Dear Mary Ellen Walling
The nonsense that you have published below is in service to a global industry destroying local fish stocks in countries around the world. You are paid to make things easier for this industry in British Columbia and this letter goes too far. To suggest there is anything natural about salmon feedlots on our wild salmon runs is harming the future of the most valuable public resource in BC. You fail to note there were 40 lice per fish recently on a Grieg salmon farm and drugs failed to bring those lice to Provincial limit. You fail to note that infection rates on wild fish in the Broughton, where your industry is under the most scrutiny, are once again rising even with drug treatments. You fail to tell the public that drug resistance was identified as inevitable at a conference in Victoria BC by international experts studying the disasterous impact of your industry worldwide. This means we are going to get the more toxic drugs used by your industry. Dick Beamish’s paper is a red-herring and does not refer to the problem, which is juvenile salmon leaving the rivers clean and becoming infested with lice passing by salmon farms. His work expounds on the presence of lice on adult salmon retuning from the ocean and is irrelevant. You must know this but you ignore it. You also fail to tell people why my prediction of extinction has not happen yet….because when I reported the lice your industry responded and cleaned up its mess….but even that is no longer possible as lice numbers are rising despite the drugs.
If your industry is passionate about wild salmon Get Off the wild salmon migration routes right now! Test every one of your farms for the virus ISA that is spreading with your industry worldwide. And I dare you to invite me to attend your farms at harvest time to see what is really in your pens. I think your industry is fighting to remain in BC waters because it is consuming wild herring and other species both as by-catch and to feed your industry’s fish. Prove me wrong, invite me and the local First Nations to watch your industry pull up the nets and let’s see what is really in there. How many rock cod, wild salmon, black cod, grey cod are in your industry’s farms. Does anyone have a license for these?
It is time to end this ridiculous game of meaningless phrases. It is time to end the secrecy around your industry. It is time to release your people from the contracts they have signed not to talk about what they do on your industry’s farms. Five thousand people showed up according to the security guards at the BC Parliament Buildings to demand the Norwegian net pen industry GET OUT of BC waters. It is time for the Canadian land-based fish farmers to step up and end the pollution and harm done by your industry.
And Mary Ellen Walling it is past time for words. Lets go farm to farm, talk to the employees, look at what fish you have in your pens, examine the drug records, watch as your industy’s fish are cleaned. Let’s see what they look like and what is their stomachs. The reign of secrecy and mis-truth has to end now!
Alexandra Morton
salmonaresacred.org