Right before I left for the One Ocean Expedition with Mowi, Dalhousie University released findings of an interesting study, revealing that while Canadians love salmon, they don't know enough about it!
One of the main goals I had during this project with Mowi and the One Ocean Expedition was to increase awareness about the important contributions of blue foods and address common misconceptions about aquaculture.
I've already been sharing a ton about what I've learned onboard from scientists working in novel feed development, fish vaccines, and marine spatial planning. But now, I want to break it down and apply it to some of the most common misconceptions that I've heard about farmed salmon.
Salmon farming has been quite a contentious topic in Canada, but is this bad reputation still warranted? The industry has made impressive strides in the areas of sustainability that unfortunately, remain overshadowed by its past blunders.
Has salmon farming had its issues in the past? Yes, similar to other shifts in technology. Take for example, organic land based crops. In the 1970s, the development of GMOs and pesticides were used to scale crop volume and of course, we learned a lot from these mistakes. Today, we have improved methods for organic farming that are being widely adopted. The same process has been happening in aquaculture. We've been learning from the mistakes made 15 and 20 years ago, and today aquaculture is the fastest growing food producing sector in the world and one of the most sustainable protein sources on the planet. Which is good news for us!
Unfortunately, the most common misconceptions about salmon farming are still floating around, overshadowing what is actually a pretty cool success story. So today, I wanted to debunk some of the most common farmed salmon myths, with help from a fisheries expert.
