Soon you might be getting your salmon fresh from the ranch on land: Fish farming has been around for a long time, but despite salmon’s popularity, they have been notoriously hard to farm on land, as they can be incredibly sensitive to changes in water quality. So far, farmed salmon are raised in floating pens in coastal waters, but this can be terrible for marine ecosystems. Fish can catch diseases from their wild counterparts or escape and breed with them, messing with the gene pool. Farms also release massive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus into the ocean.
Enter land-based salmon farms: these giant warehouses can hold thousands of salmon at a time while maintaining specific water quality parameters like temperature, oxygen, and salinity to keep the fish healthy. Now that they’re becoming a reality, salmon farms could be built anywhere, which cuts down on shipping emissions. We can even use their waste to make eco-friendly fertilizer.