…Eat Farmed Salmon” is a popular bumper sticker in coastal Alaska. Another one reads “Real Fish Don’t Eat Pellets.” Opposition to fish farming is almost a part of an Alaskan’s creed.

Back in the late ‘60s the Norwegian Grønvets brothers began raising Atlantic salmon in floating pens creating the salmon farming industry. Although salmon hatcheries had been around since the 19th century, hatchery fish were released into open seas and caught by fishermen. Some people have likened the transition from hatchery born to pen reared as the difference between ranching and farming, free range and caged.

Salmon farming spread, first to Scotland in the ‘70s and then to Canada and Chile. Salmon farming took off in Chile in the ‘80s competing with Alaskan Salmon on the world market. For a while in the 80’s some Alaskans toyed with the idea of salmon farming but watching what was happening in neighboring British Columbia and Chile Alaskans passed laws forbidding salmon farming, concentrating on promoting sustainable wild caught Alaska Salmon. Alaskan’s concerns included Atlantic Salmon escaping from pens and becoming an invasive species, disease spread by holding fish in close quarters, the antibiotics that were used to control those diseases and the waste on the ocean floor below such large concentrations of penned fish.

However, fish farming flourished, especially in Chile. By the first decade of the 20th century Chile produced more than a third of the world’s salmon, coming second to Norway. Salmon was Chile’s third largest export. Then things went wrong. There was an outbreak of infectious salmon anemia in Chile. Between 2005 and 2010 Chilean salmon production dropped by 75%. Antibiotics began affecting the water column, pollution spread and hundreds of thousands of Atlantic Salmon escaped. Alge blooms increased causing “red tides” that make shellfish poisonous to humans. Scientists blame the red tide on salmon farming pollution, while the salmon producers deny any link.

Now Chilean farmed salmon production is recovering and has a fresh investment of US $880 million from a Chinese firm. Obviously, this company believes there is a future in salmon farming.

Some people are happy to eat farmed salmon. Producers can create salmon flesh ranging in shades of color from pink to red depending on the die put into the pellets they feed the salmon. I have seen a salmon palette as part of feed marketing. Alaskans, however, maintain that it will not happen in our state.

There is talk of allowing mariculture in Alaska to raise shellfish and seaweed. Chile has a strong mussel farming industry. In some of the bays along Chiloé Island you can see all sorts of floats. They have line hanging from them and on that line, they are growing muscles.

Chile, of course, still has a traditional fishing industry.

I spent some time talking to a man from Castro on Chiloé Island about Salmon farming. He does not like it, mainly because of alleged corruption. He believes the industry does not follow regulatory standards on disease and pollution and is ruining the environment for other seafood. Perhaps he was referring to the red tides. He personally will not eat Salmon because in Chile it’s all farmed. “Except when I am a house guest at a dinner, and it would insult the hostess if I refused to eat it.” We stopped at a restaurant which serves salmon hors d’oeuvres. I politely declined, he smiled and did as well.

On the other side of the issue he said when he was a kid he could expect to only go to school until he was 12 and then he would have to go to work. Because of the economy that salmon farming sparked the community had more money. He did not leave school at 12 but finished high school and went to university. He works in the tourism industry. His family has a car, and modern appliances. Some of the outlying islands no longer have power for only four hours a day when they fired up the generators. Power lines run to some of the islands so they have 24 hour power. He shrugged and said: “I do not like salmon farming. I don’t like what it does to the environment. It hurts traditional fishermen. I don’t eat it. I do not like the corruption it spawns. But then again, I got to go to college, I have a car and electricity all day.”