FARMED salmon should be sterilised to prevent them breeding with wild fish and introducing genetic weaknesses, experts have urged.
New research shows that while salmon bred in captivity for food consumption are genetically different from their wild relatives, they are just as fertile, potentially damaging wild populations if they escape and breed with them.
Millions of salmon escape from fish farms each year, and can get into wild spawning populations where they can reproduce and introduce negative genetic traits.
Lead researcher Professor Matt Gage, from the University of East Anglia's school of biological sciences, said: "Farmed salmon grow very fast, are aggressive, and not as clever as wild salmon when it comes to dealing with predators. These domestic traits are good for producing fish for the table, but not for the stability of wild populations.
"The problem is that farmed salmon can escape each year in their millions."
He said a solution was to induce a condition called "triploidy", by pressure-treating salmon eggs just after fertilisation, so the fish grows as normal but with both sex chromosomes, which makes most of them infertile.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article