Escaped farmed salmon interact with wild populations through competition and interbreeding. This has welfare and conservation implications for both wild fish and the farm fish that escape.
Escapes from salmon farms create welfare harms at multiple levels: escaped farm salmon are poorly adapted for wild survival and experience high predation and starvation stress; wild salmon populations experience competitive pressure and genetic pollution that reduces their adaptive capacity. The welfare of escaped fish is rarely considered, yet these animals are thrust into a harsh environment for which they are ill-equipped. This is a preventable problem: better net management, closed-containment systems, and sterile triploid fish production can substantially reduce or eliminate escape impacts.