This week on Possibly, we’re taking a look at what’s going behind the scenes of your local grocery store’s seafood aisle. When you choose between farm-raised and wild caught salmon, what environmental impacts are you actually choosing between?
Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
Imagine you’re in the seafood aisle, staring down rows of salmon filets – farm-raised, or wild-caught? One’s cheaper than the other, and glancing at your cart, you know you could really save some money. But the other has that deep, rich color. Which do you go for?
Megan Hall: We had Rachel Chae and Andrea Li from our Possibly Team look into this.
Rachel Chae: Hi Megan!
Andrea Li: Thanks for having us!
Megan Hall: So, what should I pick? Farm-raised or wild salmon?
Rachel Chae: To get some perspective, we talked to Dr. Julie Firman.
Julie Firman: I am a fisheries biologist at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Rachel Chae: Julie says, Farm-raised salmon and wild salmon look like cousins in stores, but their lives couldn’t be more different.
Andrea Li: Wild salmon are tough. They’ve had to earn their survival.
Rachel Chae: Farm-raised salmon are bred and fed in controlled net pens. There’s no need to hunt for food, or escape predators.
Andrea Li: But this luxury comes at a cost.
Rachel Chae: Crowding creates the perfect conditions for disease. Imagine thousands of fish packed together in a net pen. It’s basically a breeding ground for bacteria and a parasite called sea lice.
Julie Firman: So that’s like a little tiny crustacean that lives on the skin of fish. It doesn’t usually kill them, but it does cause stress.
Andrea Li: Sea lice latch onto salmon. This makes them grow slower, weaker, and more vulnerable to disease.
Rachel Chae: But disease isn’t the only problem in salmon farms. All of that concentrated waste – feces, and excess feed– doesn’t just disappear. Without the right ocean currents, it builds up underwater.
Julie Firman: If you have too many nutrients in seawater, that can cause algal blooms, and then decrease the oxygen in the water and make it a less salubrious place for any of those aquatic organisms to live.
Rachel Chae: So these problems aren’t just staying inside the pens. Sometimes, they spill over, literally.
Andrea Li: In 2017, a massive salmon farm off the Pacific coast of Washington collapsed, releasing more than 300,000 farmed Atlantic salmon into the wild.
Rachel Chae: In accidents like this, a lot of the farm raised salmon die.
Julie Firman: They don’t have the genes that are necessary in order to be able to survive in that environment.
Rachel Chae: But…
Julie Firman: …if you have enough to plant a new population, then over time, that population can grow.
Andrea Li: And that’s where things get even more complicated. It’s possible for these escaped farm raised fish to interbreed with wild salmon.
Rachel Chae: This weakens the overall salmon population, making future generations less capable of surviving in their own natural environment.
Rachel Chae: But, even if they don’t interbreed, farm-raised salmon that escape still pose a threat. More fish in the ecosystem means more competition for food, space, and survival.
Andrea Li: It doesn’t help that wild salmon are pretty picky with their homes. They need specific gravel beds to lay their eggs, but when farmed salmon invade their habitat, things get messy.
Julie Firman: If you’ve got a lot of different fish that are all using the same gravel. They’ll actually dig up each other’s nests and destroy each other’s eggs as they’re building their own nest.
Rachel Chae: So, salmon farms don’t just affect wild salmon—they can disrupt the entire marine ecosystem.
Julie Firman: You know I know that farm raised fish is a lot less expensive than wild fish, and it’s still a really good source of healthy animal protein. But if someone did choose to eat farm raised fish, I would really do your homework to make sure that the farms that you’re getting from, that they’re doing it in a way that’s more sustainable.
Megan Hall: So what can we do?
Andrea Li: Start off by looking for stickers that say “Best Aquaculture Practice” – or B.A.P. This usually means that the farm follows sustainable practices.
Rachel Chae: It’s easy to grab whatever looks the cheapest, but taking a second to check where and how your salmon was raised can truly make a difference beyond just the dining table.
Megan Hall: Got it. Thanks Rachel and Andrea.
That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or Bluesky at “askpossibly”
Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.
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