The Wild Salmon Crisis – Reflections from the Wild Salmon Connections Event

Take a walk round your local supermarket and you may think that we have salmon in abundance. The shelves are flooded with salmon fillets, smoked salmon or sushi. You may even find a salmon sandwich in your meal deal.

But the reality is wild salmon are facing an existential crisis.

At the end of January, Feedback was lucky enough to attend Wild Salmon Connections – hosted by the Missing Salmon Alliance at Fishmongers’ Hall to learn more about wild salmon conservation and how sustainable and just food systems can play their part.

At the event we heard from a range of voices including children, Indigenous peoples, scientists, activists, politicians, artists, businesses: the list goes on.  All confirmed the undeniably critical state our wild salmon populations and the importance of us taking action to protect them.

90% of salmon populations in England are at risk of collapse and in the last 25 years the number of salmon that have returned to Britain’s rivers has decreased by around 70%. These heartbreaking stats point to the reality that we could be facing the extinction of wild salmon in the UK in our lifetime.

But how come we have so much salmon available in our supermarkets, I hear you ask?

The majority of this salmon produced around the world is farmed. The salmon you find in your supermarket has lived a life far removed from its wild counterpart, condemned to spend its days swimming around in an open-net pen in the sea rather than thousands of miles through open water. But this way of producing salmon is also a key driver for the decline in wild salmon populations.

Excess food, faeces and chemicals used on farmed salmon seep out of these open net pens polluting local waterways. Diseases and parasites such as sea lice infect farmed salmon and pass onto wild salmon as they undertake their natural migrations. Farmed salmon escapees get loose into our oceans and rivers, breeding with wild populations and weakening their genetics as a result. Combine this with the increase in sea temperatures due to climate breakdown and the fate of wild salmon becomes increasingly challenging.

But we can change this.

If we end salmon farming, then pollution, disease and escapee risk will all decrease, improving wild salmon’s chances of survival.

During the conference there was lots of talk about creating ‘closed containment’ salmon farms to prevent pollution from seeping into our seas. However, this tech solution does not solve the systemic issues baked into salmon farming.

The animal welfare implications of these systems are grave, and technological issues have brought about devastating mass mortality events where thousands of fish die. For example, Sustainable Blue, the ‘poster child’ Canadian company, supposedly leading the charge on land-based aquaculture, announced that it is facing financial difficulties and entering receivership following the death of almost 100,000 market-ready salmon worth CAD $5 million due to a disastrous equipment failure.

Plus, these systems do not solve the ‘food-feed’ competition inherent in farming salmon. Research published in 2024 has shown it takes up to 6 kilograms of wild fish to produce just 1 kilogram of farmed salmon.  Even if closed containment systems did improve pollution, they would still be perpetuating a deeply inefficient food production system, driving the extraction of wild fish around the world which could be eaten by people directly.

At Feedback we are continuously challenging the salmon farming industry which is driving the extraction of wild fish from around the world and damaging wild salmon populations. By calling out their greenwash, wasteful practices and social injustices, we are protecting our oceans and creating food systems that are good for people and the planet.

Fawn Sharp, former President of the National Congress of American Indians, reminded us at the conference that salmon cannot get out of the rivers to defend themselves. It’s now over to us all to raise our voices and protect these precious species.

You can learn more about the Wild Salmon Connections event here.