Island News & Views
General · 25th March 2009
Adopt-A-Fry.org
To date 8,300 people have signed a letter to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Honourable Gail Shea and Premier of British Columbia Gordon Campbell to apply the Fisheries Act fair and square on fish farms.
See the article below to get your name on this petition!
Backgrounder from The Globe and Mail
Fisheries ignored 500 names. Can it ignore 5,000?
by Mark Hume
March 23, 2009
VANCOUVER — The form letter that Premier Gordon Campbell and federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea keep ignoring is just getting longer.
In circulation for only a few weeks, it already has nearly 5,000 signatories, and more names are being added daily as it circulates on the Web.
When it first went to the politicians, 500 names were affixed. It was ignored, so it went back into circulation and soon was resubmitted with 2,000 names, then with 4,000. It’s making the rounds again this week, and is still growing.
Started by research scientist and fisheries activist Alexandra Morton, the letter asks the government to take decisive action to protect wild salmon from the threats posed by salmon farms.
One of the key requests is that salmon farms be moved away from wild salmon migration routes because of the transmission of sea lice from caged fish.
The people who signed the letter worry that salmon farms are an unacceptable risk to wild stocks.
And that fear is about to be heightened by a study being released today that shows juvenile sockeye from the Fraser River are encountering fish farms at an alarming rate.
Michael Price, a biologist with Raincoast Conservation Foundation, and Craig Orr, executive director of Watershed Watch, studied 800 wild sockeye collected in 2007-08 in northern Georgia Strait.
About 70 per cent of those fish had one to 20 sea lice attached to them. And the fish caught near farms were the most likely to be infected.
"The lice levels appear to be higher near farms," said Mr. Price, who is still analyzing the data.
Past studies by Ms. Morton have documented the spread of lice from farms to wild pink and chum salmon in the Broughton Archipelago, an area off Vancouver Island’s northeast shoulder.
But the study by Mr. Price and Dr. Orr looks at sockeye, and for the first time uses DNA analysis to trace the infected fish to their watershed of origin.
The researchers conclude most of the sockeye they caught migrating near salmon farms (60 per cent in 2007 and 99 per cent in 2008) came from the Fraser River.
Sockeye are the most valuable of all salmon species because they draw a higher price on the market and because they are the fish of choice for native food and ceremonial fisheries.
Mr. Price and Dr. Orr have now linked the most valuable fish, from B.C.’s most important salmon river, to farms and lice.
Mr. Price said juvenile sockeye can follow three routes as they migrate through Georgia Strait on the outward leg of their journey to the Gulf of Alaska.
"But all these routes converge before the Broughton Archipelago [at the north end of Georgia Strait] where there are a dozen farms," he said. "It’s clear that no fish can make this journey without encountering a farm."
Mr. Price said studies have shown that one to three lice can kill a juvenile pink salmon, so it’s fair to assume sockeye are dying as well.
Could this help explain the collapse of Fraser River sockeye stocks?
Some people will no doubt find this an alarming possibility.
The form letter, triggered by concerns about pink and chum, describes wild salmon as "the backbone of the B.C. Coast," and urges both Ms. Shea and Mr. Campbell to protect migrating wild stocks from fish farms.
So far, the politicians have been able to ignore the ever-growing letter. But the new study can only ratchet up the pressure.
Now that people know it’s not just pink salmon, but Fraser River sockeye stocks that are at risk, one has to wonder how many more names will get added to that letter.
To read "We Can Build a Better Aquaculture Industry" Alexandra Morton March 19, 2009 The Westcoaster http://www.westcoaster.ca/modules/AMS/article.php?storyid=6370
March 9, 2009- Marine Harvest has appealed the BC Court decision that we won on February 9, 2009
They state concern that the Court fails to recognize that the salmon they put in their pens are the property of Marine Harvest and disagree with the courts’ ruling that they are a "fishery".
February 10, 2009
Thanks to your support, we spent four days this autumn in BC Supreme Court, arguing that regulation of British Columbia’s fish farms by the Province of BC is unlawful and we won. The judge said they are not "farms" they are a fishery, because the ocean runs through the net pens and the ocean is federal jurisdiction. Therefore, he ruled, the salmon aquaculture facilities must be regulated by the federal government . But the work has just begun because the federal government is not much better at this. The federal government, however, is legally mandated to protect wild fish and we can work with this.
Alexandra Morton will be appearing on Cortes Island on March 21.
Cornelia Dean of the New York Times has written a profile of Alexandra Morton and her struggle to preserve the wild salmon runs. Check it out in our media page.
For more, go to our updates page.
alex 7:56 am
Filed under: Uncategorized
No Comments
Adopt a small fry
Posted on Tuesday 19 February 2008
Together, we can save BC’s wild salmon
This campaign grew out of frustration – yours and mine - with our inability to get government to act to protect British Columbia’s wild salmon from devastation by industrial fish-farming. Wild salmon stocks are in exceptional decline wherever there are fish farms. We must – and we can – turn this tide.
I’ve now studied the impact of fish farms in waters used by the Fraser River sockeye, Megin River chinook, Nimpkish River chum, south coast steelhead, coho and herring - and they are all swimming through a soup of sea lice and other farm waste. This is biological insanity.
The problem is not farming fish; it’s where you put the cages. Tiny newborn wild salmon are not surviving contact with the pathogens generated by enormous marine feedlots on their migration routes.
As many of you know, I applied for a permit this spring to medevac newly-hatched young wild salmon past the fish farms to safety. The permit was denied and the process served to highlight a deep flaw in the system: no government in Canada will take responsibility for fish farms and so the industry is out of control and people like us are going in circles trying to find who is in charge.
I’ve done the science over and over again, and participated in many government processes. Nothing changed at the government level but lots changed biologically, here in the wilderness of the Broughton Archipelago, far from the public eye. For seven springs, I watched young salmon pour from the Meetup River into fish farm effluent. That river died last fall; 89 salmon left to run home to the spawning grounds.
See the article below to get your name on this petition!
Backgrounder from The Globe and Mail
Fisheries ignored 500 names. Can it ignore 5,000?
by Mark Hume
March 23, 2009
VANCOUVER — The form letter that Premier Gordon Campbell and federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea keep ignoring is just getting longer.
In circulation for only a few weeks, it already has nearly 5,000 signatories, and more names are being added daily as it circulates on the Web.
When it first went to the politicians, 500 names were affixed. It was ignored, so it went back into circulation and soon was resubmitted with 2,000 names, then with 4,000. It’s making the rounds again this week, and is still growing.
Started by research scientist and fisheries activist Alexandra Morton, the letter asks the government to take decisive action to protect wild salmon from the threats posed by salmon farms.
One of the key requests is that salmon farms be moved away from wild salmon migration routes because of the transmission of sea lice from caged fish.
The people who signed the letter worry that salmon farms are an unacceptable risk to wild stocks.
And that fear is about to be heightened by a study being released today that shows juvenile sockeye from the Fraser River are encountering fish farms at an alarming rate.
Michael Price, a biologist with Raincoast Conservation Foundation, and Craig Orr, executive director of Watershed Watch, studied 800 wild sockeye collected in 2007-08 in northern Georgia Strait.
About 70 per cent of those fish had one to 20 sea lice attached to them. And the fish caught near farms were the most likely to be infected.
"The lice levels appear to be higher near farms," said Mr. Price, who is still analyzing the data.
Past studies by Ms. Morton have documented the spread of lice from farms to wild pink and chum salmon in the Broughton Archipelago, an area off Vancouver Island’s northeast shoulder.
But the study by Mr. Price and Dr. Orr looks at sockeye, and for the first time uses DNA analysis to trace the infected fish to their watershed of origin.
The researchers conclude most of the sockeye they caught migrating near salmon farms (60 per cent in 2007 and 99 per cent in 2008) came from the Fraser River.
Sockeye are the most valuable of all salmon species because they draw a higher price on the market and because they are the fish of choice for native food and ceremonial fisheries.
Mr. Price and Dr. Orr have now linked the most valuable fish, from B.C.’s most important salmon river, to farms and lice.
Mr. Price said juvenile sockeye can follow three routes as they migrate through Georgia Strait on the outward leg of their journey to the Gulf of Alaska.
"But all these routes converge before the Broughton Archipelago [at the north end of Georgia Strait] where there are a dozen farms," he said. "It’s clear that no fish can make this journey without encountering a farm."
Mr. Price said studies have shown that one to three lice can kill a juvenile pink salmon, so it’s fair to assume sockeye are dying as well.
Could this help explain the collapse of Fraser River sockeye stocks?
Some people will no doubt find this an alarming possibility.
The form letter, triggered by concerns about pink and chum, describes wild salmon as "the backbone of the B.C. Coast," and urges both Ms. Shea and Mr. Campbell to protect migrating wild stocks from fish farms.
So far, the politicians have been able to ignore the ever-growing letter. But the new study can only ratchet up the pressure.
Now that people know it’s not just pink salmon, but Fraser River sockeye stocks that are at risk, one has to wonder how many more names will get added to that letter.
To read "We Can Build a Better Aquaculture Industry" Alexandra Morton March 19, 2009 The Westcoaster http://www.westcoaster.ca/modules/AMS/article.php?storyid=6370
March 9, 2009- Marine Harvest has appealed the BC Court decision that we won on February 9, 2009
They state concern that the Court fails to recognize that the salmon they put in their pens are the property of Marine Harvest and disagree with the courts’ ruling that they are a "fishery".
February 10, 2009
Thanks to your support, we spent four days this autumn in BC Supreme Court, arguing that regulation of British Columbia’s fish farms by the Province of BC is unlawful and we won. The judge said they are not "farms" they are a fishery, because the ocean runs through the net pens and the ocean is federal jurisdiction. Therefore, he ruled, the salmon aquaculture facilities must be regulated by the federal government . But the work has just begun because the federal government is not much better at this. The federal government, however, is legally mandated to protect wild fish and we can work with this.
Alexandra Morton will be appearing on Cortes Island on March 21.
Cornelia Dean of the New York Times has written a profile of Alexandra Morton and her struggle to preserve the wild salmon runs. Check it out in our media page.
For more, go to our updates page.
alex 7:56 am
Filed under: Uncategorized
No Comments
Adopt a small fry
Posted on Tuesday 19 February 2008
Together, we can save BC’s wild salmon
This campaign grew out of frustration – yours and mine - with our inability to get government to act to protect British Columbia’s wild salmon from devastation by industrial fish-farming. Wild salmon stocks are in exceptional decline wherever there are fish farms. We must – and we can – turn this tide.
I’ve now studied the impact of fish farms in waters used by the Fraser River sockeye, Megin River chinook, Nimpkish River chum, south coast steelhead, coho and herring - and they are all swimming through a soup of sea lice and other farm waste. This is biological insanity.
The problem is not farming fish; it’s where you put the cages. Tiny newborn wild salmon are not surviving contact with the pathogens generated by enormous marine feedlots on their migration routes.
As many of you know, I applied for a permit this spring to medevac newly-hatched young wild salmon past the fish farms to safety. The permit was denied and the process served to highlight a deep flaw in the system: no government in Canada will take responsibility for fish farms and so the industry is out of control and people like us are going in circles trying to find who is in charge.
I’ve done the science over and over again, and participated in many government processes. Nothing changed at the government level but lots changed biologically, here in the wilderness of the Broughton Archipelago, far from the public eye. For seven springs, I watched young salmon pour from the Meetup River into fish farm effluent. That river died last fall; 89 salmon left to run home to the spawning grounds.