I’ve written a little bit about farmed salmon before. A few days ago, the news came out that tens of thousands of farmed Atlantic salmon escaped from their pen. There were 30,000 salmon in that pen, and they may have all gotten out. This happened off the coast of British Columbia. A spokesman for the fish farming company says what happened is “really unusual”. Small comfort. All it has to do is happen once to seriously screw up the native salmon, which are already dwindling in number.

Besides the fact that these Atlantic salmon, which are not indigenous to the area, will compete with the wild salmon for food, they could also be carrying diseases, antibiotics, pesticides, or sea lice.

The company representative, apparently in all seriousness, said if anybody were to catch one of the escaped fish, they should clean it and bake it with ginger and green onion in a 400 degree oven and serve it with fresh lemon slices. Really. Seeing that this escape will cost his company about $500,000, it’s nice that he’s so chipper about the whole thing. I like to think I have a pretty good sense of humor, but I’m not laughing.

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