Aquaculture

Once a luxury food, salmon is now one of the most popular fish species in the United States, Europe and Japan. Total salmon production has increased three-fold since 1980 to meet this demand. The largest growth has been in farmed, not wild caught, salmon. Approximately 60 percent (1.26 million metric tons) of the world's salmon comes from fish farms.

Norway and Chile produce close to two-thirds of the world's farmed salmon. Norway is an ideal location for farming salmon, as most of its coastline is protected from storm surges and waves and the water temperatures are favorable. Chile's extensive coastal areas and close proximity to a large and clean source of fish meal make it a prime location for salmon aquaculture. Other significant producers include the United Kingdom and Canada.

Farmed salmon are most commonly grown in cages or pens in semi-sheltered coastal areas, such as bays or sea lochs. The cages -- usually large, floating mesh cages -- are designed to hold salmon but are open to the marine environment. Juvenile salmon are hatched and raised to become smolts in freshwater before they are transferred to these marine open systems to grow. 

Main impacts of salmon aquaculture
The rapid expansion of the salmon aquaculture industry has not come without impacts - both real and perceived. The seven key environmental and social impacts are:

1. Benthic impacts and siting: Chemicals and excess nutrients from food and feces associated with salmon farms can disturb the flora and fauna on the ocean bottom (benthos).
2. Chemical inputs: Excessive use of chemicals - such as antibiotics, anti-foulants and pesticides - or the use of banned chemicals can have unintended consequences for marine organisms and human health.
3. Disease/parasites: Viruses and parasites can transfer between farmed and wild fish, as well as among farms.
4. Escapes: Escaped farmed salmon can compete with wild fish and interbreed with local wild stocks of the same population, altering the overall pool of genetic diversity.
5. Feed: A growing salmon farming business must control and reduce its dependency upon fishmeal and fishoil - a primary ingredient in salmon feed - so as not to put additional pressure on the world's fisheries. Fish caught to make fishmeal and oil currently represent one-third of the global fish harvest.
6. Nutrient loading and carrying capacity: Excess food and fish waste in the water have the potential to increase the levels of nutrients in the water. This can cause the growth of algae, which consumes oxygen that is meant for other plant and animal life.
7. Social issues: Salmon farming often employs a large number of workers on farms and in processing plants, potentially placing labor practices and worker rights under public scrutiny. Additionally, conflicts can arise among users of the shared coastal environment.

Our solution
WWF seeks to address these impacts through the Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue, which is managed by a nine-person Steering Committee. The goals of the Dialogue are to:

• Develop and implement verifiable environmental and social performance levels that measurably reduce or eliminate the key impacts of salmon farming and are acceptable to stakeholders
• Recommend standards that achieve these performance levels while permitting the salmon farming industry to remain economically viable

The Dialogue ensures open and transparent dissemination of information between the stakeholders participating.

To learn more, read the salmon Dialogue process guidance document and the full list of Dialogue goals and objectives.

Principles, Criteria and Indicators

The salmon Dialogue has developed principles that address the key impacts associated with salmon aquaculture, as well as criteria that aim to provide direction on how to reduce each impact. The principles and criteria provide the framework for the indicators, which address how to measure the extent of each impact, and ultimately the final standards. The standards are quantitative performance levels that evaluate whether a principle is achieved.

The first draft of the Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue standards (and their accompanying principles, criteria and indicators) was posted for public comment from August 3, 2010 to October 3, 2010. Click here for the committee’s responses to input from the first comment period. The Dialogue's Steering Committee used feedback received during the comment period to amend the document before it was posted for the final comment period in May 2011. The comment period for the English version ended on June 14, 2011 but the comment period for the Spanish version is open until June 30, 2011. All input will be used by the Dialogue’s Steering Committee to finalize the standards this year.

Technical Working Groups
Technical working groups are created to help research issues related to salmon aquaculture. To date, five technical working groups have been created. Members of the Dialogue were actively involved in choosing experts and developing a scope of work for each group. Each group was tasked with producing a "State of Information Report" that reviews the status of existing research related to the impact, identifies gaps or areas of disagreement in the research and suggests a process for addressing the gaps. Click here to download the State of Information Reports. 

Learn more:

• Salmon Dialogue process guidance document
  English | Spanish
• Salmon Dialogue work program for 2010
• Salmon Dialogue meeting reports and presentations
• Steering Committee and technical working group members
• Salmon Dialogue frequently asked questions
• Salmon Dialogue fact sheet
  English | Spanish
• Fact sheet about what to consider when buying farmed salmon
• Research paper about salmon

Read more about the other aquaculture Dialogues WWF is working on.