New sea lice modelling study indicates that wild salmon from Scotland’s east and north coast rivers could be impacted by salmon farming | Wildfish
by Classic_Car4776
New sea lice modelling study indicates that wild salmon from Scotland’s east and north coast rivers could be impacted by salmon farming | Wildfish
by Classic_Car4776
4 comments
“For decades it has been widely assumed that salmon farming has no negative impacts on wild salmon smolts from Scotland’s east and north coast rivers. However, new modelling of sea lice dispersion from the huge concentration of salmon farms around Orkney and Shetland casts severe doubt on this assumption.
Northern Isles sea lice modelling report
Roughly one-third of Scottish salmon farming production now takes place in the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland. To assess the risk that wild salmon and sea trout will be harmed by sea lice from salmon farms in the Northern Isles, WildFish commissioned leading expert modellers, Dr Tom Scanlon and Dr Matt Stickland of MTS-CFD Limited, to develop a detailed hydrodynamic and biological model of the area.
The model simulates water levels and flows (currents and tides), which determine the transport of sea lice emanating from the fish farms. All operational farms (26 on Orkney and 42 on Shetland) are included in the lice model using up-to-date biomass numbers (2023-24).
Modelling results show that the main salmon lice concentrations on Shetland tend to remain localised along the coastal fringes, while for Orkney the lice are channelled southwards from the Pentland Firth to occupy a large portion of the North Sea towards the Moray Firth, an area covering over 5,000 square miles. “
Don’t eat farmed salmon.
“could be”? Grow some spine, replace those words with “are” and let’s have a proper debate about the damage these farms are causing the environment.
Not that the SNP will give a solitary fuck, they’re not called Tartan Tories for nothing.
What this fails to mention is all the modelling ever done on sea lice fails to correspond with anyone actually catching them in the wild in the areas they supposedly ought to be in
The amount of research that shows sea lice aren’t actually that harmful to wild fish is growing too
This debate is so one sided and largely ill-informed – fish farming isnt perfect but nor is fishing or terrestrial farming so we either accept the flaws or don’t eat