Fish free or die?
Sunday, 16 December 2007 by Jacob TomawZach sent me this post about free vs. farmed fish in British Columbia. I have posted about oceanic fisheries before.
A new study found that the way fish farms are organized in BC led to a increase in wild fish deaths due to parasites. The BBC story reporting the study describes some changes that can be made to the fisheries in order to reduce this risk.
Are there similar issues with bird farms today? Is this a factor in the spread of Avian Flu?
Do you think the undomesticated brothers of ancient cows, pigs, and goats had these troubles too. Seems likely, as I don’t know of many wild versions of these beasts.
December 16th, 2007 at 17:37
Wild cows? Yeah, that’s a head scratcher. But pigs and goats are common in the wild.
I would mention that there is also a concern with deer raised in captivity and spreading diseases to wild populations, too.
December 17th, 2007 at 16:11
I cannot read the article at work, but I have heard of similar things with poultry. Based on “Guns, Germs and Steel”, one of the things that happened when our Eurasian ancestors domesticated animals, is that we created brand-new, extremely deadly diseases by living so close to our animals and allowing germs to cross back and forth. His argument is that they then took these diseases to Africa and the new world, and the resulting disease outbreaks helped them triumph over the locals.
Lots of farmers in China still live like this, basically sharing living space with their chickens. There is a particular strain of influenza that lives benignly in chickens and occasionally crosses over to humans, but can’t go from human to human - the so-called “bird flu”. The worry is that this thing will mutate, and be able to transmit from person to person, and be the next super-bad plague.
My guess is (and I wish I could get to the article), we’re breeding fish in captivity in such a way as to make them susceptible to parasites. This keeps the parasite populate large, and leaks into the wild, and kills fish in the wild that aren’t immune to it. As to wild birds, I believe the CDC finds wild birds that have died from some form of the “bird flu” but I don’t get the impression that it’s a big problem or anything.