Grein um hryllinginn í boði Arctic Fish og Arnarlax birtist á vefsíðu The Guardian í morgun. Engu öðru efni hefur verið deilt jafn mikið í dag á vef útgáfunnar.
Heimurinn er að vakna. Við þurfum að fá fólk í öðrum löndum til að hætta að kaupa lax úr sjókvíaeldi. Meirihluti Íslendinga hefur tekið þá ákvörðun fyrir all nokkru.
Í umfjöllun The Guardian segir m.a.
In August, the escape of 3,500 salmon from a farm owned by Arctic Fish, one of two companies with pens in Tálknafjörður, the site of the current lice outbreak, caused outrage among environmentalists and led to an investigation by Icelandic police.
Arctic Fish is one of the country’s largest salmon-farming companies, owned by Norwegian-based Mowi, the world’s largest salmon producer. The escape sparked a protest by Björk. The Icelandic singer is releasing a song with the Catalan star Rosalía to benefit activists fighting salmon farms, which she claimed were having a “devastating effect” on Icelandic wildlife.
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Arnarlax said that not all the pens were necessarily affected. Once slaughtered, the fish would be processed for animal feed, it said.
Mast is investigating the cause of the incident, Bergsdóttir said, which escalated after the authority gave permission for the outbreak to be treated with insecticide.
Worryingly, the insecticide did not kill all of the lice and the infestation grew, Bergsdóttir said. “In two to three weeks, there were huge increases in lice.”
One theory the agency would investigate is whether the lice had mutated, she said. “We know lice are very adaptable and one method they use is mutation, especially with the drugs.”
Trygve Poppe, a salmon expert and former professor of fish health at the Norwegian school of veterinary science, said: “It is the worst I have ever seen, both in the extent of the lesions and the number of fish affected. It’s an animal welfare disaster.”
Infestations of salmon lice were increasing across the industry, in Norway, Scotland and Iceland, he said. This year, eight open-pen farms were given permission to use insecticides including emamectin, azamethiphos and deltamethrin.
Lice cause pain and blood loss in the fish, Poppe said. “You can see from the pink heads, the skin barrier between the fish and the water is completely gone,” he added. “The fish are leaking, causing a loss of balance. Most of the fish are just moribund. We are seeing the terminal stages of their lives.”
Veiga Grétarsdóttir, a kayaker and activist who took the drone footage of the disposal of the salmon at Tálknafjörður last week, said she was shocked by the condition of the fish.
“I don’t think I saw one healthy fish,” said Grétarsdóttir, who collaborates with the Icelandic Wildlife Fund. “They were moving very slowly, like zombie fish; dead but moving.”
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