I have done several public talks in the past few weeks and I am hearing an entirely different tone from you. People used to ask about how fish farms damage our wild stocks, now all I hear is “What can I do to stop this?”
In response, I am going to do weekly updates on this blog and I am going to inform you whenever there are actions you can take. – Thank you all for your energy.
I will be speaking next at:
Fish Farming: The Science and the Politics in Courtenay on Sunday, 14 March 2010 at 2:00 in the Florence Filberg Centre, 411 Anderton Rd., Courtenay. Admission by donation.
Weekly Update – March 1, 2010
Important Action Required
If you have not already please sign my letter to the Minister of Fisheries to say the laws of Canada MUST be applied to the Norwegian salmon farmers.
When Parliament returns March 3rd two new Fisheries Standing Committees will be selected and new agendas set. We need wild salmon to be at the top of the agenda, because clearly wild salmon must have more political will to survive the next few years. Members of Parliament are hearing from the salmon farmers and will be considering degrading the Fisheries Act in favor of the salmon farmers. In 1993, provincially licenced aquaculture was exempted from almost every federal fishing regulation in Canada (Pacific Fishery Regulations, 1993). These Norwegian companies are seeking to have this same protection continue when all salmon farms become federally licenced in December 2010 as a result of our successful BC Supreme Court challenge.
If you want wild salmon, these Norwegian companies must not be exempted from Canada’s fishing regulations again. Please contact both the House of Commons and Senate Standing Committees on Fisheries and Oceans and ask them to travel to British Columbia to listen to the issues we are experiencing with salmon farms. Also contact your Member of Parliament and tell them we need salmon farms to be regulated by the entire Fisheries Act.
Contacts:
House of Commons Standing Committee
Travis Ladouceur
Tel.: 613-996-3105 613-996-3105
Sixth Floor, 131 Queen Street, House of Commons, Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
Canada Fax: 613-992-9069 E-mail: FOPO@parl.gc.ca
Senate Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans
Administrative Assistant: Louise Archambeault – 613-993-7722 613-993-7722
Fax: (613) 947-2104
Email: fish-peche@sen.parl.gc.ca
Mailing Address:
Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans
The Senate of Canada
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada, K1A 0A4
Drug Resistant sea lice
This week the question of whether the Grieg Seafood sea lice have become drug resistant remains. I released the video on this on my blog. http://alexandramortonblog.com/ to make this investigation to date available to the public. The Ministry of Agriculture and Lands continues to maintain that there is no evidence of drug resistance in the Nootka Island area fish farms, but their own data (posted on the MAL website) does not support what they are saying. I have asked for clarification as to how their public statements and data do not appear to match.
In eastern Canada drug resistant sea lice also made the news. People there are very concerned about the impact of new fish farm de-lousing drugs on lobsters: and
Infectious Salmon Anemia ISA
An article below appeared in the Globe and Mail. After carrying ISA from Norway to Chile and wiping out 70% of the farm salmon there, along with the Chilean industry the Norwegian fish farmers who operate in all three countries are actually profiting. Introducing a virus into a new ocean should be considered a crime, but instead these companies are profiting. Our Minister of Fisheries refuses to close the border to Atlantic salmon eggs so according to the Norwegian scientists tracking this virus BC will get ISA and it will have unprecedented impact on our wild salmon.
There are reports that ISA has reappeared in for the first time in several years in the Deer Island and Grand Manan aquaculture zones in New Brunswick.
Media
A Norwegian film crew visited the fish farms in the Discovery Islands and produced this story aired in Norway:
The Power of Patagonia
With its glacier-carved peaks and fjords, southern Chile remains one of the wildest places on Earth. But that could soon change.
By Verlyn Klinkenborg
February 2010 National Geographic
Ecojustice threatens lawsuit against Ottawa over fish-farm expansion
KEVIN SAUVÉ
Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010
“More people want farmed salmon out of oceans” (The Times Colonist, 24th February):
“Morton: Sea lice becoming drug-resistant” (The Tyee, 23rd February): /
Comments
One response to “Weekly Update and Actions”
Hello
I am a member of a newly formed group called Salmon Talks (Lillooet) which formed to address the salmon crisis in our community as well as the entire bioregion of the Fraser River and Pacific Ocean. We fully support and greatly admire your work, as well as that of the Georgia Strait Alliance, CAAR, etc. We just released a press release today (below) about an event happening in Lillooet soon. One of our goals for the event is to fundraise for a pubic forum on the Wild Salmon crisis, to be held here in Lillooet, which could be considered the heart of the mid-Fraser. Our native community is suffering greatly with the loss of such an important part of their diet, let alone part of their inherent culture. For the forum, we would like to invite renowned speakers on the topic such as yourself, Chief Bob Chamberlain, Dr. Otto Langer, Dr. Dave Levy (who works with the local Statimc nation), David Lane, Fin Donnelly and or Peter Julian, etc, as well as have local speakers, many of whom have direct experience with salmon. We have not set a date as of yet, and would like to know if it would be feasible and of interest to you to come here to speak and be part of such a forum? Is there any chance that you can tell us a date, say in the fall or early winter, when you would be able to come? Please reply, perhaps with some contact info (phone number or email) and we can talk further. (We are also pushing for the Cohen commission to come to Lillooet or Lytton, wish us luck!)
here is our press release:
Wild Salmon Café entertains and educates in the mid-Fraser: March 20, 2010
Press Release: Salmon Talks Lillooet, March 3, 2010
Lillooet BC, St’át’imc Territory
On their way to declaring Lillooet a Farmed Salmon Free Zone, the Salmon Talks collective presents a night of music, dance and speak for Fraser River wild salmon.
The Wild Salmon Café will proudly serve the best source of protein available in the world – wild salmon! Dinner by donation starts at 5:30pm on March 20, 2010, at the Lillooet Friendship Centre. Musicians, poets, dancers and speakers will follow up with a family friendly evening of celebration that honours the keystone species in BC’s interior: Pacific salmon returning to the Fraser River.
Since the unprecedented crash of salmon stocks of every species and origin along the Fraser last year, an action and education campaign has begun. Elders, youth, biologists, fisheries technicians, artists and environmentalists in the Upper St’át’imc (along the mid-Fraser) have formed The Salmon Talks to organize events that will raise awareness of the critical importance of wild salmon here. The Wild Salmon Café is the first event!
Since it has become widely known that open-net-cage fish farms along BC’s coast are a major contributing factor to wild salmon’s decline, the harvesting and emptying of three specific farms in the Wild Salmon Narrows, Georgia Strait, is the first goal. Joining with the Georgia Strait Alliance, the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, and dozens of concerned citizens’ organizations, Salmon Talks Lillooet is demanding that Atlantic salmon in farms at Sonora, Venture and Cyrus Rocks (all Norwegian owned) be harvested, which means emptied, as an emergency precaution. Cyrus Rocks salmon are at harvestable weights now, and the others are only about six months premature for harvest.
The farms must be emptied before Fraser smolts reach the area on their outmigration – about May. The adult farmed Atlantics there have sea lice, which transfer to juveniles: historically juvenile salmon are not exposed to adult salmon and therefore are not exposed to sea lice, which are lethal to smolts. Farmed salmon eat the smolts too, as recently proven by Alexandra Morton – now suing Marine Harvest, Norway, for illegal possession of wild salmon! There are 80 fish farms in the Georgia and Johnstone Straits, and Fraser smolts must pass directly by 30 of them to get to sea.
Sockeye, Chinook, steelhead and Coho are at “endangered,” and, “critically endangered” levels throughout the Fraser watershed, according to the 2009 Red Listing of Pacific salmon by IUCN scientists. Important steps need to be taken now. “In the short term, even before the federal judicial inquiry is completed, we must be prepared for … experimentally removing farmed salmon from sockeye migration routes.” – Statement from Think Tank of Scientists, December 9, 2009, SFU Vancouver.
For more information on Salmon Talks Lillooet and the Wild Salmon Café, contact:
salmontalks@gmail.com Or by phone, Kerry Coast: (250) 256 2435 or (250) 256 7523