Originally seen in Fish’n Canada’s Week in Review
Our final story of the week was submitted by fan of the show and multi-time contributor to FishnCanada.com, Calvin Pennell.
According to the Atlantic Salmon Federation, two aquaculture-born salmon have been detected in Nova Scotia’s Gaspereau River, the second year in a row this has occurred.
In both cases, the escaped fish were identified by hatchery employees after the fish were fortunately collected from the river for breeding at Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Coldbrook Biodiversity Facility in a project designed to boost the critically endangered population. Thankfully, due to their distinct appearance, staff was quickly able to remove the escapees from the group of collected fish to avoid them breeding with the wild batch.
As finding these fish during this project was purely by chance, it is safe to assume that these two aquaculture-born specimens are not the only ones swimming our waters. In fact, it is estimated that up to 2 million aquaculture fish escape annually around the North Atlantic and escapees have been also been found in nearby New Brunswick and Maine. These fish also have the potential to travel much further as local escapees have turned up in areas as far as Greenland.
According to the Atlantic Salmon Federation, officials are currently doing everything they can to keep aquaculture-born fish out of the wild salmon populations as their interbreeding can lead to less fit offspring and has the potential to exacerbate the struggles of the already endangered inner Bay of Fundy Atlantic Salmon population.
This excerpt was taken from Fish’n Canada’s Week in Review, our weekly recap of all things relevant to the Canadian outdoorsman. For more stories like this, check out the full article below and tune back in every Friday to catch up on everything you missed!
