Dear Ocean Defenders…
The following is a reply sent by TalkSalmon to Glasgow’s Sunnyside Primary School’s Ocean Defenders in response to a letter (see below) the children submitted to North Ayrshire Planners who are currently considering an application for a new salmon farm.
Dear Sunnyside Primary Ocean Defenders,
Firstly, I wanted to say well done!
It is so important that kids like you take an interest in the world around you and do what you can to make the world a better place. Did you know that a lot of salmon farmers feel the same way? A lot of us became marine biologists and started to worry about things like overfishing, and decided that the best way to deal with this was to make farms that would create an alternative to just catching fish from the wild.
Think about it! Thousands of years ago us humans decided to do the same thing with plants and animals on land and started farming. Do you think there would be any space on land for all the wild animals if we had kept on hunting and foraging in wild places instead of farming them? Well the same idea is now happening, but in the sea! Because it’s quite new there are a lot of people worried about it. There is also quite a lot to learn to make it better. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t important and isn’t a good idea in the first place!
You mentioned you were worried about wrasse and taking them from the wild. We agree and we are doing all we can to make hatcheries to grow our own cleaner fish. We think cleaner fish are a good idea to remove lice from fish without using any chemicals. Using other animals to help farms isn’t new. Did you know that over 100 important crops that we eat are pollinated by bees? Working using other animals to help make food has been going on for thousands of years. Can you think of any other examples?
About lice themselves: if you have a pet dog or cat (or even a rabbit!) you will know that sometimes they can get ticks or fleas. It is natural but a nuisance. Sometimes, even in school, kids can get head lice! It’s not scary and we are getting better at dealing with these things all the time. It’s the same on salmon farms with sea lice!
You also mentioned PCBs. These are nasty chemicals that we used to make in factories that have made their way into the food chain. Poor Lulu the killer whale was an example to us all to never do this again. Salmon farmers now have started to take any PCBs they find in the food chain out of the feed they give to salmon. It has less PCBs than there is in wild fish!
We also care a lot about seals, dolphins and other marine life. Seals are clever and are a real problem. Think of a fox in a hen house! Using acoustic deterrents (ADDs) is an idea to keep them away without hurting them. It’s not perfect, but there’s a lot of us working to find better solutions, including using double netting when we can, and developing smarter AI technology to respond to them.
Salmon farming is just part of the world’s aquaculture industry. Aquaculture is farming in water, and it is now responsible for more than half the seafood we eat. It’s really important! It is important also because aquaculture is one of the least environmentally harming ways to farm animals, it makes less greenhouse gasses, and uses less land and fresh water and less feed or antibiotics than any other form of animal farming. And it’s getting better all the time. There are a lot of scientists that really care about the world working in fish farming. Perhaps one day you will decide you want to join in and help improve things more!
Here in the U.K., something like 80% of all our food as well as a lot of our clothes and things like phones and TVs we buy from overseas. The recent COVID epidemic has made a lot of us realise that just relying on other countries for everything might not be a good idea and that we should make a lot more things here in the U.K. For jobs, as well as to make sure that these things are made to the best standards possible. It wouldn’t be right to just look after our home environment whilst we hurt the environment in other countries with the food we eat. We have to look after the whole world!
Thanks again for your letter. I think to make the world a better place it will be important to listen to different people with different viewpoints, to get a balanced view so that you can decide for yourself what is the best way forward. And keep up the good work against plastic waste!
Yours Sincerely,
Talksalmon
Want to read more? Try: Why activist film-making shouldn’t be mistaken for journalism
