Do farmed salmon compete with wild salmon?
With today’s net pens farmed fish seldom escape into the wild. When escapes happen, the farmed fish do not appear to compete very well in the wild, or even to have a very high survival rate. Of the low proportion of escaped fish that survive to be caught or found in BC, over 94% have empty stomachs (McKinnel et al., 1997), indicating that their competition with wild salmon for food is insignificant. Very few farmed salmon have been found in river systems, and farmed fish have been shown to have a significant competitive and reproductive disadvantage compared to wild salmon (Fleming, et al., 1996). Competition for spawning locations between wild and farmed salmon is therefore negligible (Alverson & Ruggerone, 1997).
