Sunday, December 26, 2021

"Farmed fish breeding with wild fish is changing the life cycle of wild fish"

This is exactly what you don't want and the reason this blog gets borderline hysterical when discussing farming genetically altered fish.

From PhysOrg, December 23:

A team of researchers from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research and Rådgivende Biologer, has found that interbreeding between farmed salmon and wild salmon is changing the life cycle of the wild salmon. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of scale growth patterns in thousands of salmon taken from rivers in Norway over the years 2010 to 2017. 

In this effort, the researchers looked at the impact of escaped farmed breeding with wild salmon. To that end, they collected and studied scales obtained from 6,900 adult wild Atlantic salmon living in 105 rivers in Norway over a seven-year period. They analyzed each of the sample patterns and compared them with other fish. The researchers also conducted genetic tests on the scales to learn the genetic history of the fish that donated them.

The researchers found that the biggest impact on the came early in life, when they were in the process of adapting themselves to live in saltwater. The researchers found it happened in fish with farmed ancestors earlier than in wild fish with no farmed ancestry. The researchers also found that the salmon with farmed fish backgrounds aged at a faster pace and also returned to rivers earlier to lay their eggs. Taken as a whole, the researchers found that female salmon with farmed ancestors grew to maturity 0.29 years earlier than native wild , and the number for males was 0.43 years.....

....MUCH MORE

And it is accelerated maturation—also known as the egg-to-cash-in-the-bank-cucle—where the loudest proponent of genetically engineered salmon is focusing.

Previously on this point:  

You Know Big Oil and Big Pharma But Are You Familiar With Big Salmon?
AquaBounty’s first commercial harvest of its GE salmon will be this month"
I'm not sure that this is the best way for me to get my omega-3 fatty acids. The genetic engineering was not focused on nutrition but rather on getting our finny friends to grow faster....

Genetically Modified Salmon Producer, AquaBounty to Sell Shares as Losses Deepen
AquaBounty’s Genetically Engineered Salmon is Coming
AquaBounty Is Now Selling Their Indiana-Raised Atlantic Salmon (but not the genetically modified fish, yet)
FrankenFish: "AquaBounty unveils 50,000 tonne target"
Here Come the Frankenfish: GMO Salmon Coming to a Store Near You

They absolutely must not allow these things to get anywhere near ocean salmon (or Great Lakes salmon for that matter).
And though the writer takes a blithely upbeat look at this development, we are posting it for information purposes only....
And in completely unrelated news, from the journal Nature:
Transgenic Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes Transfer Genes into a Natural Population