Today we entered Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw and Mamalilikulla territory, where 1/3 of the BC salmon farming industry is operating without First Nation permission.
The Martin Sheen and crew are welcome here.
The people remember salmon are wild.
There is There is no excuse for the salmon farming industry to be here, if we pull together we can return this place to the wild ones.
End Open Net Salmon Farming – Sign the petition
I wonder if you guys ever protest salmon farming in your real home down in the USA?
The “excuse” for salmon farming is that it’s sustainable and more than that it’s existence actually protects wild salmon.
overfishing salmon is dangerous to salmon populations. Salmon aquaculture helps protect against overfishing salmon.
In 1974 10% of the worlds marine fish stocks were listed as “overfished” and 50% “fully fished”. In 2013 those numbers were 30% and 60% respectively. Doesn’t that concern you at all?
What do you think will happen to the salmon stocks if you manage to shut down all the salmon farms?
Are there impacts? For sure, and I would expect the salmon farms to continue to improve and address those impacts and concerns.
But you don’t seem to want that, you seem to want them shut down. You promote salmon fishing and demarket salmon farming.
So much for the economies of coastal BC and so much for the survival of our wild salmon.
Hi James
I don’t know where you’re getting your information from but I’d like to respond to some of your concerns…First off, Alexandra Morton doesn’t want the farms shut down…she wants them removed from the marine environment and onto land based facilities. The jobs for the people who are now working at open pen farms will still be there for land based.
As far as the farms being sustainable, many would beg to differ for the simple reason that small wild fisheries world wide are being depleted, just to feed carnivorous farmed salmon….
Also, it can be argued scientifically that open pen salmon farms do not protect wild salmon and other fish, but rather cause them harm…We already know through DNA testing that they’ve imported and spread their Norwegian strain viruses (eg, PRV) to our Pacific Coast wild fish, and this has been confirmed by Norwegians scientists themselves.
The farms by their very nature attract and become breeding grounds for sea lice, which latch onto young salmon smolts swimming by and if that fish doesn’t have scales to protect it from the sea lice, chances are it won’t make it for very long…the lice here in BC have become drug resistant, and so now the farmers have resorted to bathing their fish in hydrogen peroxide baths for 20 to 50 minutes at a time, in hopes that the lice burn off their fish. Sadly, the slimy protective coating is also burned off the fish, which sends out a pheromone that it’s injured, and so re-infestation with sea lice becomes the norm…
This treatment is cruel, and higher mortality rates during treatment and for days afterwards is not unusual…sadly they have also lost entire farms when doing hydrogen peroxide treatments, but like I said, they have no drugs left to use…and then when they’re done bathing their poor fish, they release the hydrogen peroxide into the marine environment, where it creates complete dead zones around the farms.
To add insult to injury, salmon farmers don’t have to clean up their poop, each farm creates a small towns worth…their motto seems to be dilution is the solution, yet when we send cameras underneath the farms, there is a white substance covering the piles called beggiatoa, which is only associated with raw sewage…I’ve helped to pull up some of that poop and it’s texture is like a thick clay, and it smells very strongly of metals and chemicals, certainly not natural to any marine environment, and not healthy either.
Sadly, the animals that try and get at the farms fish are shot and killed, with over 7,000 reported kills of seals and sea lions in just a few years on this coast…and last, but not least…the salmon farmers like to turn the lights on over their pens at night…this is called pit lamping and is illegal for regular fishermen to use because lights attract small fish…the salmon farmers will try and convince you that their fish are too stupid to eat anything other than pellets, but all you need to do is talk with anyone who has ever worked at a processing plant and they will tell you they open up farmed salmon with wild fish in their bellies all the time!
I agree with you that overfishing of any species is a huge concern and I’d love it if everyone on this planet agreed to give our oceans 5 years of no fishing so everthing could rebound …but open pen salmon farms certainly don’t stop overfishing (especially when they themselves overfish small fisheries to feed their salmon), and in no way do they help anyone other than the shareholders
James – I think that there is a great need for aquaculture but only if it’s undertaken in a sustainable way. The current practise of feedlot salmon aquaculture is not sustainable on many fronts which include fecal waste management, potential to spread disease to wild salmon, sealice impacting juvenile wild salmon, depleting fish stocks to provide food for aquaculture. Closed containment aquaculture would address most of these issues and we should be looking to quickly develop this more sustainable system further and change from open net feedlot.
I agree, James. Instead of being anti everything, environmental groups should be working and collaborating WITH industries (all industries) to help them improve their practices and establish meaningful relationships. The aquaculture industry will never take her seriously because she isn’t willing to work with them. Why would they open up their farms and dead fish to someone who is only going to push their own agenda anyway? Why would any industry try and work with people who don’t believe a word they say? Not everything is a conspiracy. Yes, hold them accountable and ensure they’re following best practices. Question them. Engage. This is not engagement.
If you shut down all the salmon farms, the wild salmon have a chance to survive. If the DFO does its job, there would be no “open net” salmon farms. They should not be in the waters where wild salmon and all other fish have to migrate. No one is saying salmon fishing should be a free-for-all, so not sure what the writer means. But definitely, Atlantic salmon open net pens should be outlawed and strict regulations implemented by our Federal government should be enforced to protect our wild salmon on behalf of all the wildlife and marine species that depend on the natural flows of wild salmon. I hope we never have to depend on a corporate created industry to fuel our wildlife and our natural economy.
Thank you Alexandra for doing the science the DFO won’t. Open pen fish farming is an environmental catastrophe, a war waged on ecosystem allowed for mere money.
I don’t believe anyone is saying “shut down the salmon farms”. What is being said is get them out of the wild salmon migration/feeding areas, put them on land where the negative environmental effects can be managed. YES it will be more expensive initially since the industry is now getting free services at the public’s expense. Name me one community in this country that can legally dump raw sewage into a brook, lake, river. bay, ocean or onto their neighbors property? To start up an farm these operations all have their hand out for government assistance in one form or another: grants, tax concessions, DFO services and crop failure reimbursements. If they fail to make it, who is left with the mess and picks up the tab? If these operations were on land there would be increased tax revenues for hard assets and materials could be reclaimed and sold to recover the public funding put in. This would be a WIN/WIN, environmentally and economically!!!!
totally agree! win-win!
Victoria has and still does.
And you’re using the provincial capital that supports the industry as an example of poor judgement? That supports your argument how?
James: Alexandra is in her home waters. And don’t buy the fish farm lies. Dangerous aquaculture does not help wild salmon in any way. The Norwegians fish farmers are here because they DESTROYED their own wild salmon.
that sums it up perfectly!