Factory-farmed salmon: does it make sense to grow fish in indoor tanks?

US inland farms offer an alternative to diminishing wild Atlantic stocks, but the price tag is bigger carbon emissionsThe state of Maine once had one of North America's great wild Atlantic salmon runs, now destroyed by polluting paper, textile, and saw mills and the construction of hundreds of dams for open-pen salmon farming. But a new kind of salmon farming - inland rather than offshore - is supposed to solve all those problems and more, providing jobs and putting an end to escaped fish polluting the remaining wild stocks.One of these land-based salmon farms is planned for Bucksport, a down-on-its-luck industrial town of 5,000 people on the estuary of the Penobscot, a struggling wild salmon river. Another is intended for Belfast, population 6,700, a few miles south on scenic Penobscot Bay. As in much of coastal Maine, in the north-eastern corner of the US, this historic town has become a haven for affluent incomers, who buy summer homes and attract shops and boutiques. Continue reading...