Chilean Salmon Juggernaught

Chilean farmed salmon has increased more than 10-fold in the past 15 years, but it is not without problems. The World Wildlife Fund reports that the production is taking a toll on the nation's inland lakes, where salmon smolts, or juvenile fish, are produced. Oxygen-free dead zones in the lakes are growing, fish are escaping and invading rivers and lakes and pollution is mounting. WWF estimates that switching production to contained ponds would would cost around $43 million -- just 2 percent of the money the country makes from salmon exports each year. This is just one of the criticisms of farmed salmon, which also rely heavily on stocks of wild fish to feed salmon, depleting wild species.

Comments

[Rachel]

As someone who just recently began including fish in my previously vegan diet, I find this type of information to be fascinating. Within the last week or so, I began looking into what constitutes "sustainable" fish, and how such products can be defined.

For some reason, aquatic issues seem to be on the back burner in terms of sustainable eating, especially in comparison to the amount and severity of problems that overfishing has caused.

When I read this article, I immediately thought to log on to my newly adopted seafood guide, located at:
http://www.eartheasy.com/eat_sustainable_seafoods.htm
Chilean Salmon is listed as a "moderately" sustainable fish; I wondered if it will move to the "high risk" area fairly soon?

[Sam Fromartz]

Another good one is

http://www.seafoodwatch.org part of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

They have a downloadable wallet card and you can search by fish species. Then, if you're really ambitious you can read long reports about each species.

Also check out my link to Blogfish in the blogroll.