"Evidence is mounting that pink salmon, pumped by the billions into the North Pacific from fish hatcheries, are upending marine ecosystems."
"The Tutka Bay Lagoon Hatchery is located at the edge of an isolated estuary off southcentral Alaska’s Kachemak Bay. Accessible only by boat from the closest hub community of Homer, the hatchery is one of 30 constructed by the state to boost commercial salmon fisheries that were struggling in the 1970s. On the last day of April, I board a water taxi in the Homer harbor to visit the facility. A raging westerly wind careens across the bay as the 10-meter landing craft slams into swells the skipper describes as “sporty.”
I’m visiting during the hatchery’s ponding process—the transfer of pink salmon fry from freshwater incubators on land to floating saltwater pens in the lagoon. This is the first step before the hatchery releases about 60 million paper clip–sized pink salmon into the ocean where they’ll disperse to feed and mature by next summer.
Fish farms, which are illegal in Alaska, raise salmon until they’re marketable size. But hatcheries take advantage of a salmon’s innate homing instinct, unleashing juvenile fish to feed and complete the growing process at sea, after which they’ll return to the waterbody near the hatchery to provide fish for commercial and recreational harvests. This practice is known sometimes as salmon ranching, and seafood marketers often label hatchery fish as “wild caught.” My goal is to get a feel for the scope of the industry, which is mostly run by NGOs funded by the sale of hatchery fish. I want to put into perspective mounting scientific evidence that these industrially produced fish are flooding marine ecosystems where they can impact everything from plankton to whales."
Miranda Weiss reports for Hakai magazine with photos by Nathaniel Wilder June 1, 2022.
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