Like cows interbreeding with buffalo, farmed Atlantics could spawn with wild Atlantics and diminish the gene pool, said Fred Whoriskey, vice-president of the Atlantic Salmon Federation. If it were a few farmed fish marrying into a huge family of wild ones it wouldn't matter, but the odds are against wild salmon on the East Coast. More farmed Atlantics than wild swim up New Brunswick's Magaguadavic River to spawn, once one of the most important salmon runs in Canada, said Whoriskey. He is trying to re-establish the wild runs by trapping salmon as they go upstream and weeding out the farmed fish. Protecting the flock Salmon farmers want the same thing Whoriskey does - to keep their salmon in the cages.
Every escaped fish is a business loss, which is why farmers pack guns.
Like farmers on land protecting their herds from wolves, some fish farmers shoot sea lions that come looking for an easy meal. A colony of 700 sea lions in a Chilean national park was decimated after a salmon farm moved within about 400 yards of it. Now only about 25 sea lions are left. Seal rookeries in British Columbia were also wiped out, said Alexandra Morton, a B.C. whale biologist on Vancouver Island's Inside Passage. Morton became an outspoken opponent of salmon farms in 1993, when she noticed they were scaring away the humpback, minke, gray and killer whales she'd been studying since 1984.