Is your Copper River salmon really wild?

It's Copper River salmon time again, and everyone here in Seattle is looking forward to some lovely fresh salmon.  I'll be waiting a couple of weeks until prices come down, the first shipments tend to be expensive.

Is Copper River salmon worth the high price?  There are a lot of good salmon out there, and I think Copper River fish are great, but so are a lot of other fish that don't have the same hype or high prices.

Another interesting issue is the wild origins of Copper River salmon.  Alaska's industry fiercely protects the image of Alaska's salmon, saying they're all wild all the time.  Nevertheless, somewhere around 20% of Copper River sockeye were not spawned naturally, in a lake or stream.  That's right, around 20% of Copper River salmon were spawned by people in a fish hatchery.  The pre-season forecast  for 2014 from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game predicts that 18% of this year's Copper River sockeye will be from hatcheries.  Also, documents from an ecolabel review show that in 2010, the last year reported, 26% of Copper River sockeye were from hatcheries (page 37 of linked document).

"wild" fish spawning?

Is there anything wrong with Alaska's hatchery fish?  They're good to eat, but they can cause problems, especially when they interbreed with wild fish.  Alaskans say their hatchery fish are well managed, but the independent Marine Stewardship Council review found insufficient information to reliably support that claim.  The MSC is requiring better information to establish that hatchery fish aren't harming wild fish within 4 years as a condition of keeping the ecolabel (see page 11).  By the way, this is an issue that contributed to the split between the Alaska seafood industry and the Marine Stewardship Council.

"wild" fish spawning?

The debate around wild or not is really a question of definition.  Alaskans are proud of their salmon "ranching" system, which is what they call the hatchery system.  So long as the fish are caught out of the ocean or a river, they're defined as "wild."  The Alaska Sea Grant says that Alaska's salmon ranching is part of Alaska's aquaculture industry.  And the Prince William Sound Aquaculture Corporation produces "hatchery-born wild salmon" from their salmon ranching operations.  Sounds like a bit of a word tangle to me.  The reason for all of this linguistic muddle, of course, is to help Alaska salmon compete with farmed salmon raised in net pens until they're eating size.

Decide for yourself.  Is a fish spawned by people like in these pictures a "wild" fish? 

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The salmon economy bubble

Can a salmon economy be built out of man-made fish? Alaska is poised to find out, with a salmon crash looming if they've built their salmon economy wrong.

And Alaska is not alone in this mess. Since they share an ocean, Alaska is inextricably linked with Japan, Canada, and a few other places in relying on half-farmed salmon to prop up their salmon economies.

There are too many hatchery salmon in Alaska and the surrounding ocean, and Alaska insists on calling them "wild" even though they start their life in fish farms (see photo of baby "wild" salmon, left).

It's a risky way to build a salmon economy, but so far the house is still standing, so it must be ok...right?...

Uh oh-a new study says the total of half-farmed salmon is too high, the man-made fish are harming wild salmon, and a salmon population crash looks more and more likely.

In a press release, the authors state their case:

In a new paper in Marine and Coastal Fisheries, four researchers, including Randall Peterman and Brigitte Dorner in SFU’s Faculty of Environment, predict a perfect storm is evolving that could seriously reduce wild salmon populations.
...
“Higher levels of hatchery fish straying onto spawning grounds, combined with low numbers of wild fish, could further erode wild salmon diversity, which helps stabilize their abundances,” explains Peterman. “Many salmon from both sides of the Pacific intermingle in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea and/or south of there. Together, these factors create the perfect storm for reducing wild salmon over the long term.”

Sadly, fishermen and managers seem blithely unconcerned. They're probably still holding their tech stocks, waiting for them to come back to life.

We've been down this road before, in salmon country further south. I watched Oregon's salmon economy crash after a failed reliance on hatchery-produced salmon. Oregon and Washington are now busy reforming salmon hatcheries, after learning the hard way that a salmon economy built on hatchery fish is a house of cards. But...of course...Alaska is doing it right. And so is Japan, Canada....

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Alaska's (not) wild salmon

Alaska hates farmed salmon...until Alaska produces them and re-brands them "wild."

It's a little-known fact that many of Alaska's so-called "wild" salmon start their lives in a fish farm before being allowed to escape into the ocean.

Do you think I'm kidding? Read this just released by the Prince William Sound Aquaculture Corporation:

Pink salmon in the Prince William Sound (Alaska) are a modern, man-made marvel. Hatcheries operated by the Prince William Sound Aquaculture Corporation and the Valdez Fisheries Development Association (VFDA) are responsible for virtually all of the pink salmon harvested in Prince William Sound.

A man-made marvel? These so-called "wild" Alaska salmon start their lives in fish farms before escaping into the ocean and being caught as "wild."

What do these salmon look like in a store?



And what does the salmon industry tell us about these salmon?

Salmon newly hatched from eggs remain in fresh water for about a year before heading out to sea. The fish feed and grow in the ocean for an average of four to seven years. Remarkably, each fish will return to the exact stream in which it hatched to spawn and die.

Oh really? Nothing about people collecting eggs in a bucket (see photo at right)?

I suppose describing this picture in a "wild" salmon brochure wouldn't produce the same image of romance and charisma...

...two men lean over a bowl in a laboratory with eager anticipation as the first eggs begin to spill out of the female salmon, soon to be followed by miracle of fertilization...the fertilized eggs are then stacked on temperature-controlled racks to be monitored daily until they hatch and are released into the cold clear waters filling concrete ponds, their home until they get big enough to swim out to sea...

Moving on, what does the salmon industry tell us is thebiggest enemy of Alaska's wild salmon?

There is, however, a threat to this heaven-sent fish that concerns all who love to catch and consume Wild Salmon. The threat is Farmed Fish. With the increasing popularity of salmon farms around the world, commercial fishermen aren't the only ones paying the price. Penned fish have an increased risk of disease. Fish escaping from these farms, into the open ocean, pose a serious hazard to the health of wild salmon stocks.

Say what?

The biggest problem for wild salmon is when farmed salmon escape from fish farms into the ocean? But letting farmed salmon escape into the ocean is exaclty how Alaska produces most of it's pink salmon and many of it's other salmon (sockeye, coho, and chinook--also known as king salmon). In some places in Alaska, so-called "wild" salmon catches are dominated by hatchery fish, even for the most prestigious chinook (king) salmon. These man-made salmon are hugely popoular among the people of Alaska, based on public support for the hatchery program.

The fine words about wild Alaska salmon are hardly matching the reality, and almost everyone in Alaska seems OK with that. Maybe the real cause of Alaska's opposition to fish farms is market competition between Alaska's hatchery-supplemented "wild" fish and farmed fish produced elsewhere.

We'll come back to the probems further down, first let's hear from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game says about the recent boom in so-called "wild" salmon production from Prince William Sound, quoted in Alaska Dispatch

The average annual harvest for the most recent decade-long period stands near 45 million salmon per year. How salmon harvests in the Sound doubled, and then doubled again, has everything to do with human alterations to the environment. But not in the form of spilled oil.

"It's the hatchery fish,'' said John Hilsinger, commercial fisheries supervisor for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. "There's a real large number of hatchery fish."

There can be no doubt, Alaska is dependent on farm-produced salmon that escape by design into the ocean. Statewide totals are 1.2 to 1.4 billion salmon each year that are raised in hatcheries and released into the ocean, accounting for 14% to 37% of annual salmon catch. Overall odds are about 1 in 4 that a so-called wild Alaska salmon actually started it's life in a fish farm.

According to Trout Unlimited, the statewide figures by species in 2000 were:

64% of the 2000 statewide Alaska commercial harvest of chums, 42% of pinks, 24% of coho, 4% of sockeye, and 19% of Chinook salmon were of hatchery-produced fish.

Is the salmon industry worried about these salmon that are allowed to escape intentionally from fish farms? No, in fact the salmon industry is eager to expand hatchery production of salmon in Alaska. From the Alaska Dispatch:

So why not do more to boost the salmon economy in the Sound? What's wrong with a bigger fish spill?

That is a hard question to answer. A lot of people think helping out nature by adding things -- can you say "bird feeder"? -- is a good thing. Only when it comes to subtracting things -- can you say "aerial wolf hunt"? -- or adding ugly things -- can you say "oil spill"? -- do people get upset about nature tampering.

Even officials at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game -- having originally questioned the hatchery expansion -- are now in the process of approving most of PWSAC's requests for expansion. What else are they going to do?

"You're not going to shut down the hatcheries,'' Eggers said. "The Sound is supported by hatcheries now. The (fishing) industry depends on hatcheries."

Is this a problem? Also quoting from Alaska Dispatch:

"Our obligation to manage wild (salmon) stocks in Prince William Sound is very challenged at current levels of population,'' an April memorandum from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game warns. "Department straying studies suggest that at current production levels, hatchery salmon straying may pose an unacceptable risk to wild salmon stocks."

This warning comes from a review of Alaska's salmon hatcheries by the University of Alaska:

Based on a review of the scientific literature and discussions with biologists, geneticists, and fishery managers about protecting salmon biodiversity, the potential impacts of extensive ocean ranching appear to pose a great concern...

Fisheries scientist Ray Hilborn, who is often a good friend of the fishing industry, has this stark warning about artificial production of salmon, especialy when it's desgined to boost fishing:

Artificial propagation is often seen as a way to maintain and increase or augment fish stocks that have suffered from habitat loss and overexploitation. Large-scale hatchery programs for salmonids in the Pacific Northwest have largely failed to provide the anticipated benefits; rather than benefiting the salmon populations, these programs may pose the greatest single threat to the long-term maintenance of salmonids. Fisheries scientists, by promoting hatchery technology and giving hatchery tours, have misled the public into thinking that hatcheries are necessary and can truly compensate for habitat loss. I argue that hatchery programs that attempt to add additional fish to existing healthy wild stocks are ill advised and highly dangerous.

This is not a new issue. Scientists and conservationist have been critiquing salmon hatcheries for a long time, although Alaska has better practices than some other areas and has so far escaped the worst criticism. Blogfish has been knocking on this door for years, and salmon farming advocates have been calling for a more truthful comparison between farmed salmon and Alaska's so-called wild salmon.

Maybe we're finally starting to see a broader recognition that there is a bit of mythology behind the reputation of Alaska salmon.

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Alaska's half-farmed salmon

Alaska's love affair with farming of salmon (despite words to the contrary) is slowly coming under scrutiny. Fish people in Alaska should be up front about their salmon hatcheries that are really a lot like fish farms.

Image: boyhood home of a so-called "wild" salmon?

Blogfish has noted previously that Alaska's so-called wild salmon include some fish that are raised for part of their lives in fish farms called "hatcheries." These fish live for up to half of their lives in farms, before being released into the ocean. When caught and sold, half-farmed fish are called "wild."

The problem is worst for less-preferred species like pink salmon and chum salmon, but even some sockeye and a very few chinook (king) salmon begin their life in hatcheries (fish farms).

Just this week, a letter to the editor of the copyrighted and subscription news service Intrafish has a scathing critique and a new term that just might begin to stick (excerpt below). Fish farmer Neil Sims of Kona Blue refers to Alaska's hatchery fish as "half-farmed" and writes about the hypocrisy of Alaska's opposition to fully-farmed fish, while simultaneously half-farming huge numbers of salmon.

This is an interesting take on the wild salmon vs. farmed salmon debate. The best answer is that we need 3 categories, wild, hatchery, and farmed salmon. But I don't look to Alaska for progress on this issue.

Alaska's half-farmed salmon are a waste of resources

From: Neil Sims
President, Kona Blue Water Farms, LLC

10.09.08 15:23

John Fiorillo had a “chuckle” over Alaska’s opposition to offshore aquaculture , when he argued – quite soundly – that Alaska is already the world’s biggest offshore aquaculture program, because of the massive salmon stock enhancement effort.
...

how does Alaska’s half-farmed salmon measure up...

The easy answer is to imagine the furor if there were 58 million farmed fish escapees each year! But when they are deliberately allowed to escape (i.e. released) into the ocean, Alaska’s hatchery-reared stocks compete with truly wild fish for prey and other resources...

Hope you don't mind me posting this excerpt, Intrafish

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