What is a wild catch salmon? In common language, it connotes a salmon caught from the wild waters, marine or river system. It triggers an image of salmon born in their natural spawning grounds and spending their growing years in the clean and pristine waters of the north pacific ocean.
How wild is the salmon really?
Yesterday, my co-worker said while filleting several fresh and wild Alaskan salmon, "Hey Djoma, look at this, there are punched holes in the fins of the salmon!" I responded, "Oh, those are hatchery tags. That means that the salmon was hatched and raise for a year before being released to the wild. That culture process is referred to as sea ranching." What really caught my attention was the reaction of another co-worker who heard my response. "That is scary. The salmon then is not really wild!"
When I made a video documentary about the Capilano Coho Salmon, I learned that the government sponsored hatchery in the Capilano River, North Vancouver, BC, would tag 25% of the salmon fingerlings they produced and released to the wild. They also would insert a wire marker into the snout of the fish. These procedures are for purposes of tracking the fish. Since then, every now and then I would receive a whole salmon (usually a Chinook) with its snout cut off. It must be a hatchery produced "wild salmon". The licensed fishers report the tagged salmon to the appropriate government agency.
Let me get back to the "That is scary," statement of my co-worker. The implication is that, any salmon that is hatchery produced is basically a farmed salmon. A manager from a fish distribution company who had viewed my video on the Capilano Salmon asked me, "Since the salmon was hatched and nursed in a close system and fed with formulated feeds, would that make them farmed salmon?" I said, "Yes and No. Yes, since they got started off with formulated feeds. No because they matured in the wild open seas."
Being relatively new in Canada, there is still much for me to learn about the fishery system in the northwest pacific rim. During a recent visit in Tofino, BC, my host narrated that the Alaska fishery systems is augmenting ocean salmon stocks with hatchery produced fingerlings. The growing appetite for salmon is becoming more difficult to supply with naturally spawned salmon. Yesterday's tagged salmon just confirmed that for me. I am aware that there are a number of interventions, government sponsored, to improve the wild salmon stocks. The Alaska Snow Pass Coho Salmon would be one, another is the Capilano River Hatchery (under the Salmonid Enhancement Program) and still another would be the Washington Salmon Hatchery System.
So is that really a wild catch salmon? It was caught from the wild, yes. Is it naturally wild? No, if it was hatchery produced.
The preference for wild salmon over farmed salmon has several issues. One of the arguments is that farmed salmon puts a pressure on wild fish feed stocks that are converted into fish feeds. Along this argument, I wonder what kind of pressure on the fish feed stocks is made by the release of 250,000,000 hatchery-produced salmon fingerlings into the northwest pacific ocean?
So when I see a banner head that says, "Go wild salmon...", and pay a premium price for the "wild" tag, I'll react, "....ho-hum..."
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