UK: Study finds no link between salmon farming and harmful algal blooms

Study finds no link between salmon farming and harmful algal blooms. Marine scientists investigating the formation of harmful algal blooms (HABs) in Scottish waters have found no link between salmon farming and the likelihood of a bloom forming. Such blooms can have devastating effects on aquaculture sites. Humans eating shellfish that have absorbed these toxic phytoplankton can become ill and blooms can also be fatal to farmed fish. In a paper published in the journal Harmful Algae, researchers from the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) in Oban concluded that farmed salmon biomass alone had no significant effect on cell abundance of any of the studied phytoplankton. Prof Keith Davidson, a co-author on the paper said: “It would be a reasonable assumption to make that excess nutrients from fish farms could have the potential to ‘feed’ nearby phytoplankton, increasing their abundance and, therefore, an intensification of HABs. “However, our mathematical model-based ...