Fishfarms... friend or foe?

We sea anglers are always going on about how great fish farms are for our sport. Perhaps I am one of the biggest culprits, having just stated how the good fishing is in the sea lochs in western Scotland close to the Salmon nets in my thornback ray feature in Total Sea Fishing magazine. These are some facts that you hear sea anglers talking about all the time: Lots of feed and waste falls directly below and close to the cages, attracting all forms of sea life and numbers of small and big fish to the immediate area. The attachment ropes and chains set up a whole food chain in themselves. In places like Norway, anglers know that some tremendous sport can be had close to a salmon farm. Great then, what a good thing salmon farming must be then. Wrong... Just how selfish can we be?

It seems the problems salmon farming is causing far outweighs the benefits to sea anglers. Let’s put to the side all the pollution and damage these things are causing to local environments, just for the time being. Far closer to home than that, our brothers and sisters in sport have been paying a very large price. In stark contrast, anglers are actually suffering hugely from the adverse effects of commercial salmon farming - freshwater anglers to be precise; those who fish for wild salmon and sea trout in our rivers. To them, salmon farming is causing problems equal to (and perhaps far worse!!!) than those sea anglers are facing from commercial overfishing/trawling.

Here is a worrying fact. Millions of farmed salmon escape from their cages every year in Scotland, and these have been spreading parasites and disease to wild fish that cannot handle them. Basically, the wild salmon population is in crisis. The rivers in western Scotland have been effected more so than any other due to the intensity of the commercial farming operations in close proximity. Some rivers don’t get a run of salmon at all now, at least not a run worth fishing. It really is a sad state of affairs. Similarly to our commercial overfishing problem in the sea, there seems to be no easy answer to the freshwater anglers problem either... as commercial fish farming is seen as big business. Also, similarly to sea angling, the fact that freshwater angling contributes millions of pounds to local economies every year is overlooked by the powers that be.

Here's a selfish fact for us sea anglers think about; I've heard it takes roughly 8 tons of wild fish - usually sand eels by the way - to produce a ton of oil/pellets, which in the end produces even less farmed fish as the final product. That equates to a heck of alot of wild fish being taken from the sea to keep commercial fish farming in operation.