So the lookup in this vector could be a serious bottleneck. Maybe building a Set would help? Should be as easy as Set(passContig) instead of passContig. But you should hoist it outside the reader loop:
setPassContig = Set(passContig)
while !eof(reader)
read!(reader, record)
if FASTA.identifier(record) in setPassContig
write(writer, record)
end
end
BTW, did you try to use a Profiler on your problem?