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Table of Contents
Introduction
Introduction
Salmon are an important part of the our carbon and nutrient cycle. They migrate from oceans, traveling far up rivers to spawn and die. Predators feed on the traveling fish and their corpses, enriching forests along the way. The fry then hatch and travel back down to estuaries to grow stronger before heading back into our oceans.
Salmon such as Chinook are a favorite food of orca whales and other keystone species, making salmon themselves, key members of the environment.
Threats to Salmonids
Threats to Salmonids
The following are just some of the threats to salmonids, and are currently listed alphabetically. Later they may be arranged according to severity of threat.
Habitat Loss
Habitat Loss
Seagrass Meadow Loss
Seagrass Meadow Loss
Salmon feed on grouper and other orgnanisms who call seagrass beds home. When the grouper are overfished or the seagrass dies off from pollution or warming waters, then the salmon have nothing to eat.
Blocked Waterways
Blocked Waterways
Dams and weirs are one of the biggest threats to migratory fish including salmon and eels. They prevent the adult fish from reaching their spawning grounds, killing off entire generations in a single season.
Estuary Destruction
Estuary Destruction
Many estuaries have been damaged or lost due to humans building harmful infrastructure, draining land for farming, and other activities. Estuaries are critical environments which help juvenile fish, birds and many other species before they migrate on.
Immediate success for salmon habitat restoration in the Fraser River
2:55 minute video about the work being done to repair an old salmon nursery, which was destroyed to make a river deeper for ships.
Fish Consumption
Fish Consumption
Overfishing
Overfishing
As much as 90% of our oceans have already been fished to or beyond capacity. Bottom trawling has continuously dredged up the sea flood, destroying critical breeding and feeding habitats. The obsession with 'catching the biggest fish' has also meant we consistently remove the more fertile breeding females, leaving the smaller individuals who are either not old enough to reproduce, or who lay far fewer eggs than full grown females.
Overfishing harms salmonids not only by literally taking them out of the oceans, but by removing their own food, and the species who eat salmon. This is death by a thousand cuts, but thanks to fishing subsidies we now have a larger fishing fleet than ever before. It is estimated that we now have 3 times more fishing vessels out at sea than is sustainable, constantly searching deeper waters for fewer fish, instead of letting the remaining fish recover.
Aquaculture
Aquaculture
Aquaculture is considered by many to be the "solution" to overfishing, however the high density of fish in these aquatic factory farms causes the same high levels of disease and parasite spread that we see in land-based farming. This contributes to the following problems:
Escaped Fish
Escaped Fish
When fish escape from aquaculture pens, then can more easily spread sickness and parasites to wild fish populations, who are already struggling from parasites, disease, and other threats. This increases their risk of being wiped out.
Farmed fish also have different genetics from wild fish populations. The two types of fish can breed, which can negatively impact the wild populations chances of survival.
Antibiotics & Pesticides
Antibiotics & Pesticides
Antibiotics have been banned in a growing number of countries due to the harm they pose to ocean life. However farmers struggling to make a living keep fighting for the right to dump different types of toxic substances on their fish farms to kill off parasites such as sea lice. In recent years, they started using pesticides which were banned on land for harming bees. As the chemical arms race continues, scientists have to work fast to keep up with the industry, to understand the full consequences of dumping these chemicals on ecosystems which were not designed to live with them. Since the pens are just nets, the ocean water immediately washes through, transporting the chemicals across the seabed, and through the gills of any passing fish. This means that they immediately enter the wild food chain, including that of salmon and their prey, as well as the animals who feed on salmon.
Waste from Processing Facilities
Waste from Processing Facilities
Officially blood, guts, and other waste from processing facilities should be treated before being disposed of, but companies have been caught dumping raw blood and other waste directly into the ocean via pipes. Even worse, these pipes have been found right along the migration routes of endangered salmon species, increasing their chance of catching infectious pathogens.
Pollution
Pollution
This includes plastic from land and ships, ghost gear from the fishing industry, sewage and livestock waste, PFAS, chemicals from mining and factories, plus other sources of pollution.
Solutions
Solutions
Waterway Health
Waterway Health
Energy
Energy
Use types of energy that don't block waterways, such as solar, geothermal, and wind energy.
Riparian Zones
Riparian Zones
Deforestation, especially due to livestock farming, has stripped many rivers of their protective riparian zones. This means that more pollutants wash in, and that the water gets much hotter than waterways that still have their protective tree borders. With global warming, this means rivers are becoming hot enough to cook live fish more and more often, but this can be reversed.
A growing number of countries are not only making it illegal to deforest along river banks, but are also creating grant schemes to pay farmers to restore them back to their natural state.
Unblock Waterways
Unblock Waterways
This means dismantling unused or unproductive dams and weirs.
Fishing & Aquaculture
Fishing & Aquaculture
Plant-Based Alternatives
Plant-Based Alternatives
Plant-based doesn't just mean plants. It can include seaweed, mushrooms, and other healthy foods that aren't animal-based.
Seafood Alternatives
Seafood Alternatives
If you are worried you'll miss your favorite or culturally important seafood dishes, consider checking out the growing number of brands and DIY recipes that can replace different species such as fish, oysters and crabs.
We've listed some of these by species, including a little info about the species itself and some tasty alternatives for each one!
Support Sustainable Harvest Practices
Support Sustainable Harvest Practices
Not everyone has the luxury of avoiding seafood, especially in poor coastal regions where seafood can make up to 20% of the local diet.
A lot of "sustainable fishing" claims are just greenwashing with little oversight, and limits that are based on financial goals rather than sustainability, however there are some solutions worth supporting. For example one charity has been teaching women how to harvest oysters without destroying the mangroves the shellfish attach to, and even teaching them to farm with old oyster shells, reducing the risk to both mangroves and the women harvesting.
There's also a growing movement of regions banning oyster shells from landfills, instead offering communities drop off sites or pickup services for oyster shells to be recycled into reefs.
Eat Invasive Species
Eat Invasive Species
Another sustainable solution to those who still want to eat seafood, is to help catch and consume invasive species. For example the Lionfish Patrol App is designed to help people track down the invasive fish who have invaded the Caribbean and harm local wildlife. Resources such as Eat The Invaders: Lionfish offer info about where the species is invasive, and offers several recipes as well as additional links.
Biomes
Biomes
We often think of Salmon and their relatives as open ocean fish, but they can also be found in the following places.
Estuaries
Estuaries
Adults can feed and rest in estuaries on the way to their spawning grounds. When their offspring make their way out to sea, they can stop in estuaries to acclimate to the saline water (preventing stress and stunted growth), feed, and rest.
Waterways
Waterways
Unblocked waterways including rivers and streams are critical to the lifecycle of salmon and other migratory fish. Dams and weirs can kill off an entire generation of fish, who may never return without dismantling the blockage, and helping to reintroduce the lost species.
Seagrass Meadows
Seagrass Meadows
Salmon and various many other species "spend at least part of their life cycle in seagrass communities".
"When seagrass is destroyed, there are rapid, damaging effects throughout the marine ecosystem. For example, in Puget Sound in the United States, herring spawn in seagrass. If the seagrass disappears, the herring disappear, too. Then the salmon that ate the herring have nothing to eat. Next, the orcas that preyed on the salmon are left without their primary food source." - Seacology: Seagrass
Tools & Apps
Tools & Apps
Oceana
Oceana
New Zealand
New Zealand
Spyfish Aotearoa 🐙 🦈🐟 🐠 # 📷 "Our team deploys baited underwater cameras in marine reserves all over Aotearoa New Zealand to monitor the abundance and diversity of marine life.
Help us identify and count the species of fish recorded by the cameras. Your classifications will be used to determine the effectiveness of the reserves, inform marine management, and protect our taonga (treasured) species."
Maps
Maps
International
International
The Global Hydropower Tracker (Interactive) "is a worldwide dataset of hydropower facilities.
The tracker catalogs hydroelectric power plants with capacities of 75 megawatts (MW) or more. It includes all facilities at this capacity threshold for operating, announced, pre-construction, under construction, and shelved units. Some data are also included for plants that are either mothballed, retired, or canceled.
Projects are the fundamental level of organization for the Global Hydropower Tracker. A given project may consist of a single turbine-generator set, or multiple turbine-generator sets. When available, information about the capacity and number of turbine(s) is included. Multiple projects that are part of a collection of related power-generating infrastructure but which should be considered different plants due to distinct physical infrastructure, geographic separation, and/or other factors such as ownership or operation are linked together as a complex."
Organizations
Organizations
Europe
Europe
Dam Removal Europe "Rivers have always provided fundamental and vital services for mankind and the environment. However, dams disrupt the natural functioning of rivers and can cause a wide-scale decline in fish and other river wildlife. For these reasons, it is necessary to remove these barriers to return rivers to their natural, free-flowing state."
OSPAR "is the mechanism by which 15 Governments & the EU cooperate to protect the marine environment of the North-East Atlantic.
OSPAR started in 1972 with the Oslo Convention against dumping and was broadened to cover land-based sources of marine pollution and the offshore industry by the Paris Convention of 1974. These two conventions were unified, up-dated and extended by the 1992 OSPAR Convention. The new annex on biodiversity and ecosystems was adopted in 1998 to cover non-polluting human activities that can adversely affect the sea.
The fifteen Governments are Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom.
OSPAR is so named because of the original Oslo and Paris Conventions ("OS" for Oslo and "PAR" for Paris)."
Funding & Grants
Funding & Grants
Europe
Europe
Fund your dam removal "Want to remove a ‘ready to go ‘ dam but need extra funding? Try getting your removal crowdfunded!
We collaborate with WWF on their Crowdfunding Campaigns to remove dams! To see if crowdfunding is the right option for you, read below and also have a look here to see what previous campaigns looked like. Below is a list of information we require to help fundraise for your dam removal separated into three phases."
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