- Atomic salmon from a filthy Russian sea have arrived
in Scottish rivers, sparking fears that they will pollute the food chain
and pose a further threat to already beleaguered wild fish stocks.
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- The Kola Fjord in north-west Russia is the world's largest
rubbish dump for military nuclear waste. It is also home to Oncorhynchus
gorbusha, a species of salmon native to the Pacific but taken west to be
farmed.
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- And where there are fish farms there are escapes. Now
the Pacific salmon have turned up on our shores. Last August one was caught
in the River Leven, the stream that drains Loch Lomond.
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- A dead fish has also been found on the banks of Prince
Charles's favourite Atlantic salmon stream, the River Naver in North Sutherland.
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- For years ghost ships carrying hundreds of spent nuclear
fuel assemblies from the reactors of icebreakers and the nuclear-powered
submarines have sat in the White Sea Kola areas. Nuclear waste was jammed
in vessels and ditched on shore, because there were no permanent storage
facilities.
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- In 2001 Western experts discovered radioactive waste
stored in rusting tanks and containers on the ground, with no roof to protect
against the elements or to prevent rain and snow from washing radioactive
liquids into a bay.
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- Bruce Sandison represents the Salmon Farm Monitor, a
group which campaigns for the restriction of salmon farming. He said yesterday
that the arrival of atomic Pacific pinks could finish off the Salmo Salar,
the wild Atlantic salmon, in Scotland.
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- He pointed out that wild salmon numbers were already
in steep decline in Scotland and warned that more escaped farm animals
were now being caught than genuinely wild ones.
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- Disease from farms and the dilution of the gene pool
by spawning escapees already threatened the Atlantic salmon's future.
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- A recent estimate suggested there were only 500,000 wild
Atlantic salmon left. Many of these, said Sandison are likely to have been
genetically contaminated already.
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- Citing Scottish Executive figures, he said: 'Since 1998
77 incidents have been reported involving the escape of more than one million
farm salmon and trout from their cages.'
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- Researchers found that wild salmon were vulnerable to
extinction because of genetic and competitive pressures from farmed fish.
Experiments with wild and farmed salmon hybrids in fresh and marine water
showed that the offspring of fish that had interbred had a much lower survival
rate - some 70 per cent of the fish died in the first few weeks of life.
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- Overall, farmed salmon were much less successful at surviving
in the wild than native salmon and were unlikely to return to rivers to
spawn. However, they grew quicker than wild salmon and the ones that did
survive displaced many of their wild cousins from the rivers.
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- The team, led by Dr Philip McGinnity of Ireland's national
agency, the Marine Institute, and Professor Andy Ferguson of Queen's University
Belfast, warned that accidental and deliberate introductions of farmed
salmon could lead to extinction of vulnerable wild populations of Atlantic
salmon.
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- Dr Paulo Prodohl, a co-researcher on the study, said
wild salmon were the product of thousands of years of evolution, which
had 'fine-tuned' their genes to survive in the natural environment. The
introduction of new genes from fish that had been bred in captivity could
wreak havoc on local gene pools.
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- Now, those wild creatures that evade domestic farmed
escapees face the prospect of coming into contact with the atomic Russian
stock. 'We are extremely worried about this latest development. This distinctive,
humped back fish has now entered Scottish waters. Only time will tell what
impact it will have on the environment.'
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- Anglers and fish farmers have already had to deal with
the presence of British radioactive waste entering the food chain. In July
the Food Standards confirmed the presence of Technetium 99 in salmon on
sale in supermarkets. However, it was deemed to be of such a low level
that it presented no threat to human health.' But nuclear waste was being
summarily dumped in north-west of Russia until 1994.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2003
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,13369,1081155,00.html
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