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About the map
The map on this page shows the world’s major salmon producers and the table below includes
information on their total production in 2003, the latest year for which records are available.
Expressed in metric tonnes. Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization and Living Oceans Society.
Wild pink salmon on Canada’s Pacific coast. Photo credit: Barry Kovish.
Salmon producing countries
United States
Massive expansion proposed
Although Alaska has banned salmon farms, other states, notably Washington and Maine allow salmon farming. Globally, the United States is considered a small player - ranked seventh in the world in farmed salmon production.
This situation may rapidly change though because earlier this year President Bush proposed massively expanding fish farm development. The controversial proposal, which seeks to increase the US fish farm production levels five-fold by the year 2025, would focus on offshore waters that are beyond state control.
Canada
Wild west coast under threat
Scientists agree that where there are salmon farms, be it Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Chile or Canada, you have epidemic outbreaks of sea lice. Although sea lice occur naturally in the ocean, densely packed salmon farms create ideal year round breeding grounds for this parasite.
Because salmon farms are often located in sheltered bays and inlets lice infestations on the farms can have particularly deadly consequences for young salmon who are forced to swim past the farms on their outward migration to the open ocean. Young salmon, called smolts, are especially vulnerable to the sea lice outbreaks because of their small size and the natural stress they undergo when switching from a freshwater to a saltwater environment. On a smolt just two or three lice can be deadly. In 2000, 3.6 million adult pink salmon returned to the Broughton Archipelago, located off the northern tip of Vancouver Island, to spawn and lay their eggs. In 2002 only 147,000 adult spawning salmon returned (pink salmon have a two-year life cycle). Many scientists believe that this unprecedented population crash was due to vulnerable wild smolts becoming contaminated with sea lice from salmon farms as they migrated out to the open ocean.
The crisis in the Broughton Archipelago resulted in some farms being fallowed (temporarily closed) but both the federal and provincial government refused to shut down the farms disputing the fact that the sea lice epidemics on the farms were infecting wild salmon.
Stellar sea lions. Photo credit: Art Wolfe.
Marine mammals are also not immune to threats from salmon farms. In addition to exposure to toxic pollution from the farms (see fish facts), animals such as seals, otters and Stellar sea lions are routinely shot to ‘protect’ open cage farms. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans issues licenses which permit salmon farmers to shoot “nuisance” animals drawn towards captive Atlantic salmon. Surprisingly, the permits are issued illegally as fishing licenses.(1) Over 5,000 seals and sea lions have been reported killed by British Columbia fish farmers in the last decade.(2)
South America
Northern demand for fish feed elimnating local protein sources
Salmon farm in BC’s Broughton Archipelago. Photo credit: Jeremy Sean Williams.
Many people eat farmed salmon thinking it takes pressure off of wild fish stocks: in fact it does just the opposite. Unlike herbivorous farmed fish like talapia, salmon are carnivores and require nutrient-dense fishmeal and oil derived from wild fisheries. Astoudingly, it takes up to 4 tonnes of wild fish to produce one tonne of farmed salmon.(1) Currently aquaculture uses up 70% of the world’s fish oil and 30% of the world’s fishmeal(2) and the International Fishmeal and Oil Manufacturers Association predicts that by 2010 aquaculture could consume 90% of the world’s fish oil and 55% of the world’s fishmeal.(3)
In Canada it is illegal to produce fish feed from fish that are suitable for human consumption so the salmon farming industry has turned to developing countries which are in danger of having these fisheries collapse. A number of fisheries that supply the fish feed industry are located along the coast of Peru and Chile in the southeast Pacific Ocean. In 2001, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) characterized these fisheries as “fully fished”, meaning that they are fished at or beyond the maximum safe biological limit. This has more than just economic consequences for the developing world: many people living in coastal areas of the world depend on local fisheries as their main source of protein.
To make matters worse for these countries, salmon farms are operating there now as well, bringing with them all the negative impacts on wild stocks experienced in other jurisdictions. Chile is the second largest producer of farmed salmon in the world and sells most of its farmed salmon to the United States.
Norway
In the late 1960s the world’s first floating salmon pen was built on Hitra, a wind-swept island along Norway's central coast.(1) Norway’s fish farming industry has developed astronomically since then, and there are now over 800 farms along its lengthy, indented coast. These farms annually produce 500,000 tonnes of farmed salmon and trout (60% of the North Atlantic total).(2)
As the fish farming industry has been present in Norwegian waters for more than 30 years, we are now able to see the consequences of these fish escaping into the wild. In areas with dense fish farming, the negative impacts on wild salmon populations are indisputable. Every fourth salmon in Norwegian seas is of farmed origin. In the great salmon river Namsen, almost 50% of the salmon caught in 2002 were escaped farmed fish. On the western coast of Norway, in the Hardanger Fjord, nine out of ten salmon were of farmed origin. Over time, a high number of farmed fish can have a significant impact on the survival of the wild fish. They compete for food and habitat, displace the eggs laid by their wild relatives, and the offspring from farmed fish and hybrids have a significant lower survival success than wild salmon. Transmission of diseases and parasites from farmed fish to natural communities are also a major threat.
Scotland
Salmon farming has expanded rapidly in Scotland since the late 1980s. There are now approximately 350 farms, mainly located on Scotland’s West Coast and islands. Although Scottish wild salmon stocks have showed a steady decline since annual records began in 1952 (well before the introduction of fish farms), recent reductions in salmon netting at sea seem to have resulted in an encouraging increased wild stocks, except in areas where the fish farms are located.(2)(3)
The sea trout, a relative of the Atlantic salmon, has been particularly badly affected in west coast fish farm areas. Sea trout tend to stay around coastal areas much more during their marine feeding and growing phase and are therefore more vulnerable to sea lice infestations from the farms. Some wild salmon populations are also hit hard – those which emerge from river mouths and migrate along long narrow sea loch systems effectively have to ‘run a gauntlet’ of fish farms, thus exposing themselves to lice infestations. Even when the fish farms can control the lice to a level where they are not impacting on the farmed salmon, there are so many fish on the farms that even if each has only one or two egg producing female lice on them, this still has the potential to act as a massive reservoir of larval lice into the sea lochs.
