A British game fish association has warned that “genetic spill” from fish farms is threatening with collapse the whole salmon fishing industry in Scotland.
Paul Knight, chief executive of The Salmon and Trout Association, told members of the Scottish Parliament that fish that escape from Norwegian-owned farms have had a “massive contributory factor” in the decline of stocks.
Cross-breeding changes the genetic make-up of wild fish and reduces survival rates dramatically, impacting on spawning numbers.
Presenting a petition signed by more than 18,000 concerned citizens, the organisation called for all sea-based fish farms to be removed from the estuaries of major wild salmon rivers to reduce the impact of sea lice, and for salmon smolt farms to be banned from operating within any wild salmon river system.
Instead, the association said the government should encourage the fish farms to move into off-shore, deepwater locations.
“Nobody wants to see fish farming go away, quite the opposite. These two industries can exist side by side”, Knight said.
Scottish salmon exports have increased by more than 500 percent in the past 20 years, according to a news article in The Press and Journal, an Aberdeen daily. In 1980 only 9 percent of fish consumed by people came from aqua-culture, now it is nearly 50 percent. According to the latest figures, from 2008, Scotland’s salmon farmers injected more than €600 million into the economy that year.