The Kuril Islands as a Potential Region for Aquaculture: Organochlorine Pesticides in Pink and Chum Salmon

Vasiliy Yu Tsygankov

doi:10.4172/2155-9546.1000442

Abstract

The Kuril Islands region is considered promising for development of salmon aquaculture. There are 41 salmon fish hatcheries in the Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands, 38 of them are hatcheries of the pink and chum. Food safety of products is an important task of aquaculture. Therefore, concentrations of isomers of hexachlorocyclohexane (α-, β-, γ-HCH) and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its metabolites (dichlorodiphenyldichloroethane (DDD) and dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) were determined in pink and chum salmon were caught in this region. The contents of toxic substances don’t exceed the maximum permissible concentrations (MPC) according to the Russian sanitary standards. The average total concentration of pesticides in organs of salmon from the Kuril Islands is lower than that in salmon from the North Pacific American coast and the Atlantic Ocean. The region can be used to grow smolts, which will be later released into the ocean.

Highlights

Marine and oceanic feeding grounds of pacific salmon occupy vast expanses of subarctic waters in the North Pacific, the Bering, the Okhotsk, the Japan, and the Chukchi Seas with the total area about 15 million km2
The total of 56 salmon hatcheries are operating in the Far East, which are cultivated six species of the Pacific salmon
We provide data on Organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) concentrations in two species of Pacific salmon of the genus Oncorhynchus from the water off the Kuril Islands and discuss the level of accumulation of the pollutants in these species compared to other “wild” salmon of the Pacific coast of North America and farmed salmon from the Atlantic Ocean

Summary

Introduction

Marine and oceanic feeding grounds of pacific salmon occupy vast expanses of subarctic waters in the North Pacific, the Bering, the Okhotsk, the Japan, and the Chukchi Seas with the total area about 15 million km. Within the exclusive economic zone of Russia, the feeding grounds of adult pacific salmon (age 1 and elder) include the deep-water parts of the Okhotsk and the Bering Seas and the waters eastward from the Kuril Islands and the Kamchatka with the total area 3 million km. The main areas of juvenile (postcatadromous) salmon feeding in summer-fall are the southern deep-water part of the Sea of Okhotsk, the waters at the western Kamchatka, and the Commander Basin in the Bering Sea with the total area about 1.5 million km. At present salmon culture in the Russian Far East is an important part of Russian aquaculture. An important component of the biological optimum is safety of the habitat and quality of producers

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Conclusion