly, "artisan aquaculture") fish say there is no difference. Farm-raised salmon is fed coloring agents to mimic wild salmon's deep color; its flesh is sometimes deemed softer and its flavor milder. "We believe that a...

By DEIRDRE FLEMING Staff Writer The Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission appeared open Thursday to a spring fishing season for Atlantic salmon after a successful trial this fall on the Penobscot River. Department of Marine Resources Commissioner George Lapointe recommended that a restricted spring season be considered, after the experimental fall season was deemed a success. The pilot catch-and- release program occurred without harming the salmon, officials said. Lapointe, who is on the...

By James KilnerSTAVANGER, Norway -- From a large, sparsely decorated office overlooking a warehouse and a busy main road, Atle Eide controls a quarter of the world's salmon production.Just 20 years ago, fish farming was a family-run industry confined to the windswept Scottish and Norwegian coasts.Now it is a multibillion dollar business spanning the globe and, after a series of takeovers, it has a true market leader -- Norway's Pan Fish."It's one of the most fascinating industries in the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Environmentalists asked U.S. regulators on Wednesday to investigate what they claim are misleading advertisements touting the health benefits of salmon for pregnant women. The Washington, D.C.-based group Pure Salmon Campaign said it petitioned the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to look into a salmon farmer trade group ad that made the claims in the New York Times Sunday Magazine in November. A spokeswoman for the FTC said the agency had received the petition,...

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Conceding that using hatcheries to supplement dwindling salmon populations is harming wild salmon species in some cases, the Bush administration plans to move away from the practice in favor of a more direct solution: Catch fewer fish. James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, announced the new policy Wednesday at a meeting of salmon scientists, many of whom have concluded that wild Pacific salmon will become practically extinct this...