Any ideas. On the package and on their site says it s tasmanian waters but nothing about being farmed or not.

yes, all of it.

The way to tell farmed from wild salmon when buying whole fish is to look at the length of their tail. A wild salmon will have a long tail streamlined looking and with little tips on top and bottom just how your kids would draw a fish. A farmed salmon will have a shorter stumpy tail disproportionate to what you would expect to see, this is due to the fact they are either caged or dammed and swim only in circles with little to no flow or rivers to swim against. When purchasing fillets you used to be able to tell from the colour of the meat however know they feed them pellets that enhance meat colour to the eye pleasing deep orange all customers relate with wild salmon. If buying fillets it is desirable to see a slight rainbow/ oil reflection in the right light this means the fillets are freshly cut. Just seeing moisture will not indicate freshness as proprieters are known to spray with water to keep fresh appearance up tuna is exactly the same. and any fish where you can see the blood line in the fillet it must be red and not towards brown this indicates coagulation of blood and drying out of fillet and is a good signal that the fish fillet was cut one or two days ago and not filleted today as may be suggested to you Farmed or wild will show this regardless,there are certain loopholes in fish labelling and it is hard to prove otherwise. A perfect example is dhu fish, if you go to a fish and chip shop and get a piece of dhu fish at times you will get a whole fillet ( side of fish) that is disproportionate with the legal size of a dhu fish or you pay $10 for a piece of shark. Best fish and chips in wa used to be the grouper and his wife at city beach shops, don't know if there still around, Kailis is also not bad but too pricy for what you get. You may be able to tell I love seafood

Do NOT buy seafood at either, but specially woolies... my cat won't even eat it.
Most Salmon (Atlantic always) you buy in stores is farmed.

Yeah it's farmed, I have seen the farms down in south Tassie....there is a great job going down there that nobody wants it consists of catching seals that enter the farm and transferring them a few km down the coast for release only to find them back at the farms a few days later.its a ongoing freezing smelly process!

The fish are fed with pellets and apparently and additive is used which turns the flesh to the pinkish colour as its more attractive to market.

Are salmon native to Tasmania, I mean real salmon like they get in Canada and Russia, that swim up the river they were born in to spawn? Not the fish caught off a Vico or WA beach named salmon because the fisherman once heard about the other fish and could not come up with another name.


I think salmon only come from places in the northern hemisphere, including the British Isles and Scandanavia. If this is the case all salmon that is the product of Australia would be farmed.

Atlantic Salmon are an introduced species in Tasmania.
Being a keen angler, seafood lover and having just spent 3 months in Tassie I asked almost all the same questions.
Farmed salmon are kept in floating pens and the seals are a real problem. Farmed salmon will also have a 'clipped fin' dependant on the hatchery.
Several times a year the seals rip holes in the pens and allow 'mass escapes'. When this happens word gets out pretty quick and the 'licensed' amateur netters are out in droves. I witnessed one such episode at Simpsons Bay, Bruny Island, the escaped fish were circling in the bay, when in two sets of the net, two blokes in a dinghy (two hour soak time) took 84 salmon between 4 and 5 kilos. I also saw an 8 kilo fish taken on a lure at night.
These 'wild' fish lose a lot of condition very quickly when they escape as they have never needed to hunt to feed having had people throw pellets at them their entire lives. Once they cotton on to the fact that anything smaller than them that crawls, swims or slithers in the ocean is food they regain condition rapidly, and rather large specimens can be caught on lures and baits, whether this population will ever be 'self supporting' is doubtful as they do not have the homing instinct to find their 'home' river. However with the regular 'escapes' I doubt the 'wild population' will ever die out.

As for imported seafood in the major supermarkets, "Buyer Beware". I wouldn't touch 'Basa' or 'farmed imported prawns' with a ten, no twenty foot pole.
If you can't catch it yourself, buy Australian.

Isn't it better to buy farmed salmon? Leave the environment alone?
Serious question.

evlPanda said..

Isn't it better to buy farmed salmon? Leave the environment alone?
Serious question.

I believe so. I also think genetic modification can be a good thing - nature does it so why can't we?

(moving to heavy weather in 5,4,3,....)

seanhogan said..
Same age salmons, guess which one is the "wild" one :

The top one is the fat american one; genetically modified form saturated fats and television and cars.

farmed is supposed to be a cause of cancer. there was some studies done into it. it's because of the food.

my understanding is you cannot buy wild salmon in Australia. time to find another fish to eat.

Seems nearly every part of the food supply has been tampered with,the latest being fish farming. They can't have us eating anything healthy unless it has issues.

Would not surprise if the fresh bread from Ireland is irradiated too,part of the food regulations.

100% farmed.Spent yesterday at trade school listening to one of the companies bang on about how great there salmon was.Unfortunately it beats raping the ocean.Although you still have to catch pilchards anchovies to feed the penned fish.

Mark _australia said..

evlPanda said..
Isn't it better to buy farmed salmon? Leave the environment alone?

Serious question.

I'm unconvinced.
BSE came from cows being fed products made from cow. Chickens at least have had some recyling into their food. What are the fish fed to make the grow so quickly? I have visions of the liquified dead beign fed to the farmed people in the Matrix

Plus any intensive farming means disease can take hold easier and germs can mutate faster so we are asking for more species jumps like BSE harming people, chick pox and measles jumped species

Playing with fire with intensive farming, genetic modification, artificial this n that.

If we need so much seafood I think better of farming baby fishies and releasing them into the wild

I agree Mark, but unfortunately, the only way 'natural' salmon (and most other species consumed by humans) could possibly be sustained is with a vast change in human eating habits.

Farmed salmon are like any farm animal. The amount of feed (re; pilchards & other less desirable fish species) hugely outweighs the amount of produced edible meat from the fish. As with cows - the amount of grain & feed that goes into feeding a cow for its lifespan could feed many more than the beef produced (although I'd rather a nice juicy steak than a bowl of cereal).

Another issue with GM modified farmed fish (or fish fed GM modified food) - is that they escape, through either poorly-constructed nets, storms or sharks biting holes in the nets. These species breed with the wild fish stock & soon enough, it won't matter what kind of salmon you choose to buy - the choice will be made for us.

patsken said..guess I'm going to have to stop using blood "n" bone and fish emulsion etc on my veggie patch then......

you could always be environmentally friendly and use cats instead of regular fertilizers, 1 under each grape vine works great, should work just as well for vegies and stuff.

stephen

AUS02 said...

It takes less than 2kg of wild fish to produce 1kg of farmed salmon. Australia has no native salmonids. Atlantic salmon come from the northern hemisphere (as the name suggests) and are farmed there as well as in Tasmania. I work for Huon Aquaculture, a privately owned, family business in Tasmania that produces great, farmed, Atlantic salmon (and trout). Check out our website: www.huonaqua.com.au/ , especially the myth-buster section: www.huonaqua.com.au/about/myth-busters/

It's good to get some industry insight... my figures were an assumption, but still - twice the feed needed is an issue that needs addressing in order to maintain future fish stocks imo.