Which brings me to the basic problem with the pen-rearing of salmon in our waters. The salmon farmers pay only for their pens and permits, their fish and their feed. Those are only some of the real costs of raising salmon the way they do. We pay when the wild runs are wiped out or reduced to levels that do not support commercial endeavors. Native fishermen pay when depressed runs squeeze all the value out of their treaty rights.
Coastal villagers pay when toxic effluent from pens renders their shellfish suspect.
We all pay when the chemicalizing and polluting of previously pristine waters turns around and bites us in any of the ways it inevitably will. And everyone pays when the often expensive efforts to rehabilitate weak wild salmon runs are wasted. The pen-rearers are the ones, the only ones, who actually gain if wild runs are destroyed. As in agriculture, all the little pesties have to be eliminated if the crop is to succeed. The problem here is that one of the pesties is wild salmon, and its destruction causes destruction all up and down the chain of life.