The popularity of farmed Atlantic salmon on dinner tables worldwide has been a disaster for the king of fish. A 2024 study determined that 865 million farmed salmon have died in mass die-offs in the last decade. The scientists blamed the deaths on several factors, from ocean warming caused by climate change to the aquaculture industry’s overuse of antibiotics and pesticides and its aggressive attempts to increase production. The news was carried by news outlets worldwide, among them Time, the British Broadcasting System and the Coast Reporter.
The peer-reviewed paper had been published in a highly respected journal, Nature, and was the first to analyze global data on these sudden die-offs. The lead scientists, Gerald Singh of the University of Victoria, Charles Mather of Memorial University, and Zaman Sajid of Texas A&M, blamed the increasing number of these sudden die-offs on lax government regulation, competition among companies to meet rising demand, and warming waters caused by the climate crisis. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54033-9
Bill Taylor, president of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, said that the salmon farming industry is only accountable to shareholders and focused on short-term profits. “The only way salmon farmers can really do this is to pump more fish into more cages, accept massive losses, and eke out a few more fillets at the end of a growing cycle,” Taylor said. “There is no future for salmon aquaculture in ocean sea cages.”