mike hirshfield

Excuse my tardiness, but this week (Oct 20-25) is the Global Week of Action for the Pure Salmon Campaign, with which Oceana Chile is a partner.

Yesterday, Oceana's chief scientist, Mike Hirshfield, took part in a press conference call to discuss the primary environmental and consumer issues associated with farmed salmon and to call upon the FDA to implement a more thorough testing process to identify toxic chemicals in imported farmed fish.

Oceana's Chile office is working to halt the overuse of antibiotics in the country's farmed salmon.

Here are four good reasons why you should think twice about farmed salmon:

The Oceana Ranger, our roving catamaran, has discovered deep-sea white coral in the Aviles Canyon in the Bay of Biscay, off the northern coast of Spain. The coral was identified using an underwater robot, which can work down to 600 meters.

The deep-sea coral can take centuries, or even millennia, to form -- some European coral formations are more than 8,000 years old, and their age makes them especially vulnerable. Recent studies estimate that almost half of the deep-sea coral reefs in Europe have disappeared, particularly due to destructive fishing methods such as bottom trawling.

Those were the words Oceana's chief scientist Mike Hirshfield used to describe this newly discovered species, and he may have it right.