| Page 2 of 3 < > |
Chile's Flourishing Fish Farms Prompt Fears for Ecosystem
Workers at a salmon farm in Calbuco, Chile, harvest what has become the region's economic backbone, reducing unemployment and raising incomes.
(Courtesy Of Paulo Vargas Almonacid)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
Manuel Viveros, 39, has worked for 12 years at an installation designed to fatten salmon. When his daughter recently graduated with a social science degree and couldn't find a job, she also turned to salmon, working on a quality-control line in one of the plants.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]Like a lot of locals, he praises the salmon industry for improving the quality of life -- even as he tells stories about how he and his family have changed some of their eating habits because they believe the waters aren't as clean as they used to be.
"Before, we could eat seafood raw, and we did it all the time," he said. "But we don't do that anymore. Everything has to be cooked."
The potential risks of using the lakes to raise smolt have long been known, and the Chilean government stopped issuing concessions for smolt production in lakes in the early 1990s. But existing concessions were allowed to continue operating, and the total production of smolt in those areas has doubled since 1998, according to the World Wildlife Fund study.
Additionally, the Chilean branch of the environmental group Oceana suggested in 2005 that salmon operations in the sea were responsible for red tide -- the growth of damaging ocean algae. The widespread use of antibiotics in salmon farms has also attracted criticism within Chile.
The salmon producers counter that it is in their interest to promote sound environmental practices, and the country's trade group -- SalmonChile -- attributes the industry's success to its international reputation for imposing high standards on itself.
"The industry has had the capacity to create and implement its own standards, which go one step further than the sanitary and environmental demands of our country, with the aim of anticipating the needs of the most demanding markets of the world," according to a statement from SalmonChile.
Even many of those who bemoan the effects of salmon farming in Chile acknowledge that's true -- but they say it's because Chilean government regulations are weaker than those of many other salmon-producing countries.
"Norwegian seafood companies come to Chile and do things they'd never get away with at home," said Dave Bard of the National Environmental Trust's Pure Salmon Campaign in Washington.
Stefan Woelfl, a scientist at the Austral University of Chile in Valdivia, has conducted numerous studies of the region's lakes to determine the environmental impacts of salmon farming, which he described as serious.
"But if I find problems in a lake, I don't direct my complaints toward the company -- I direct the complaint to the government," Woelfl said. "The company didn't do anything wrong according to the law. It's the state that is allowing it to happen."
The World Wildlife Fund report urged the companies to move all smolt-producing operations out of lakes and into contained, land-based facilities that the group says would diminish environmental impacts significantly. Such systems are already in use in most other salmon-producing countries and are just beginning to be used in Chile.
