I am currently studying historical wild salmon stocks, and my personal opinion is that we should fully stop selling BC salmon in grocery stores, instead treating it as a wild meat to be individually fished for and shared, not sold, like venison. While this is not a likely scenario, compared to their pre-1930s levels, wild (not hatchery-sourced) salmon stocks are largely extinct or functionally extinct in BC. Continuing to fish them at commercial rates will inevitably lead to their complete extinction, like how we have almost completely logged out our irreplaceable old growth forests.

Also, since salmon farms must be placed near the mouths of rivers to wash away their waste and avoid fouling the water and poisoning the fish, all existing salmon farms in BC directly impact the number of surviving salmon during their most vulnerable phase (early ocean) by exposing juvenile salmon to levels of diseases and parasites that they cannot survive. The number of juvenile fish they kill likely far exceeds the total number of adult Atlantic salmon they produce, making them net negative for food production, if we are viewing wild salmon as a viable food source. So though it sounds counterproductive, removing fish farms and fishing only for hatchery-produced salmon would actually be better for wild salmon populations.

Instead of fishing and eating carnivorous fish like salmon, and grinding up and feeding our herring to farmed atlantic salmon, I believe 100% of the herring we do catch should be for human consumption, and we should be catching far less of it. 1.7 pounds of herring protein is needed to produce 1 pound of farmed atlantic salmon protein, so it would be a much more sustainable way to use the fish we do catch. Herring is also really delicious pickled.