This is some very interesting info on salmon ranching in Alaska. Many of the comparisons between salmon ranching in Alaska and salmon farming here in BC are absolutely staggering and really shows how massive and intense salmon ranching actually is.
http://www.certifiedorganic.bc.ca/rcbtoa/services/NAsept-oct-pgs14-15c.pdf
From the PFD:
Ranching introduces 250 times as many smolts, consumes 70 times as much feed to produce less than 10 times the volume of marketable salmon!
Whilst the salmon farming sector in BC has been subjected to scrutiny, vilification, political opportunism and uncertainty, salmon ranching has been allowed
to operate without constraint. Heavily subsidized by governments, and demonstrably less efficient in terms of feed conversion, ranching also creates intense competition for food to native wild salmon and is a real threat to the integrity of the gene pool of the wild fish – but it receives none of the scrutiny and negative publicity directed at salmon farming.
I agree with the majority of this, and it brings up a point by that guy (UBC) in clayquotkids video. about what we don't know what happens in the ocean and it's ability to produce enough food for what we are dumping in. both ranch, hatchery.
where I don't think its a fair comparison is saying that the end goal of ranching is producing 'marketable' salmon..... I definitely could be wrong cause I only read a few articles, but wasn't ranching embraced because both sporties and the commercial guys were benefiting?
also, the one huge plus of ranching as opposed to farming..... again I only read a few articles. was that these salmon return to rivers to try to spawn naturally. If they are, then they are adding a significant amount of nutrients to the river during spawning and death. as opposed to pooping all over the bottom in the same spot.
of course you could then argue that these ranched fish are screwing up the natural populations with interbreeding and resource competition. blaaaa this issue makes me wanna crack a beer at 9 in the morning.
now imagine if we dumped all the money into habitat restoration instead of lawyers and commissions and lobbyists and advertising.