Salmon farms are unhealthy for fish

Sir,

Michael C Smith suggested fish farm sea lice are responsible for the destruction of our native wild salmon stock (Letters, The Oban Times, January 18).

There are other negative consequences of intensive fish farming that also need to be addressed.

These are:

1. The sheer number of them. The visual impact of sea farm cages cluttering up so many of our most beautiful remote bays and lochs, making these places no-go areas for us and many other creatures.

2. The ethics of caging these wild creatures in the first place. Salmon are top predators. Can we put thousands of them in a crowded cage and expect them to be healthy and well? It is cruel to say the least. The stress alone is enough to make them diseased. The food they are fed is very different to what they would naturally eat in the wild.

3. The product produced at the end of the day may not be fit to eat. Ethoxyquin remains in the flesh of the salmon and we eat it too. The drugs azamethiphos, cypermethrin, deltamethrin and emamectin benzoate are used regularly on the salmon to kill sea lice. These are fast-acting neurotoxins and are toxic to mammals, birds, fish, other sea creatures and humans.

4. The negative long-term effect of salmon farms on our sea, shore and everything that lives in, on or near them has not been properly assessed. We don’t know for how long the ground below fish farms remains void of life, toxic and harmful to the environment and us.

Who is accountable? The companies that cause the harm, the environmental agencies that allow it to go on or we as consumers for hiding our heads in the sand on this very emotive subject? Eva Tombs, Isle of Lismore.