One of the environmentalists' most damning charges against salmon farmers is that by raising the large, carnivorous fish in close quarters, unfiltered, untreated salmon excrement pollutes the surrounding ocean water, destroying valuable coastal habitat for other fish and sea creatures.

"They're so confined that they're essentially stewing in their own feces," says Don Coleman, 42, from Berkeley, Calif., a volunteer from the nonprofit Friends of the River. Another good protest tactic: grossing out the would-be fish-buyer.

Activists charge that the close proximity of the farmed salmon to each other in their net pens also promotes disease: "Like little kids in a kindergarten, in such close quarters, if one of them gets sick they all do," says Dugas. She says that in British Columbia, wild salmon migrating by the salmon farms have become infected with sea lice, thus threatening the wild stock, which fishermen rely on. During storms, some of the farmed Atlantic salmon have also been known to escape from their pens, and interbreed with other species of Pacific salmon, a charge the aquaculture industry claims is overblown.

The Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, a coalition of 10 environmental, fishing-industry and native groups in British Columbia, organized the protest at Whole Foods, as well as similar actions in Los Angeles, Seattle and Vancouver at Whole Foods and Safeway stores there, as part of its "Farmed and Dangerous" campaign, which also included a recent full-page ad in the New York Times. Dugas explains that the Canadian campaigners are bringing their reform-salmon-farming message to the U.S. because 80 percent of the fish farmed in British Columbia is exported to this country, and much of that is sold to consumers in Washington, Oregon and California.

But among the protesters are a few characters who you wouldn't expect to find at this sort of placard-waving, San Francisco protest affair, revealing another side of the issue: fishermen who feel that they can't compete with fish farmers, and want their wild market protected.

Mike McCorkle, a commercial fisherman from Santa Barbara, Calif., who says that he's been fishing for salmon, shrimp and halibut there for 49 years, attended the protest because farmed salmon has been undercutting his catch. It's not often that you find fishermen, who are often under attack from environmental groups for alleged over-fishing, finding common cause with the would-be saviors of the oceans.

Five years ago, the market price McCorkle used to get for the salmon he caught was around $3 a pound. But since then it's fallen by half to $1.50, and at times even as low as a dollar. "At half of the market price, we can't make a living. California fisherman can't compete," he says.

But he thinks that the word about farmed salmon is getting out, since "this year the prices were a little better."

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