Can farmed Atlantic Salmon invade the ecological niches of wild Pacific Salmon?
Dr. Mart Gross, Professor, Department of Zoology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario Conservation biologists cannot yet accurately predict the success of exotics and together with a lack of knowledge about salmon in the wild it is therefore difficult to know the degree to which Atlantic salmon will invade the ecological niches of the Pacific. My 1998 publication predicted that Atlantic salmon would produce progeny in Pacific waters and this has recently been confirmed. We therefore know that Atlantic salmon survive, enter freshwater streams, and reproduce. What we don’t know are the details about the ecological niche space they will occupy, whether their breeding will result in sustainable populations, how and where they will spread along the coast, and their degree of impact on native species. We can only surmise these things from general behavioral, ecological and evolutionary knowledge. I briefly review the invasion theory, the potential for ecological impacts on native Pacific
