A Sterile Solution: How Crispr Could Protect Wild Salmon
1 min readPhoto: Molecular biologist Anna Wargelius leads a research team that has created salmon that they call “sterile parents.” The gene-edited fish can have their fertility restored, but will pass on the genetic modification, likely making their offspring sterile. Visual: Erlend A. Lorentzen / Institute of Marine Research. Article by Lisa Abend. Undark – July 21, 2021.
Upon an otherwise unruly landscape of choppy sea and craggy peaks, the salmon farms that dot many of Norway’s remote fjords impose a neat geometry. The circular pens are placid on the surface, but hold thousands of churning fish, separated by only a net from their wild counterparts. And that is precisely the conundrum. Although the pens help ensure the salmon’s welfare by mimicking the fish’s natural habitat, they also sometimes allow fish to escape, a problem for both the farm and the environment. […]