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Strange to have an article about salmon farming drawbacks without mentioning escaped salmons polluting the wild salmon population. There has been a strong decre
by syoc 2mo ago
Strange to have an article about salmon farming drawbacks without mentioning escaped salmons polluting the wild salmon population. There has been a strong decrease in wild salmon as they lose the ability to migrate back up the river to lay their eggs due to breeding with escaped farming salmon.
- obelos 2mo agoThat is... unintuitive. Wouldn't the escaped salmon have to be able to get back upstream enough to where the wild salmon are laying/milting?
- mmaunder 2mo agoThey’ve bred more docile salmon, according to the article. Getting that DNA into wild populations would be problematic I’d imagine.
- fragmede 2mo agoIf those salmon are too docile, just give them cocaine. https://www.science.org/content/article/cocaine-pollution-gives-salmon-wanderlust https://www.science.org/content/article/cocaine-pollution-gi...
- dessimus 2mo agoHollywood is ready to run the gamut of cocaine-fueled fauna.
- LoveMortuus 2mo ago>docile salmon Hmm… that made me think of domestication, do you think we could ever have salmon as pets? What’s their character like? More like dogs or cats?
- Animats 2mo agoThat's surprisingly easy. It's been done for chickens. All that was necessary was to put groups of chickens in cages, and keep only the cage groups that were the best egg-layers. After only a few generations, chicken-on-chicken violence was way down.
- Hupriene 2mo agoI think the idea is that the migration instinct passed down by wild salmon is an epigenetic heritable trait. This trait is strongly selected for in wild salmon populations, but not in farmed populations. The constant influx of this maladaptive trait into the wild population is leading to an overall decrease in the ability of the wild population to successfully propagate.
- hmottestad 2mo agoDon’t forget the dams and the humpback salmon.
- satvikpendem 2mo agoI suppose natural selection will act on those salmon that can't reproduce.
- kakacik 2mo agoI dont think thats the mechanism, otherwise there would be 0 effect on wild population. Farmed males spreading their genes must have some effect though, its not like they are automatically infertile due to just being farmed. Similar approach works very well ie on tse-tse fly in parts of eastern Africa I've visited - introduce infertile/weak males into wilderness to effectively eliminate entire population in medium term.
- pazimzadeh 2mo agothe farmed salmon were bred to reproduce and grow rapidly
- pjc50 2mo agoOne possible outcome of that is the extinction of wild salmon.
- pvaldes 2mo agoAnd, another could be to increase the populations of wild salmon Dumber here is a feature, not a bug. The dumber the farmed escaped salmons are, the better. Imagine 10 wild salmons swimming up the river to reproduce, 8 of then are devoured by bears. Only Rick and Jenny survive. Now imagine the same salmons swimming up the river to reproduce, but joined by 40 farmed sterile salmons. And 8 of them are devoured by bears. The reproductive success of the wild ones have increased, because security is in the numbers. Being easier to catch, bigger, clueless and extra-dumb, farmed salmons will attract the predators and more wild ones will reach the end.
- MagicMoonlight 2mo ago[dead]
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- pvaldes 2mo agoThis problem has been solved long time ago. Farmed salmons are sterile and can not reproduce, by design. Jurassic park vibes here. I know, I know... Okay, say the damned phrase and shut up.