In an effort to find out, scientists from Europe, North America and Russia are to co-operate in research funded by a giant international public-private partnership. That the stock has been dwindling in both the Atlantic and the Pacific has been noted for more than a decade, but the pace of loss has increased in recent years.

The decline in wild salmon stocks has had adverse effects on commercial fishermen, many of whom have been forced to seek alternative work. It is now striking the salmon sport fishing industry with devastating results. Two of the countries most affected are Canada and Ireland. In Canada the crisis is doubly felt, on the east with the loss of Atlantic wild stock, on the west with loss of the Pacific stock.

A multimillion euro international study will involve using DNA fingerprinting techniques to track salmon to their rivers of origin. Almost unbelievably it will track their migration routes through the oceans, with hourly readings of their locations.

Meanwhile proponents of fish farming, which has been widely blamed for impacting wild salmon stocks worldwide, are hailing measures taken by the European Commission to support the fish farming industry in Ireland and Scotland.

The Irish Aquaculture Association welcomed the measures, and has pointed out that its industry provides 1,500 full-time and part-time jobs.

The risks to health from eating chemically fed farmed salmon have been detailed in previous issues of this e-zine, most notably in an article in August 2003, "Would you feed these fish to your children?"

The European Union bureaucrats are taking a grave risk in supporting the farmed salmon business.

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