The Newfoundland and Labrador Aquaculture Industry Association says there are many factors contributing to a drop in salmon returns to rivers on the province’s south coast.

DFO last week pointed to a variety of potential factors including water temperature, changes affecting zooplankton, predation, and aquaculture as contributing to salmon returns that are at near local extinction on the Conne River and Little River.

Aquaculture impacts include sea lice, disease transmission, and “some degree of hybridization on south coast populations” according to DFO.

Executive Director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Aquaculture Industry Association, Mark Lane says there are many pressures affecting salmon returns on the south coast.

Other issues not being talked about according to Lane include industrialization, habitat loss, overfishing, interceptory fisheries in Greenland and St. Pierre et Miquelon, angling, catch and release, poaching and by-catch. He says there are about 15-16 known contributing factors leading to the decline in deep Atlantic salmon.