Yes you may be right on your points Banx. We also should look at how much those billions of ranched salmon eat in the wild when they are released from their net pens. They would also be competing with the wild. Their return btw is around 10% from what I have read meaning a lot of waisted feed from the start where farmed salmon has around a 90% return. I feel farmed has taken the consumer bite out of our wild and leaves more for the sport and more to spawn. We may not like it, but the only thing I have seen work to bring low populations back is to simply leave them alone for a few years. It has worked from Washington up to Alaska. Add a bit of enhancement into that pot
Oh btw, cant say as I have ever caught much for pinks. Guess it may be from targeting coho and springs.
well this is just opinion of course, but I kind of disagree that farmed/ranched fish compete with wild species for food out in the ocean. yes they are out there eating food for sure. But to say that they are over competing the wilds is kind of silly. Wild fish are stronger, that is a fact. They would also be more wiley when out in the chuck as compared to some hatchery fish who's been handed everything since the day it's born.
I think, opinion only of course, that these hatchery/ranched fish would be easier pickings for predators than the wilds who have already run a gauntlet since emerging from an egg. Thus off setting the destruction to wild stocks that have already occurred. As mentioned earlier, these ranched fish will return nutrients to their natal streams when they return. Which feed insects, trout, mammals, birds, the trees....everything. All farmed salmon does to the environment is give it a beating.
what would you rather drop in the ocean? live small fish, or antibiotics and crap?