Growing Fish Farms and Huge Ecological, Health, Ocean Pollution Costs

The coast of Peru is being blighted by an industry sprung up to satisfy the West’s voracious appetite for salmon – marine life, human health and whole ecosystems are paying the price. The Ecologist Film Unit investigates

It is a life of poverty and filth. Standing above the tangle of rusting metal pipes and concrete-rimmed pools that lead into the ocean, Segundo Vorges and Luis Diaz explain how they scratch a living here in Chimbote harbour, Peru. They are part of a twilight community of ‘pipe people’ who survive by reclaiming waste discharged from nearby fishmeal production plants.

When operational, the pipes carry effluent – an unsavoury mixture of fish bodies, scales and fat – into the pools and the sea. Vorges and Diaz skim off the useful waste, particularly the fat, before shovelling it into containers. Some is turned into pellets used for cooking and sold at nearby markets. Whole families, including children, are involved in this dirty enterprise, earning $3 per day.

This shocking scene is a million miles from the succulent pink salmon fish-steaks on sale across the western world. But the two are inextricably linked: much of the fishmeal and oil produced in Peru from anchovy fish stocks is the principal ingredient of feed used in salmon farming.

Fishmeal is a protein-rich flour produced by cooking, drying and milling raw fish and trimmings. Fish oil is a byproduct of fishmeal processing. Both are largely derived from oily fish including anchovies, herrings and sardines. High nutritional values – both contain omega-3 fatty acids, beneficial both to humans and animals – has led to massive demand from the aquaculture industry.

Globally, the sector is worth almost $2.5 billion, with 400 plants producing approximately six million tonnes of fish flour and one million tonnes of fish oil annually. Principal fisheries supplying producers of meal and oil are situated in European waters and in the Pacific bordering Peru and Chile. Peru is the world’s leading exporter, supplying 28 per cent of the UK’s fishmeal in 2007.

After processing, meal and oil is usually exported for mixing with binders, such as soya, for output as feed pellets. Salmon are carnivorous and require large amounts of feed: environmentalists estimate 4kg of wild caught fish are required to produce 1kg of farmed fish, fuelling claims that aquaculture is not sustainable.

‘We know the factories are responsible for these [problems], because when it operates the illnesses gets worse,’ says one young woman, holding her young child. ‘When the smoke comes it gets so bad we need a mask.’ Another says when the plants are operating the pollution is so thick you cannot physically remain on the street.

Pupils at a Chimbote school afflicted by the industry also complain of health problems and environmental damage. ‘It causes fungal growths, breathlessness, we cannot breath,’ says one boy. Another says: ‘As well as make us sick it changes the colour of the ocean. We used to play years back, but now it’s polluted there is nowhere to play’.

During a tour of a row of dilapidated classrooms, teacher Yolanda Lara Cortez claims the industry has proved disruptive and costly. ‘We had to build walls to keep [smoke] out,’ she says. ‘We used to hold classes here, but the smoke, noise and pollution was so bad we can no longer use them.’ Other schools have suffered too, according to Cortez, with as many as 5,000 pupils affected by the pollution.

The salmon rush

A thousand miles south of Chimbote, the windswept mountains of Patagonia drop steeply into the stormy ocean that surrounds this region of Chile. This is salmon farming country, and the hub of Chile’s multibilliondollar aquaculture industry, soon to outgrow Norway’s as the world’s biggest. It is estimated that 40 per cent of all salmon eaten in the USA is produced here, as is much of the frozen salmon supplied to the UK and EU.

NOTE: Simple solution is to vote with your $$$ and do not support farm raised fish, This fish meal is combined with GMO soy, antibiotics and presented as a healthy alternative to wild fish.