NASF launched the campaign ‘Let’s Undo This’ to tell Parliament to ban open-net ocean pen salmon farming and pass the strongest laws possible.
05.2024
CAMPAIGN BY NASF
We Did It, Let’s Undo It – NASF, Iceland
Over the last few decades, the Atlantic salmon population has declined by 70%. The majority of native breeding grounds for the species, like the Northeast United States, Norway, Scotland, and Canada, have hardly any healthy salmon populations remaining.
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO ICELAND.
It’s one of the only places left in the world where wild Atlantic salmon populations are not yet decimated. But that will change quickly if there’s no action to preserve the species and Iceland’s wilderness.
AND IT’S A BIGGER PROBLEM THAN YOU MIGHT THINK.
Bravely swimming against the currents to ensure its survival, the North Atlantic salmon is a majestic and unique species. It is an invaluable indicator of the health of our planet, helping us measure environmental conditions and protect diverse ecosystems. Now that it has been driven to near extinction, it is our turn to fight for its existence.
Bravely swimming against the currents to ensure its survival, the North Atlantic salmon is a majestic and unique species. It is an invaluable indicator of the health of our planet, helping us measure environmental conditions and protect diverse ecosystems. Now that it has been driven to near extinction, it is our turn to fight for its existence.
But we can undo it. See how in www.letsundothis.com
WE LET OPEN-NET OCEAN PENS DOMINATE THE SALMON INDUSTRY.
The fish farming industry has sold us “fresh fish raised in open waters,” and we believed them to be better, healthier even – after all, the pens are “open” – but the truth is the opposite: This is an inhumane, totally irresponsible practice that results in mutated fish living in a cesspool of lice, fecal matter, and diseases.
TRAPPED BY GREED.
Simply put, it’s everything you don’t want on your shores or on your plate. Open-net ocean pens are so overcrowded that their mutated fish can barely move or breathe, trapped in fecal-infested water, constantly treated with pesticides.
WE WATCHED AS LICE TOOK OVER, PENS BROKE, AND CATASTROPHE FOLLOWED.
Open-net ocean pens are the biggest threat to wild Atlantic salmon for two main reasons. The first is a nasty one: sea lice, which thrive in the overcrowded pens. And since the pens are placed near wild Atlantic salmon migratory paths, swarms of sea lice latch onto wild juvenile salmon. They suffer, and many of them perish.
MIGHT LOOK QUIET, BUT THERE’S SUFFERING UNDER THE SURFACE.
But the biggest issue is that those nets often break, releasing thousands of these fish into open waters. And their synthetic DNA puts the whole species in danger when they mate with salmon in the wild – creating a new invasive species that can’t survive the natural salmon lifecycle.
WE LET THIS HAPPEN.
In September 2023, there was yet another breach in one of these pens. It is considered one of the biggest environmental disasters of our time. And very few people seem to know about it.
INDEX
1. In the marine waters of the Northwest, these orca whales prey exclusively on fish—and not just any fish: salmon, and preferentially Chinook, the biggest salmon in the Pacific. In this, these orcas (sometimes called Southern Residents) have plenty in common with some of the other longtime native residents of this place: the Lummi Nation.
2. In the Lummi language, the local orcas are called Qwe ‘lhol mechen.
3. When the Lummi first came to this Douglas fir and cedar cloaked land and its glacially carved bays and inlets, the Southern Residents were here to greet them.
