When “Environmentalists” Take Anti-Science Positions….

I have been following with great interest this discussion in the “Aquaculture & Seafood Networkers” group on LinkedIn. If  you are an aquaculture professional and you don’t belong to this group, you should (and if you don’t belong to LinkedIn because “I don’t have time for social media” — shame on you!)

The discussion, at the start, is about a Vancouver Sun article on closed-containment aquaculture. However, when a group member who is currently making a documentary about net-pen salmon farming enters to pronounce that “closed containment systems should be the only way farmed fisheries operate” and open-net farms “are devastating to our oceans and our wild salmon,” a conversation is sparked that should be taking place much more publicly than on a specialist LinkedIn group.

As he can always be counted on to do, Dave Conley, senior consultant and founding partner of Aquaculture Communications Group,  springs forth to challenge the scientific basis of net-pen opponents’ objections. At this writing, the Alaskan filmmaker has yet to produce a single piece of peer-reviewed research supporting her arguments about “the harmful impacts of farmed salmon to our health and to our environment.”

In response to several links supporting her position, Ivar Warrer-Hansen, Head of Business Developments at Inter Aqua Advance — who makes his living selling the very type of closed-containment systems the filmmaker advocates — asks her to “just give me one peer reviewed article please, just one.” So far, she has been unable to do so. I will keep watching and report here if she does.

Within this discussion is a brief but interesting exchange about feed-conversion ratios that is a must-read for anyone who has ever tried to defend aquaculture against the “10 pounds of fishmeal for every 1 pound of salmon” meme. Again, thank you Dave Conley for providing the links to the relevant research.

I’ll give the last word to Ivar: “The sad thing is that when [environmentalists] take anti-science positions, they weaken the environmental movement – they give environmentalists a bad name. We all want to look after our environment.”