Messing with Mother Nature

Jurassic Park gave us a lesson in messing with Mother Nature but that was fiction while the negative impact open net salmon fish farms is having on wild salmon is not. To quote: "Sea lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis) are naturally occurring parasites of wild salmon that latch onto the fishes’ skin in the open ocean. The lice are transmitted by a tiny free-swimming larval stage. Open-net salmon farms are a haven for these parasites, which feed on the fishes’ skin and muscle tissue. Adult salmon can survive a small number of lice, but juveniles headed from the river to the sea are very small, thin-skinned, and vulnerable. In the Broughton Archipelago, the juvenile salmon must run an 80-kilometer gauntlet of fish farms before they reach the open ocean. "

The possible danger using this tech to farm other wild species (tuna halibut etc., etc, .) could be immense if problems like this crop up as man cannot know all the interconnected relationships that species like salmon have with the environment in which they live. "Scientists expect a 99% collapse in another four years, or two salmon generations, if the infestations continue."

No doubt, this is a Wicked Problem writ large.