Salmon Farming Is Facing A Reckoning Around The World

     As we've already established, the salmon farming industry is no sustainable alternative to industrial fishing. Aside from the counterintuitive use of wild fish to make feed for these domestic fish, the cramped cages breed diseases that infect native runs, the accidental capture of wild salmon has been documented, the exorbitant pollution of the sea floor is beyond dispute, the escape of Atlantic salmon into Pacific waters creates invasive species, marine mammals and seabirds that try to eat from the farms are shot and killed, and the farms are often placed in the territorial waters of indigenous peoples who don't want them there. This decline in salmon kills coastal forests and starves endangered populations of sea lions and orcas. 

     Alaska, Oregon, and California long ago banned these toxic offshore salmon farms, and the populations of salmon as well as the ecosystems they support are now recovering. In the past few years, this progress has spread around the world. In 2018, after several notable salmon escapes, Washington state banned open-net salmon farms. In 2020, the government of British Columbia announced a phaseout of salmon farms: within the next few years, this abhorrent industry will be abolished in the Pacific Northwest.

     Last month, Argentina became the first country in the world to entirely ban offshore salmon farming. The industry was relatively new there, and garnered significant controversy when it was first introduced. This means that salmon farming in the Americas, which has to be done in a specific climate, is limited to the shores of New England, the Canadian Maritimes, and, most notably, Chile. The easiest victories have been achieved, but we have to keep up this momentum. An article from 2019 that described the offshore salmon industry as "too big to stop" was amended in 2021 with a follow-up article in which the author believed they were wrong. Aside from the Americas, we need to defeat the industry in Ireland, the U.K., Norway, the Faroe Islands, Australia, and New Zealand. If we can do this, and I believe we can, we will save wild salmon from utter disaster.

     We have won a major victory in the Pacific Northwest, and public opinion is now decisively in our favor. Millions more saw salmon farming for what it is in Seaspiracy, and we need to seize this moment and abolish the thug-run, money-hungry salmon farming industry that puts dollars over the health of people and the planet.