Environmental Impact Of Salmon Farming

Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic animals, such as fish. There are various types of fish farming and each type has an ecological impact on marine life. The type of farming I will be focusing on is salmon farming. In this type of farming they use open net-cage farming which is currently one of the most harmful aquaculture production systems. There are a lot of environmental impacts that salmon farming has such as sea lice, diseases, marine mammal’s deaths, and escapes. Our main goal is to find ways to minimize these negative impacts that salmon farming has in our environment. The big issue in open net cage farming is that all the waste goes directly to the ocean’s floor. This has a negative impact on marine animal’s ecosystems that live around the cage because it contaminates its ecosystem. A way to minimize the harmful way of open net cage farming is by separating these nets from marine life or to use closed tanks techniques. This will reduce waste that goes directly to marine life and this will help reduce death due to contamination caused by open net cage. The escape of farmed salmon to the habitat of wild salmon, poses a huge threat to the wild salmon. When they escape they compete with the wild salmon for food and habitat and they also spread diseases. The escaping can be reduced or eliminated by using closed system salmon farming

They attach themselves on the skin of salmon and they feed on their skin, blood and mucus. This can cause damage on the fins, bleeding, and skin erosion. Sea lice can also carry diseases from farmed salmon to wild salmon, putting the wild salmon population at a threat. To stop or reduce sea lice farms can have tried the treatment Slice, but it was not successful because the sea lice build a resistance to the chemicals in it. One way to actually minimize this problem is to come up with a treatment that the lice will not