Oh Ben this is near and dear to my heart, having worked in and around salmon conservation for 5 years.

We're also killing the fish because of hatchery grown fish - they are hatched and raised as itty bitty babies, then released out in the wild. Hatchery fish lessen genetic diversity, and compete with wild salmon for food out in the ocean.

Then there are the dreaded farmed salmon. In addition to putting commercial fishermen/women/robots out of work, farmed salmon in British Columbia have been exposing the wild fish to sea lice. EW!

Sea lice? SEA LICE? I am totally never going into the ocean again.

But on the plus side, global warming is opening up new habitat in the Arctic Ocean, where there are signs of new chinook salmon runs, which is great for, you know, all of you in Barrow, AK.

If you want to see exactly how screwed the fishies are, check out the salmon threats map. See where all the dams are (salmon jump high, but can't get over big dams)
http://boris.ecotrust.org/impact/index.phtml?layer=4

I've heard of the problems of which GX speaks. When I lived in Bangor, I heard about the problems caused by paper mills, which delignified wood pulp by cooking in with chlorine and dumping the effluent into the rivers, including the Penobscot. Mixing organic matter and chlorine at high temperatures yields PCBs and dioxin, which are nasty bioaccumulants that concentrate in fatty tissue, like the fat of a salmon that's eaten smaller contaminated fish or insects. So there was that. However, I understand that those jobs are gone from Maine and the wood pulp is now shipped abroad to be bleached in countries that don't know or care what PCBs are before it's sold back to us.

The salmon also can get upstream past hydroelectric dams to spawn thanks to ingenious fish ladders. However, the fry go through the turbines on the way back down, which makes for a lovely salmon mousse.

I tried to fish for salmon once. I fell in. It looked like this (praying for a paragraph break here):

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o/~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That totally didn't turn out right. There was supposed to be a left-leaning slashie on the left side of the "o" so it looked like someone in the water with his arms up. Something in the site's software ate it.

We have family in AK that always brings tasty salmon with them when they come to visit. There has been talk from my dad that he will move back when my sister is off to college. I can't see my step-mom wanting to be back to Sand Point (AKA the world's tiniest island that is covered with bears who like to eat you if you wander alone at night without your gun).

Sadie did you see Grizzly Man? *shudder* I still have nightmares from that story.

GX, you're a jack of all trades! Who knew we had a salmon expert. I love all these health experts telling us to eat fish 2-3 times per week, oh but it'll cost you $90 per person and it's chock full of heavy metals, not to mention the sustainability issue. I can't keep it all straight. I'm gonna go jump in a turbine now...JTC - not a bad picture!

Regina, I hear you. I keep meaning to put together a "sustainable fish eating decision tree", but I'll tell you, it's incredibly complicated. Except jellyfish: disgusting, cheap, plentiful. They're really your best bet.

I've never seen Grizzly Man - but now I'm curious! I'll just say I'm glad he didn't tell me the bear stories until a few years ago. If I had known that when I was 9 and running free with my buddies on the island all summer I'd probably have been quite the neurotic mess!

Jellyfish and squid! And probably skates. My brother studies skates. There are LOTS of them.

As soon as jellyfish get a cool Italian name like calamari, they'll be all the rage.