The Wild Salmon Debate

About 10 years ago my friend Charles Johnson, the Vermont state naturalist, called me with a question about salmon. I was surprised and flattered to have Charles ask me about anything natural, for Charles holds an encyclopedic knowledge about the natural world and a deep but nonpedantic environmental ethic. Usually I call him. When I was writing a book about New England’s forests, I called Charles, and he made bog ecology, which is as complicated as calculus, seem as plain as pancakes. And when a woman I’d fallen in love with told me she had always wanted to see moose, I called Charles and asked him where to find moose. "Victory Bog," he said. At Victory Bog my love and I found moose, and three years later we married.

Now Charles was calling me. "Got a question," he said. "We’ve got some people over for dinner"—from the background came a rowdy banter—"and we were having this discussion. We’re wondering is it OK to eat salmon?"

This explained the call. As Charles knew, I am an avid salmon angler, and I had just written a book called The Great Gulf, about decimated ocean fisheries, and several articles about salmon. This made me a sort of salmon-expert-for-the-day. Charles, meanwhile, was as confused as most eco-conscious people are about the shifting fates and statuses of the world’s saltwater fish.

"How do you mean ‘OK’?" I asked.

"Well, you know—ecologically," said Charles. "Are salmon fisheries sustainable?"

"Depends," I said. "What kind of salmon?"

"Atlantic."

"I was afraid of that," I said. "Atlantics are lovely fish. But any Atlantic salmon you buy in a store came from a farm."

"Oh," said Charles. "Is farmed salmon not so good?"

"Did you already eat this fish?" I asked.

He laughed. "That bad, huh?"

A little while later, when I had explained it all, he said, "I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know this."

I assured him—this was 10 years ago—that few people did. "Probably even most state naturalists don’t know this."

"Maybe," he said. "I better go. Dessert’s ready. And I gotta hide a salmon carcass.

"But do me a favor, will you?" he asked. "Don’t tell anybody about this."

The "Is It Ok?" Algorithm

Now, 10 years later, many people, both foodies and greenies, still struggle to answer Charles Johnson’s question: Is it OK to eat farmed salmon? If the answer seems elusive, it’s partly because things change—ecosystems change, the fishing and aquaculture industries change (or not), and we learn more about how those industries affect fish populations, ecology and economies. But the answer is slippery mainly because it depends so heavily on what the meaning of the word "OK" is. OK is personal. The most satisfying answer comes from what you might call your own Is-That-Food-OK Algorithm—a weighting of variables that will be as simple or complex as the criteria you bring to it.

For some, taste trumps all. Others give weight to price or health or local economic or environmental impact. There are plenty of good reasons to eat salmon: It tastes good. It’s easy, fast and aesthetically pleasing to prepare. It’s incredibly healthy; no common fish delivers more of the omega-3 fatty acids that help keep arteries clear and hearts strong. The past decade has shown that these fatty acids may also strengthen the immune system and eyesight, and even improve mental health. These pluses have helped inspire Americans to more than triple their consumption of fresh and frozen salmon in the last 15 years, from 50,000 metric tons in 1990 to 180,000 in 2004.# The only fish we eat more of are shrimp and canned tuna.

But the main reason we’re eating more salmon is because a burgeoning worldwide salmon-farming industry has almost quadrupled the supply of salmon in the last two decades, making farmed salmon obtainable almost anywhere, anytime, for under $8 a pound. These farmed salmon make up about 80 percent of the huge increase in U.S. consumption since the late ’80s. The "Is Farmed Salmon OK?" question therefore relies at least partly on the impact of that expanding salmon aquaculture industry.

How does one sort this out? We’re talking about food here, and values, so I won’t presume to tell you how to weigh things. But I do know that the variables in the salmon equation have changed since Charles Johnson phoned me a decade ago. In particular, we know a lot more now than we did then about salmon’s health benefits—and a lot more about how salmon farms affect the environment and wild fisheries. Time to recalibrate the algorithm.