Why Buy Wild Alaska Seafood?
A Sustainable Harvest
- The Marine Stewardship Council has certified Alaska salmon
fisheries as sustainable. The Audobon Society, Sierra Club,
Environmental Defense and Monterey Bay Aquarium are among
the conservation groups advocating consumption of wild Alaska
salmon.
- Alaska is the world leader in successful fisheries management.
In Alaska, there is a healthy abundance of seafood. Alaska
is the only State in the nation whose constitution explicitly
mandates that all fish shall be utilized, developed, and
maintained on the sustained yield principle.
The Health Benefits
-
 Wild
salmon are high in beneficial omega-3 fatty acids. Medical
professionals recommend eating wild salmon, which has much
more omega-3 than farmed salmon.
- Clean water = clean fish. Alaska is thousands of miles
from large sources of pollution that can contaminate the
human food supply in other parts of the world. This distance,
combined with our planet’s pattern of circulation
of water and air, and Alaska’s own low population
density and lack of heavy industry, help ensure that Alaska’s
waters are among the cleanest in the world. Repeated studies
conducted by government and university scientists have demonstrated
that Alaska seafood is pure and clean.
- Wild salmon are 100% natural. They swim free in the cold,
clean waters of the north Pacific eating foods like shrimp,
herring and squid. Their flesh is naturally red with beautiful
shades that vary subtly depending on species, food source
and river of origin
The benefits to our small coastal
communities.
- Fishing is the economic backbone of every community in
the island archipelago of Southeast Alaska. Alaska's fisheries
are small boat fisheries. Often they are family-run businesses.
Your purchase of wild Alaska seafood helps ensure the continued
viability of Alaskan fishing families and the communities they
support. Southeast Alaska's commercial fishers are leaders in
local conservation issues. They embrace new technology and fishery
management philosophies as they prove beneficial, knowing they
must fish sustainably and provide a seafood product that meets
increasing consumer demand for high quality.
 The
Sad Story of Farm-Raised Salmon
 Salmon
farming as it is currently practiced is not ecologically
sound, and in fact threatens the health of wild salmon runs.
Conservation groups including the Audobon Society, Sierra
Club, Environmental Defense, and Monterey Bay Aquarium recommend
eating wild salmon and avoiding farm-raised salmon. In Alaska,
where salmon farming is not allowed, the wild salmon runs
are healthy and strong. In British Columbia, where salmon
farming is big business, the wild runs are in jeopardy.- Farmed salmon routinely escape
from their pens. These escaped farmed Atlantic's
compete with wild salmon for food and spawning habitat.
Escaped farm salmon can spread disease to wild salmon and
may interbreed with wild salmon thereby reducing the latter's
fitness. Escaped farmed Atlantics threaten to displace native
Pacific salmon, substituting a single strain of exotic fish
for a diverse native stock.
 Eating
wild salmon is better for your health. Farm raised
salmon live in crowded pens in unsanitary conditions ripe
for the spread of disease. Salmon farmers combat this threat
by lacing the salmon feed with heavy doses of vaccines,
antibiotics, and other chemicals. Farmed salmon are fed
more antibiotics per pound than any other farmed animal.
In addition, farm raised salmon are fed synthetic chemicals
to artificially color the naturally gray flesh.- Farmed salmon pollute. Fecal
wastes, uneaten food, antibiotics and chemicals flow in
huge quantities from the fish pens directly into the coastal
waters. This degrades water quality and destroys nursery
areas that support wild ocean fisheries. Diseases can spread
from farmed salmon to local wild stocks.
- Salmon farming depletes fisheries
resources. Farm raised salmon are fed fish products
extracted from wild-caught fish. They represent a net loss
of protein, since it takes 3-5 pounds of fishfeed to produce
one pound of farmed Atlantic salmon.
- Large-scale salmon aquaculture
is displacing small family-owned fishing businesses. A
small number of very large multinational corporations own
most of the salmon farms. They are able to flood the salmon
market with low-cost farmed salmon. This has driven prices
for wild salmon so low that large numbers of small fishing
businesses are struggling, which in turn is crippling the
economies of small, fishing-dependent communities. Low-wage
jobs in aquaculture cannot replace these vibrant small fishing
businesses.
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