Stand Up for Pacific Salmon (SUPS)

As citizens of the Pacific coast, we are concerned about the impact our buying choices have on wild salmon.

The vast majority of the consumer public is completely unaware of the threats posed by open net-pen salmon farming, and many think of farmed salmon as a healthy and responsible choice.

Nonprofit organizations such as Waterkeeper organizations play a critical role by helping to educate consumers of the reality behind net-pen salmon farms and empowering consumers to leverage their purchasing power to effectuate change to the industry.

One of the most effective ways to create change is to take action at the local level. We believe the SUPS campaign, where grocery store shoppers engage with retailers—requesting that net-pen farmed salmon be removed from their shelves—is an effective means of generating change at the market and policy levels. One thing is certain: consumers can play a critical role in helping to shift global aquaculture to a more positive economic and ecological operation.

Problem

Net-pen salmon farms are floating pens containing hatchery salmon smolts that are reared to adult size in marine habitats. These “salmon feedlots” are usually located in protected bays and stream-mouths, in areas that are migratory habitat for salmon.

These net-pen farms can hold 500,000 to 750,000 farmed salmon in an area the size of four football fields.

Net-pen salmon farms are floating feedlots that have spread sea-lice, pollution, chemicals, and infectious diseases into pristine habitats all around the world, including British Columbia and Washington, and are having a devastating impact on wild salmon stocks.

Peer-reviewed research is conclusive, and consensus exists among fisheries biologists: where net-pen salmon farms exist, wild salmon, and trout decline[1].

The impacts of accumulated feed and excrement on the seafloor are considerable, adding to the alarming problems of parasite and disease transfer. There are also human health concerns with eating net-pen farmed salmon associated with the presence of antibiotics, PCBs, dioxins and chlorinated pesticides

Because of the presence of PCBs and other substances, the journal Environmental Research recommends that farmed salmon should be eaten no more than “between 0.4 and 1 meal per month.” This confirmed a similar 2005 study in the Journal of Nutrition, recommending that pregnant women, children, and nursing mothers avoid farmed salmon because of high levels of pollutants.

Other concerns for consumers include the industry’s use of antibiotics and artificial coloring. Without the orange and pink dyes put into their feed, for instance, farmed salmon flesh would be an unappealing shade of gray.

Why SUPS Was Developed

Currently the Fraser River in British Columbia, home to the largest spawning population of salmon in the province, is enduring a catastrophic crash of its sockeye population. While net-pen salmon farms are only one of many impacts on these fish, in an era of acidifying oceans and warming rivers—and other climate change variables such as the increase in some aquatic diseases—salmon farms are one threat that can and must be removed.

The Fraser River is experiencing one of the biggest salmon disasters in recent history with more than nine million sockeye vanishing. Between 10 million and 13 million sockeye were expected to return to the Fraser last summer. But the official count was just about 1.7 million.

Certainly there are many contributing reasons that contribute to this crash, which include climate change, overfishing, water quality problems, and pollution (as migrating salmon have to swim through waves of industrial and municipal sewage on their way in and out of the River) and, of course, net-pen salmon farms.

Aboriginal fishermen are suffering, the commercial and recreational fishery has been shut down. Tourism has taken a huge hit, and orcas, eagles, bears, wolves, and other predators are suffering as salmon is truly the backbone and foundation of this region.

In November, the federal government called for a judicial inquiry to investigate the reasons for the decline of sockeye salmon on the Fraser River. Fraser Riverkeeper has been granted formal standing to participate in the process with other NGOs as part of the Conservation Coalition, with Ecojustice’s representation, but this process will take two years to complete.

In the meantime, we felt it was important to take action on the ground and educate consumers, especially in the US, about the true impact of their choices at the supermarket.

The net-pen salmon farm industry in Canada is not a Canadian industry, nor do its profits remain in Canada. Ninety percent of BC’s 130 salmon farm licenses are owned by three Norwegian multinationals: Marine Harvest, Cermaq, and Grieg.

NGOs, First Nations leaders such as Chief Bob Chamberlin, and researchers like Alexandra Morton have approached these corporations repeatedly, encouraging and pressuring them to do the right thing. But because making needed changes will lessen their profit margins, they won’t—unless customers demand it.

SUPS Strategy—Consumers Demand Change

We felt it was important to take action on the ground and educate consumers about the impact of their purchasing choices and encourage them to vote with their wallet, especially in the United States.

U.S. consumers have a tremendous impact on the direction that this industry ultimately takes and on the future of wild salmon stocks on our Pacific coast. In 2006, 93% of Canadian farmed salmon was sold in the United States, and currently over 50% of the salmon consumed in the US is farmed.

By launching SUPS and collaborating with Waterkeeper organizations, and eventually many other citizen and NGO allies from California to Alaska, our goal is to entirely shut down the net-pen salmon farming industry on the Pacific coast.

SUPS campaign asks customers of Costco, Safeway, Tesco, Kroger, SuperValu, and Trader Joe’s to follow the example of their fellow retailer Target. In January the discount chain, on the advice of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s SeafoodWatch program, dropped net-pen salmon from over 1,700 stores.

How to Get Involved/ What you Can Do

We hope this pressure from the consumer will encourage retailers to stop stocking their shelves with farmed Atlantic salmon and that that industry will ultimately feel that pressure. We hope to promote major reform in the salmon farming industry, using the power of consumers “voting with their wallets” to encourage the industry to convert to tank systems, also known as closed-containment. While closed-containment does not solve all the industry’s ecological impacts it does create an escape-poof, disease transfer-proof barrier that ensures zero discharge and keeps antibiotics, drugs, and pesticides out of the marine environment.

Purchase Only Wild Salmon. Purchase only wild salmon or other fish species instead of farmed salmon grown in net-pen systems. Ask your retailer if the salmon you are purchasing is wild. Most salmon farms in Canada and the US are stocked with Atlantic salmon, an invasive species that has escaped torn net-pens by the hundreds of thousands over the years. It’s important to note that all Atlantic salmon is farmed. There is no “wild Atlantic salmon” for sale anywhere in North America.

Write a letter. Pressure your Retailer. Write a letter to your local retailer and tell them that until they stop selling farmed salmon that you will not be shopping there. Encourage them to shift to selling either wild salmon or salmon farmed in closed containment systems. For a sample letter, click HERE. For a list of retailers that sell farmed salmon, click HERE.

Host a Movie Night. If you would like to host a movie night in your community with a letter-writing party, click HERE for more info, or contact your local Pacific Waterkeeper organization (go to www.waterkeeper.org and click on “find your waterkeeper”). We can provide you with a NBC newsreel, a short cartoon, and a short feature documentary, “Farmed Salmon Exposed,” by award-winning filmmaker Damien Gillis. The 23-minute film has been screened by salmon lovers from Washington, DC to Norway. Each of the videos deals in a different way with wild Pacific salmon and the problems with farmed salmon.

Host a Letter-Writing Party. This is an opportunity for citizens to take one small but effective action on behalf of salmon. They can do this by taking a few minutes to pen a hand-written letter to retailers that still sell net-pen farmed salmon urging those retailers to pull it from their shelves.

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[1] Ford JS, Myers RA (2008) A global assessment of salmon aquaculture impacts on wild salmonids. PLoS Biol 6(2): e33. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060033. See also L. Neil Frazer. Sea-Cage Aquaculture, Sea Lice, and Declines of Wild Fish. Conservation Biology, 2008; DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.01128.x. See also Hutchinson P, editor (2006) Interactions between aquaculture and wild stocks of Atlantic salmon and other diadromous fish species. Proceedings of an ICES/NASCO Symposium held in Bergen, Norway, 18–21 October 2005. ICES J Mar Sci 63:(7).