What are the threats?
There are many examples of how the salmon farming industry has impacted regions and communities where salmon are produced in open pens.
Litigation is used to avoid compliance with regulation or to gain access to new areas for producing salmon (read more)
People in salmon farming regions have experienced bullying and have been silenced by the industry (read more)
The inevitable and continual escape of farmed salmon (in the Falklands, this would be Atlantic salmon) introduces a non-native carnivorous predator to the marine environment (read more)
Escaped farmed salmon predate on native marine fauna, including those species that are critical to commercial fisheries (in the Falklands this could be juvenile squid and fish) (read more)
Mass mortality events at open-pen salmon farms are increasing and pose not only welfare issues for the farmed fish, but also economic and biological hazards (read more)
Wildlife, including whales, dolphins, seals, penguins and other seabirds, become entangled, injured and sometimes die because of open-pen salmon farms (read more)
The enormous, untreated effluent output from open-pen salmon farms overloads the marine environment with nutrients, causing pollution that leads to biodiversity loss (read more)
The over-nutrification reduces oxygen levels, causing anoxic “dead” seabeds near open-pen salmon cages where slimy bacterial mats smother all life (read more)
The excess nitrogen emitted by open-pen salmon farms increases opportunistic green algae at the expense of kelp (read more)
Open-pen salmon farming has been shown to increase the risk of harmful algal blooms, which in turn are themselves deadly to marine life (read more)
Open-pen salmon farms facilitate and exacerbate harmful jellyfish blooms, which have the capacity to destabilise ecosystems from which recovery is unlikely (read more)
Fish feed has been shown to contain heavy metals and “forever chemicals” that accumulate under the sites (read more)
Antifoulants used on salmon farm infrastructure are highly toxic; mechanical net cleaning poses ecological hazards (read more)
Sea lice proliferate on open-pen salmon farms and can infest native fish (in the Falklands, the native zebra trout and minnow could be at risk) (read more)
Open-pen salmon farming introduces novel diseases and increases the virulence of endemic pathogens (read more)
The tonnes of medication used on open-pen salmon farms to combat disease are released into the marine environment (read more)
These reasons and more have led communities and governments around the world to say no to the production of salmon in open pens (read more).