The high price of salmon farming

[liuzhou]

I don't want to put you off but...

 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/sep/15/net-loss-the-high-price-of-salmon-farming

[KennethT]

really interesting article... thanks.  My only question is about the 1st sentence of the 3rd paragraph - saying that salmon only comes from the northern hemisphere, but I had some of the best smoked salmon of my life in New Zealand, the Akaroa salmon which, aside from being pricey, is absolutely delicious.

[liuzhou]

4 minutes ago, KennethT said:

My only question is about the 1st sentence of the 3rd paragraph - saying that salmon only comes from the northern hemisphere, but I had some of the best smoked salmon of my life in New Zealand, the Akaroa salmon which, aside from being pricey, is absolutely delicious.

 

Quote

New Zealand has no native salmon or trout and all the salmonids were originally imported as ova.

.

-http://www.salmon.org.nz/new-zealand-salmon-farming/history/

 

It's all farmed.

[KennethT]

Just now, liuzhou said:

 

 

It's all farmed.

That makes sense... I wasn't saying that the salmon there were wild (they had a high fat content, so I would have a hard time imagining they were), but I was just confused by the article's sentence.  The way I read it was that salmon didn't exist (farmed or not) in the southern hemisphere, but I could have into it what wasn't there.

[AlaMoi]

anyone else old enough to remember Jacques Cousteau telling us the infinite bounty of the sea can feed the world . . .

[heidih]

1 hour ago, AlaMoi said:

anyone else old enough to remember Jacques Cousteau telling us the infinite bounty of the sea can feed the world . . .

 

Oh what a guy! The hippo episode!!! Fan girl here. But our world's fisheries are a bit of a mess so management is essential and there are political issues. 

[chromedome]

2 hours ago, KennethT said:

really interesting article... thanks.  My only question is about the 1st sentence of the 3rd paragraph - saying that salmon only comes from the northern hemisphere, but I had some of the best smoked salmon of my life in New Zealand, the Akaroa salmon which, aside from being pricey, is absolutely delicious.

For me, the eyebrow-raiser was his mention of 200,000 fish in a pen. I'm pretty confident that's the entire farm, not a single pen.

 

I've toured a couple of the local operators. The less-responsible one, a global operator which shall remain nameless (and has been responsible for many newsworthy issues, including at least one mentioned in that excerpt), packed about 10,000 fish per pen. The more responsible one, my own former supplier (I still buy from them privately, now that my restaurants are closed) limits population density to 3,000 per pen. Their pens are also situated in areas of the Bay of Fundy with an excellent natural flush (the Bay has the world's highest tides) and those lower densities help them keep parasites, waste and illness to a minimum.

Either way, 200,000 is WAY high.

[AlaMoi]

1 hour ago, heidih said:

 

Oh what a guy! The hippo episode!!! Fan girl here. But our world's fisheries are a bit of a mess so management is essential and there are political issues. 

 

I think for his day, he was potentially more than less correct.  what he did not foresee is technology advances that now enable fishing fleets to virtually scoop all the fish out of the ocean in one pass . . .