Fish Farm Update by Rod Marining

SmallFry
SmallFry

Wild Salmon Rally/Protest has 1-2 punch!

Just after the rally, with over 200 hundred people in attendance and TV crews, which went from 1 to 3 o'clock, an announcement came over the microphone. "Anyone wanting to walk to the Olympic Flame after the rally with some of your protest signs, please gather over here"

It took guts and nerve to march from Vanier Park (Planetarium), over the Burrard Bridge, into the heart of the Olympic beast, near last weeks Bay riot, right thru the Olympic mayhem of 200,000 tourists milling around and thru numerous police officers who were always whispering into their wrists, right down to the above picture, standing in front of the Olympic Flame.

Although, there were around 20 protesters with signs, the size or number of the Salmon Farm protest was deceiving. Put 20 protesters walking down a Vancouver street along with 200 Olympic tourists in toll, and wella, you have 220 protesters. At least that is what it looked like to police and other looky loos. The loud chanting did sound like 200 people. It took the surrounding Olympic public by surprise. What is going on here, the tourist thought and checked out all those anti Salmon Farming signs.

Each of the protesters were armed with WC2 made newspapers which were titled, Saving B.C.'s Wild Salmon, Where did they go? They handed out hundreds stickers, which said "SAY NORWAY To Uncontained Fish Farms."

Most were receptive. Here are some of the comments; "I am from Norway and those dam Salmon Farms destroyed our wild stocks of salmon also, I am from Vancouver Island and those fish farms are killing us, Right on, can I get a picture holding one of your signs", (Olympic tourists were picture crazy, wanting to give money to get their picture taken with the protest signs).

The best part were the two International TV cameras franticly asking questions. How do you cook Wild Salmon? Do Farmed and Wild Salmon taste different? One of the First Nations Elders said there are no more Wild Salmon in our rivers. Many Elders depend on Wild Salmon for their diet. They said that Norwegian owned Fish Farms in BC are breeding zones for Lice, and they were kill off our wild salmon and our way of life.

Then, there was the jocks, who did not know that there was such a thing a Farmed Salmon. They thought that all Salmon were simple all wild Salmon, "what is the difference between Wild and Farmed?" "I never thought about it", said one thirty something guy. (Wow do I live in a bubble, Yes, some people do not read anything, beyond the sports page). "Like, why are protesting Salmon? I love salmon." We kept on walking through the thick crowd. The majority seemed very receptive to what we were doing. Actually, appreciated what we were doing and were leaving at the end of the day with a political dimension to the Olympics.

As the helicopter flew constantly over our heads, keeping an eye on us, my mind kept thinking, what are they, the head of the one billion dollar policeman thinking? I could hear the questions in my mind as I walked. Should we put the Riot police on alert? How many are they? Are they the Black Bloc? Do you think they have a plan to blow up the flame? Are they the advance guard of other protesters? How come we, the police, did not know about this group, this protest? Our billion dollar intelligence is failing or fading. They did not take out a licence to protest. So and so on.

I love spontaneous actions.

It was a beautiful sunny day and we all had fun, Rod


SmallFry

Join 20,000 people on the letter to the Fisheries Minister asking that the laws of Canada be applied to fish farms

sign here

Drug-resistant Sea Lice Multiplying

SmallFry
Walter Cordery,Nanaimo Daily News
Published: Monday, February 01, 2010

It looks like Alexandra Morton was right and that sea lice associated with fish farms are killing wild salmon.

Recent comments by a representative of the Norwegian Food Safety Authority, reported in the Times Colonist, should make Canadian authorities take note.

Sea lice problems have skyrocketed in the past year to triple their numbers.

They are growing resistant to the chemicals the Norwegian fish farm industry uses to try to control them. This is disconcerting for British Columbians because Norwegian companies dominate the industry off the B.C. coast, owning more than 90% of the fish farms.

"Today, the louse is the main threat to sustainable fish farming in Norway, both because of its effects on the farmed fish and its impact on wild salmon," Ole Fjetland of the NFSA said in the Times Colonist.

He said that drug-resistant sea lice threaten the entire Norwegian wild salmon population and their numbers have dropped 50%.

Things are so bad in Norway that the World Wildlife Fund wants the complete destruction of the most-infected fish farms to stop the extinction of wild runs.

Fish Farm News



Chilean Fish Farms in BC? Vancouver Dec 7, 2009


Chilean Fish Farms in BC

Will refurbished materials salvaged from the Chilean salmon farms contaminate BC waters?
Loading a fish farm onto a barge in Vancouver, Dec 7 and then towing it to Howe Sound for assembly. It will then be towed to Anacortes Island in the San Juans. This could create a serious proliferation of fish farms and their sea lice into more Killer Whale habitat and a juvenile Sockeye Salmon migratory route to the open ocean. How can industry possibly safeguard British Columbia from contamination with their ISA virus? Infectious Salmon Anemia is a salmon virus that is spreading worldwide, wherever there are salmon farms. In Chile, the Norwegian strain of ISA has destroyed 60% of the industry, 17,000 jobs and unmeasured environmental damage. The industry is pushing into new territory. If this gets to BC no one can predict what it will do to the Pacific salmon and steelhead, it will be unleashed into new habitat and we know this is a very serious threat to life.

The Global Reach of the Norwegian Salmon Farming Industry: By Damien Gillis


Farmed Salmon Exposed


Letter to Minister Gail Shea by Alexandra Morton

November 30, 2009

Minister Gail Shea

Ottawa, Canada

Dear Minister Shea:

Twenty thousand, two hundred forty-three (20,243) people have now signed the letter on my website www.adopt-a-fry.org insisting that you apply the Fisheries Act to “farming” salmon

.

But the Norwegian salmon farming industry is now so far out of alignment with common sense and the spirit of Canadian law that the road to compliance is not simple. As you prepare to assume control of this industry as per the BC Supreme Court decision we, the public, are doing your job in your absence laying charges against this industry and removing the firewalls to protect our fish.

Twenty years ago the business of raising salmon was wrongly categorized as “farming” and assigned to the Province to manage. The Province is not responsible for wild fish and the feds were not responsible for fish farms, so no one has been responsible for impact of salmon “farms” on wild fish.

This Provincial regulatory scheme was recognized as unlawful and struck down by Judge Hinkson, February 2009. He gave government 1 year to sort this out and it remains uncertain if ownership of salmon (farmed or not) is even legal in the ocean.

At first it was assumed the Provincial government would somehow continue to run the industry, but shortly after the August 2009 sockeye crash, the Province backed away leaving Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) scrambling to design a regulatory regime. As a result a delay is being negotiated during which the Province expects to continue expanding the industry!

Expansion is crucial to Norwegian fish farmers because they have lost money for 3 years now and their share prices can only rise if they put more fish in the water. However, we just lost 10 million sockeye that passed through heavily fish farmed waters and Judge Cohen has “aquaculture” 3rd on his list to investigate with his Judicial Inquiry. It would be immoral to expand the industry during this moment of regulatory restructuring and investigation.

When you peel back the layers of the Fisheries Act the conflicting rules make no sense, except as firewalls. On the one hand the Pacific (Fishery) Regulations (1993) exempts Provincially licenced aquaculture from all fishing regulations appearing to give them unrestricted access to all the wild fish drawn into their pens by the lights and food. These fish are Atlantic salmon fodder and highly valuable sablefish, salmon and herring.

Then as if someone recognized the preposterous enormity of this the Access to Wild Aquatic Resources 2004 was produced to licence fish farmers for by-catch, if the amount was deemed insignificant to wild stocks.

This was a good idea, but no one seems to have these licences. And how could they? The wild pink salmon Marine Harvest admitted to having in their boat last June 16 were from an age-class and stock so endangered millions of public dollars were spent to protect them. However, this is lost in DFO’s regulatory labyrinth. If Marine Harvest has no licence to possess by-catch, does that mean that the 1993 regulations come into effect to exempt them from all fishing rules including possession of an endangered wild fish stock? I hope we get to find out. Judge Saunderson issued a summons to Marine Harvest to appear in court for possessing these pink salmon. The Department of Justice could halt this case, but it would seem in the public interest for a court to hear this.

In October 2009 Marine Harvest also admitted to catching herring in the Broughton Archipelago and composting them with no reporting or licence. Was this legal or illegal? Does anyone know? If they had no licence for tons of herring by-catch are they exempt?

Herring fishing has been closed in Broughton for twenty years because the stocks are not rebuilding. Now we find out Norwegian “farmers” are killing them despite the closure with no apparent ramifications, no quota nor reporting. These fish farmers are out-fishing BC fishermen! Over-fishing is a global scourge. Minister Shea this is not right.

Nothing is straightforward. When 40,000 Atlantics escaped from Marine Harvest’s farm October 21, 2009, we were told they were worth a million dollars and everything had been done to recover them. But now we hear farm fish are worthless once they escape and only 1,200 were recovered because Marine Harvest was “confused” about the licence DFO granted them specifically for this situation. Does profit - starved Marine Harvest really want the expense of disposing of 40,000 fish? They did not do everything they could have to recapture their fish and section 55 of the Fishery (General Regulations) states no person shall release live fish into fish habitat. They must be charged and heavily fined to inspire compliance. This is the tool your Ministry uses on other fishermen.

It is disturbing that someone lobbied Parliament to disguise the industry as Provincial farms even though this must have raised legal red flags and then someone specifically exempted “provincial aquaculture” from the fishing regulations. This is Salmongate.

We are hosting guests who are pulling the tablecloth into their laps dragging the silverware, the food, the water everything out of our reach. Thankfully, Judges Hinkson, Slade, Cohen and Saunderson have nailed the tablecloth to the table.

However it is not up to the courts to manage fish. Fisheries and Oceans Canada is touring the National Aquaculture Strategic Action Plan Initiativeto get feedback, calling aquaculture a legitimate user of Canadian marine waters.

It is indeed time the fish farmers became “legitimate.” It is time to remove their regulatory firewalls, open the farms to public scrutiny and silence decades of political interference that have given foreign corporations greater access to Canadian fish than Canadians. All this and these corporations are still loosing money.

Minister Shea there is one job we cannot do for you. You must close the border to import of salmon eggs from the Atlantic to prevent introduction of ISA virus to the eastern Pacific. If you don’t you will see this issue go before the courts. ISAV strains are highly traceable. You say there is no “strong evidence” that it travels in eggs (3-11-2009) scientists say we are “guaranteed” to get the virus if we keep importing eggs.

Others and myself will continue to lay charges under the Fisheries Act with the help of lawyers who are working Pro Bono, and at reduced rates and thousands of people whose small donations are making this possible. The Fisheries Act specifically encourages the public to lay charges in the face of government “inertia.”

At the very least I ask that you do not stand in our way.

Alexandra Morton


A BCEN Member Group OpEd - Living Oceans Society

Sea lice part of Fraser River sockeye crash?

The disastrous crash of most of this year’s Fraser River sockeye salmon run is sending shock waves throughout B.C. communities. Commercial fishermen were left high and dry, First Nations leaders are concerned about a shortage of the food fish so critical to their communities, and the ecosystems that thrive on the influx of nutrients from wild salmon will inevitably suffer.

Meanwhile, scientists are debating the myriad potential causes of the collapse. Climate change, shifting ocean regimes, habitat destruction, and pollution may all be factors in the sockeye crash. But while scientists speculate, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Regional Director Paul Sprout was quick to reach one conclusion: open net-cage fish farms were definitely not a factor.

Living Oceans Society strongly challenges that assumption. The vast majority of Fraser sockeye migrate north through Georgia Strait as juveniles and must run a gauntlet of net-cage fish farms before reaching the open ocean. Field sampling done near these farms during the 2007 out-migration (the generation of sockeye that failed to return this year) found heavy levels of lice infestation on the fish. Furthermore, DNA analysis of sockeye in the northern Georgia Strait confirmed most of these sockeye were Fraser stocks, including fish from the Adams River and endangered Cultus Lake runs. More than 90 percent of the fish sampled near salmon farms were infected with one or more lice.

DFO’s hasty dismissal of the impact of sea lice from the industrial salmon feedlots is indicative of the department’s conflicting mandates. On the one hand, DFO has a primary responsibility to protect and conserve our wild fish stocks. On the other, the department has enthusiastically embraced their role of promoting, marketing and advocating on behalf of the industrial salmon aquaculture industry. Most Canadians believe that DFO’s job is first and foremost to ensure the future health of our wild fish and ocean ecosystems.

Federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea stated, when handing over nearly a million dollars in subsidies to aquaculture in July, “Our job is to support the (aquaculture) industry.” Apparently the Minister needs reminding that her loyalty is to Canada, not the three Norwegian multi-nationals who control 92 percent of B.C.’s salmon farms. As the Fraser sockeye collapsed Minister Shea was in Norway, attending one of the world’s largest aquaculture industry trade fairs. This taxpayer funded junket featured a large delegation of DFO staff and a glitzy exhibit promoting salmon farms in Canada.

The B.C. Government is handing over jurisdiction of fin-fish farming to the federal government in the wake of a court ruling that aquaculture is Ottawa’s responsibility. Suddenly, DFO’s enthusiasm for salmon farming is an even bigger concern. The question now is whether the federal government will act to support closed containment – a new, greener technology for fish farming that could protect our wild stocks, secure aquaculture jobs and put B.C. in the forefront of an emerging new industry. And will the Province of B.C. actively support such investment given that the Gordon Campbell government failed to act on countless reports and recommendations urging investment in closed containment?

Send an e-mail DFO Minister Gail Shea



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