Ministers at odds over salmon farm regime and its environmental impact

Letters exchanged between Department of the Environment and Department of Food and the Marine, and their respective Ministers, Eamon Ryan and Charlie McConalogueThe Irish regime for issuing aquaculture licences is not sufficiently robust in how it evaluates risks to wild fish stocks and downplays the threat posed by sea lice arising from commercial salmon farms, according to Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan.

There is, he warned, “an urgent requirement to mitigate, within aquaculture policy, the threat of introgression from escaped farmed fish with wild fish and the very real detrimental impacts on the genetic integrity, fitness, life cycle and from competition for habitats and food. However, he said there was “severe disquiet in relation to aquaculture policy, licensing and implementation, among stakeholders in the wild fish, environmental and ecology sectors”, Inland Fisheries Ireland and his department, which “has been recently intensified”.Mr Ryan outlined concerns about the way appropriate assessment of fish farm projects was being carried out by the Marine Institute on behalf of the Department of Agriculture.

The IFI’s analysis “gives rise to very significant concerns as regards the assessment’s consideration of the impact of finfish aquaculture on wild salmonids”. Mr Ryan said there was a need “to deal with these anomalies and ensure screenings for appropriate assessment across all estuaries and bays effectively and adequately take account of and address important attributes which heretofore appear to have been ignored or summarily dismissed”.

Studies indicate rivers with aquaculture show lower returns of mature salmon in years following high lice levels on nearby salmon farms, the IFI outlined in an appendix to the letter. The evaluation process “takes fullest consideration of all potential environmental impacts in advance of any decision to grant an aquaculture licence”, he added.

He underlined sea lice monitoring in Ireland had been acknowledged by the European Commission as representing best practice”. Protocols for the management of sea lice are operated by the institute on behalf of the State. He pointed out Mr Ryan had not indicated which studies he was referring to when citing the vast amount of research demonstrating the detrimental impact of sea lice on wild stocks. But he conceded: “Neither myself nor my scientific advisers dispute that the management of sea lice is critically important. However, the actual significance of its impact in regard to wild salmonids is not fully quantified.

Salmon farms do enormous damage to the marine environment. Please don’t buy farmed salmon. Nearly all salmon in supermarkets is farmed salmon.

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