Escaped farmed salmon, Salmo salar L., in the Glenarm River, Northern Ireland: genetic status of the wild population 7 years on

A previous study described genetic changes in a wild Atlantic salmon , Salmo salar L., population resulting from the spawning of escaped farmed salmon in the Glenarm River, Northern Ireland, in 1990. This study reports an extension of the original investigation with a further follow-up sample that was taken from the river in 1997 to assess the genetic status of the wild population two generations after the original hybridization between the wild population and the farmed strain. Overall genetic variation across eight polymorphic allozyme loci indicated that the wild population remains significantly different from the pre-escape population and from the immediate post-escape population, the presence of an allele not having been previously detected in this population ( GPI-1,2*140 ), suggesting that further incursion(s) of farmed salmon may have taken place.