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Article: Study: Sea lice from salmon farms sending wild fish to extinction
- Article from:
- AP Worldstream
- Article date:
- December 14, 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 This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.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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The more salmon that growers pack into farms near rivers and streams, the greater the harm done to wild salmon populations, new research suggests.
The problem is sea lice, natural parasites that normally attach to adult salmon with little ill effect and have little contact with vulnerable juvenile salmon.
That changes when the fish farms move in, according to a study to be published Friday in the journal Science.
In natural conditions, the adult salmon that carry the sea lice are not in the migration channels and rivers at the same time as young pink and chum salmon, so the little fish are rarely exposed.
When fish farms move in, hundreds of thousands of adults are ...