Hundreds of tons of salmon killed by algal poisoning - Canada

[donsu]

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert_read.php?cid=13511&cat=dis&lang=eng


Hundreds of tonnes of farmed Atlantic salmon have been killed by algae blooms at a farm in the village of Klemtu. The Lochalsh Bay farm, one of around 35 sites operated by Marine Harvest Canada, was hit by two algae blooms, the latest two weeks ago. "We haven't seen algae blooms in Klemtu, so it was unusual for us to have this occur up there," said Clare Backman, Marine Harvest Canada's director of community relations and environmental compliance. "The species was Heterosigma akashiwo, which is a fairly well-known species that causes damage to fish." Salmon farmers have had to learn to deal with such algae blooms, which are a widespread and commonplace problem for farms along the entire coast, particularly in the late summer and early fall. When high concentrations of Heterosigma are transported by wind or water currents into salmon net pens, it can kill fish. "We have systems that work fairly well to protect our fish from the harmful effects when these algae blooms occur, and they don't occur every year," Mr. Backman said. "It takes a special combination of sunshine, water temperature and nutrients for them to bloom, but when they do, they can be very damaging to our fish. So we tend to avoid places where there's frequent algae blooms, and the Sunshine Coast was an area like that." The dead fish are pumped into the hold of a vessel, then transported to a composting facility.

That process had already been completed at the Lochalsh Bay facility for the first group of salmon that died off in August when a second group of fish died during a second algae bloom. "The total amount of fish that we've removed from up there was actually 260 metric tonnes, which is certainly fish we don't like to lose," Mr. Backman said. "We like those fish to be grown and go to market and go through the Klemtu processing plant in a year or so, but it's unavoidable sometimes with these unpredictable phytoplankton bloom events." It equates to about 10 per cent of the total salmon stocks for the Lochalsh Bay farm, but is still a considerable amount compared with their average loss of 5 per cent, which occurs during the entire two years the fish are grown. "With the change in the weather now moving to rain and cooler temperatures, we generally see the algae blooms subside everywhere," Mr. Backman said.)
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another year, if lucky, to replace this food source

[kestrel91316]

1. I suggest they compost the fish to get a tiny bit of use out of them.

But they will probably just dump them into the ocean.

[donsu]

2. maybe not, I use fish emulsion as fertilizer - there are brands

but not as many as for man made chemical fertilizers