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#31: Fish Farming Threatens Wild Salmon

Lice, interbreeding, and contaminants are killing off the species.

By Karen Wright
Dec 16, 2008 6:00 AMNov 12, 2019 6:27 AM
salmon.jpg
Spawning Salmon in Becharof Stream within the Becharof Wilderness in southern Alaska, USA. | Image courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

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When the North Atlantic’s stocks of cod, tuna, halibut, and other big ocean predators threatened to collapse in the 1990s after decades of overfishing, consumers and conservationists alike turned their hopes to farming: raising pellet-fattened fish in net pens in bays and channels. But a sweeping analysis published last February shows that farming has only made matters worse for wild salmon.

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