Impacts & Issues: Diseases

Workers dumping dead farmed salmon ("morts").

High concentrations of fish in open netcages provide the perfect conditions for breeding disease among fish. Their unnatural densities and high stress levels make farmed salmon highly susceptible to naturally occurring salmon diseases.

In this artificial environment, diseases like infectious hematopoietic necrosis (IHN) and bacterial kidney disease (BKD) are amplified and spread rapidly.

Because netcage salmon farms are open to the ocean, these diseases can be passed back and forth between wild and farmed salmon.

Learn more:

• Georgia Strait Alliance signs on to Infectious Salmon Anemia letter over concerns the disease could be spread by fish farms here in BC - January 26, 2009
• Questions and Answers with Dr. Neil Frazer on Infectious Salmon Anaemia - January 2009
• Coalition Challenges Feds to Stop Spread of Disease  - June 2005