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Article: Study: Sea Lice Killing Off Wild Salmon
- Article from:
- AP Online
- Article date:
- December 13, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. (Hide copyright information)
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Researchers have new evidence that as the density of salmon farms increases, they can drive nearby wild salmon runs to extinction. The problem is sea lice, a natural parasite that normally attaches to adult salmon with little ill effect and has little contact with vulnerable juvenile salmon. All that changes, however, when fish farms move in.
A study in the journal Science to be published Friday shows that sea lice infestations around salmon farms in British Columbia's Broughton Archipelago have reached a density so high they are killing juvenile wild pink salmon at a rate fast enough to drive local runs to extinction in eight years if nothing is done _ and four years have ...