Copyright © 2001 The Associated Press
June 17, 2001
By BRUCE STANLEY, AP Business Writer

SCONSER, Scotland (AP) - Scallop fisherman David Oakes never expected to earn a fortune, but profits have drained away since a salmon farm expanded near his shellfish grounds in the western Scottish Highlands.

First came an outbreak of toxic algae in 1999 that contaminated the scallop beds he harvests in the inky waters of Loch Sligachan on the Island of Skye. Then health authorities detected an increase of E. coli bacteria in the marine inlet, and now Oakes fears they will close down his business if he can't find a way to sterilize his scallops before selling them.

Oakes, 43, blames organic waste discharged from salmon farms in the area, particularly the farm three miles to the north.

But Marine Harvest, the company that operates that farm, denies that its floating salmon pens have damaged the surrounding environment. Vidar Julien, a spokesman for Marine Harvest's Dutch parent company, Nutreco Holding N.V., said critics of salmon farming are acting on their emotions rather than scientific evidence.

``That's just not true,'' Oakes countered. ``They manipulate science to make a point. It's environmental and scientific fraud.''

Their dispute is a mere murmur in the tumult over salmon farms, which are multiplying across some of the poorest corners of rural Scotland. And the furor over fish farming - or aquaculture - extends far beyond Scotland and its salmon.

Although seafood farms have generated jobs and investment in many parts of the world, they have also spawned concerns about the pollution they produce and the impact they have on traditional fisheries and nearby communities.

Even the taste of farmed seafood can inflame passions. Nick Nairn, a chef and restaurant owner in Glasgow, shuns most farm-raised salmon.

``The quality is no better than cat food,'' he said.

With the world's fishing fleets depleting wild stocks of cod and other seafood staples, aquaculture has become a major source of fish and shellfish.

Atlantic salmon, black tiger shrimp and the perchlike tilapia are among the most widely cultivated varieties, and seafood farms now girdle the globe, from glacial lakes in the Scottish Highlands to former sugar plantations in the Philippines and tidal marshes in the American South.

The multinational corporations running many of the farms have helped make seafood a global commodity like never before. In the last year alone, U.S. imports of fresh and frozen salmon surged 14 percent in value to $805 million.

Commercial aquaculture took off 20 years ago as a way to help satisfy the burgeoning demand for seafood. It already provides a quarter of the world's seafood supplies, and its share is growing fast.

But what some marine biologists hailed in the 1980s and early 1990s as a ``blue revolution'' in food production has taken some unexpected and undesirable turns.

Some of the worst excesses occurred in Southeast Asia, where investors destroyed mangrove forests to clear land for ponds to grow shrimp, stripping coastlines bare and exposing them to typhoons and erosion.

Fish and shrimp farms have been criticized for dumping feces and uneaten food into surrounding waters. In some cases, algae appear to feed off the organic waste and proliferate in sudden ``blooms'' that can suffocate or poison wild fauna.

Oakes said algae blooms in the waters near his home in the village of Sconser have cost him $56,000 in lost sales - almost half of what he would have earned during the past two and a half years.

But Brian Simpson, who heads the salmon-farming industry trade group Scottish Quality Salmon, denies that fish farms are to blame.

``Algal blooms have been around since biblical times. There's nothing new in them,'' he said.

For the companies that farm salmon in Scotland, no issue is more contentious than that of the sea louse, a thumbtack-sized parasite that can weaken and kill fish.

Anglers and fishermen of wild salmon argue that pens of farmed fish attract large quantities of sea lice, which then attack wild fish swimming nearby.

Defenders of salmon farming dismiss any such connection.

Scotland produced 125,000 metric tons of salmon last year, worth some $1 billion. Almost all of it came from fish farms, making Scotland the third-largest source of farmed salmon after Norway and Chile.

Scottish salmon farming companies claim to employ 6,500 people and say they must obey strict environmental and health rules.

However, questions persist about the impact of seafood farms and the wholesomeness of their products.

The pink flesh of most farm-raised salmon is itself the result of human tinkering. Swiss drugs company Roche Holding AG makes Carophyll Pink astaxanthin, an additive for use in salmon feeds that enhances the bland color of cultivated fish.

Roche distributes a ``SalmoFan'' of color samples ranging from pale peach to crimson, just like a color chart for house paint, to help fish farm operators choose the right dosage.

Don Staniford, a former researcher for the environmentalist group Friends of the Earth Scotland, compared a typical farmed salmon to ``a couch potato cooped up in a cage ... It's dosed in chemicals, and fed a high-energy diet enriched with artificial chemicals.''

Nutreco spokesman Julien argued that consumers should be let to make up their own minds.

``If the consumers don't have trust in our product, we won't have a market,'' he said. ``And I'll lose my job.'' Error: Unable to read footer file.