Pressure Group Push For Salmon Industry Moratorium In Chile

CHILE - A leading voice in Chile’s environmental community called for a moratorium Thursday on the explosive growth of Chile’s salmon industry, saying the industry’s environmental, social, and political costs may be too great to warrant further expansion.

Economist Marcel Claude and marine biologist Alejandro Buschmann of the nonprofit international environmental organization Oceana presented a report that linked the presence of salmon farms with “red tides” – an overgrowth of certain kinds of microscopic algae that damages plant and animal life in the ocean, resulting in catastrophic consequences for marine biodiversity, toxic shellfish and unemployment for local fishermen.

“There is evidence that strongly suggests a relation between salmon farming and the occurrence of (red tide),” Claude said, citing investigations in Chile and in other parts of the world.

Nitrogen-rich waste products from salmon farms provide abundant nutrition for the algae, allowing the red-covered spores to multiply and grow, and resulting in a widespread red color throughout marine waters. Aside from its unusual appearance, these algae in turn consume so much of the oxygen and nutrients in the water that much of the naturally occurring microscopic life – the foundation of the marine food chain – cannot survive.

Red tides are a natural phenomenon, but the increased frequency and intensity of the phenomenon, as a result of chemicals released by human activity, is what really perplexes biologists.

Buschmann presented studies from around the world that noted the correlation between red tides and salmon farms, demonstrating how the “red tide” family of algae proliferates in nitrogen-rich water near salmon farms, while staying dormant in a control sample of clear water.

The red tide-salmon industry relationship has not been studied intensively in Chile, a goal that Oceana is trying to achieve by informing the public about the dangers incurred from the problem in other situations worldwide.

“We need to conduct an integrated study that examines this issue, along with other human activity (urban runoff, deforestation, and agriculture) in order to preserve the diversity of the region,” Buschmann said. He also noted that Chile’s salmon farmers, responsible for one third of the world’s salmon production, provide a mere two percent of the scientific studies dealing with environmental effects of salmon farming.

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Source: The Santiago Times

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