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These salmon, fresh from their pens and majorly infected from sea lice, are from your local gourmet market and ready to serve your family. The infested part, of course, removed, so you don’t have to deal with it or see it — image from an ARTIFISHAL screenshot.

What you are about to see is a one-way ride to killing fields

Most of us are not radicalized right-wing conspiracists and, therefore, naturally inclined to reject conspiracy theories, the fuel that runs those told they need to be disenfranchised – blame their poor relationships, lousy boss, and this morning’s flat tire on progressives, and moderate Republicans.

I was not content – just concerned until this film upended my apple cart

I had no idea the extent of the damage we are doing to our fisheries, fish, and environment, and selling it as; “With your tax dollars we, your government officials, outdoor fishery management agencies, and local politicians are doing for you what wild fish cannot do for themselves.”

We’re stocking non-native hatchery trouts and salmons on top of native fish that have survived for thousands of years, and by a plan, extincting them through DNA “dumb-down” pollution.

The open sea pens of salmon and their excrement, and invading sea lice have denuded this Norwegian fjord from top to bottom – nothing is living in the water. The natural migration of salmon and the jobs of hundreds of commercial fishers who live along the river shoreline are all long gone. Image is a screenshot.

What an ‘effing’ lie

Fish farms are killing once healthy and abundant salmon fisheries, killing every living organism in those host coordinates from Canada to Chile and Japan to Norway – selling the idea that the toxic, penned salmon are the future foodstuffs for our children, and that hatcheries as now performing are in our best interests as sportsmen and women, and commercial fishermen and women.

Watch out; this is powerful

ARTIFISHAL is a film about people, rivers, and the fight for the future of wild fish and the environment that supports them. It explores wild salmon’s slide toward extinction, threats posed by fish hatcheries and fish farms, and our continued loss of faith in nature.

Thanks for watching our film, and for your comments — our primary goal with the film was to shine a spotlight on these issues, to spark dialogue and encourage changes in the way we think about river and fish conservation and fishery management. The common ground we all seem to share is a love of rivers and an interest in seeing wild fish return in greater abundance. Patagonia has been working to protect wild rivers and wild fish for over 40 years. We were founded by an avid fly fisherman – and we’re proud of all our connections to the fish world, which range from our fly fishing and salmon product lines, to the over $20 million in grants we’ve given to local groups working on these issues in communities around the world.

To that end, whatever your point of view, we hope you visit Patagonia Action Works, to learn more about and support groups working to protect wild rivers and wild fish – https://www.patagonia.com/actionworks…

A Norwegian river left to its natural ways. Screenshot.

Further, this is the 3rd film we’ve made about these issues. First was Damnation, which highlights the destructive effect of obsolete dams on healthy river ecosystems and habitat; and then, Blue Heart of Europe, which shares the shocking story of a tsunami of dam development in the Balkans region of Eastern Europe, and calls for a stop to the construction of 3,000 new hydropower dams and diversions. We couldn’t agree more that habitat destruction, dam building, mismanaged harvest, and pollution of our waterways are also incredibly important issues – check out these films to get a sense for some of our advocacy across the issues.

Watch Blue Heart here . . .

Watch DamNation here . . .

If you have questions about our position – please visit . . . and review our “Get the Facts” section and visit our  Provisions Sourcing page for more information on our Salmon products . . .  

Finally, if you have questions about the science on this issue, we recommend these links, housed on the Native Fish Society and Wild Fish Conservancy web pages:

https://nativefishsociety.org/science…

http://wildfishconservancy.org/wild-s… 

http://wildfishconservancy.org/what-w…

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