BC Salmon farms news

Thanks for the links Larry. Sounds like the BC Government authorities are pretty out to lunch, and looking to get out of government. The First Nations folks are to looking for some consistency and support from the Canada government. Hope that works.

https://www.oursound-oursalmon.org/

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

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What a shame. A foreign company that provides almost no jobs and exploits and degrades our local resources is shut down. Bummer dude! Hope they pull the permit for Cypress Island as well after what happened earlier this summer. I have no sympathy them :thdown
 
Couldn't have happened to a more deserving company.

More power to local, wild salmon and eco friendly resources.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

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Larry thanks for the link. I see a C Dory in the header. I was amazed when I brought up the number of salmon farms in all of the PNW--I have been going into this area since about 1950. Even 25 years ago there were relatively few of the farms.
 
I think you can think of the concept of salmon farming a little like timber in the PNW. The demand has increased over time. The native stocks, like native old-growth forest, and highly protected now. At the current time, essentially all timber is produced on plantations. Essentially zero is cut from native old-growth forest, usually just when a road goes through or an area is developed. Salmon for food are produced from a variety of stocks.

The farming conservation concept is that if we produce salmon in farms, the native runs don't need to be used, and can be protected easier, since we don't need them to meet human food needs. Several important differences...planted Douglas-fir doesn't migrate into a native area and compete, and Douglas-fir planted is the same species as native. Both are not true for salmon, at least salmon that escapes pens and Atlantic vs PNW salmon. Also, we are mixing hatchery PNW salmon in with native salmon.

However, it is clear that we can't be fishing for or eating or exporting salmon to the extent we do currently on native stocks alone. Also, if you think the Wild Salmon people support fishing and eating salmon, get real. Read "Deep Ecology". Many of these people think we are the ones that need to go extinct and that we should not be using salmon (or trees) for any of our human needs. I like to eat salmon, like to fish for them, and spend a lot of money doing both, whether in Puget Sound, our oceans or in Ivar's. I want to continue doing so.
 
robhwa,

Did you miss the part where it says that the salmon farms are spreading a disease from Norway which is killing off the native Pacific wild salmon?

That is the problem.

A parallel problem is that to raise farm fish, other food fish and bait fish have to be caught and turned into fish pellets to feed the farm fish.
 
robhwa,

Did you miss the part where it says that the salmon farms are spreading a disease from Norway which is killing off the native Pacific wild salmon?

That is the problem.

A parallel problem is that to raise farm fish, other food fish and bait fish have to be caught and turned into fish pellets to feed the farm fish.
Click to expand...

REPLY: I appreciate your concern for salmon. Yes, I have read all of these posts. I worry that everyone wants to blame someone else for any problem. We often don't see ourselves and our actions as a problem. We typically focus on someone else, and it is usually a company that is blamed. It is often in the interest of others, in this case, individuals and companies that sell other salmon species, to rid us of that particular "problem".

Examples: Amazon is blamed for homelessness, Weyerhaeuser for habitat destruction, the United States for Iran's and Cuba's economic mess, immigrants for lack of jobs for Americans, the list goes on. I don't buy these either.

I am saying that disease transfers from one species to another are ONE problem. They certainly do not seem to be THE problem with wild salmon, and nobody that spends most of their time working on salmon science would likely say that...but they are handy to blame, and they are a problem. Providing animal protein to salmon from our local fish is also a problem, since it is not available to wild salmon.

Focusing on and eliminating Atlantic salmon farming as THE problem with wild salmon solves little. If the disease problem can be understood, addressed and eliminated it is no longer a problem. And then we still have the jobs.

Sorry that salmon are complex, but eliminating the Atlantic salmon farming industry is not going to solve the problem of dwindling wild salmon any more than eliminating hatchery stocking are, and blaming the Atlantic salmon farming industries IS handy. The list of problems with wild salmon is long, global warming, water flow, culverts, forestry and ag practices, point-source and non point-source pollution, endocrine mimics, parasites, surf perch, cutthroat trout...

It can be said, and some advocate, that we should eliminate any salmon fishing entirely, since we often hook wild salmon (I have many times), and even with careful hook and release, they sometimes die, particularly if you play them to exhaustion. So, is the next step eliminating hatchery stocking, and then on to eliminating sport fishing? Hatchery salmon can also introduce diseases. All are certainly problems with wild salmon. There is no THE problem.

By the way, I don't advocate eliminating stocking or fishing either. I love catching hatchery and wild salmon. I spend a lot of money pursuing them. I will advocate for them when I think my efforts will help. Farmed Atlantic salmon give me no joy at all, but right now they seem somewhat of a red herring for wild salmon problems.
 
robhwah, excellent points. But you left out over fishing by foreign interests outside (usually) of our territorial waters.... :(

Certainly if viral diseases and parasites come from the farmed salmon...-- Then that process needs to be quarantined to protect the native species. I detect that some think that virus and parasites are not a threat (?).

We won't eat farmed salmon. We do have a good fish market where fresh wild is flow in, but its pricey. I also was in the PNW a few years back when the price of salmon was a dollar a pound to the fisherman. The trollers could not pay for fuel and maintenance of the boat. Sure the seiners would get that

In my lifetime I have seen many fisheries depleted by over fishing. Granted that on occasion National Fisheries has taken this too far. (maybe). We blame all sorts of factors, but poor management is a major basic cause.

There are many complex social and political issues involved (as you point out).
 
Very good discussion of farmed salmon, in the context of market forces and biological concerns vis-a-vis effects on the viability of commercial and sport take of wild fish.

I live in a coastal city with a rich heritage of commercial harvest of Columbia River salmon, and a growing for hire sport salmon fishery within the river. A six man open sled, at 150 bucks a head, is a pretty efficient machine when run by a knowledgeable guide. Though these two kinds of fishermen disagree violently about the right of the other to earn a living off catching salmon (almost all hatchery-reared fish), both abhor farmed fish, and can orate at length about the drawbacks of farming salmon in open net pens.
 
The salmon problems are different in the three locations, Washington, BC, Canada, and Alaska. Washington is overpopulated, with fewer spawning streams left. BC is not very populated, but they have damaged their streams with logging. The logging damage is being controlled now, but the fish farms are killing off the native runs.

As far as I know, Alaska still has abundant salmon runs. Alaska hatches salmon and releases them to live wild. When these fish return to their hatchery locations, they are caught by the commercial and sport fishermen. This provides more salmon than just the wild runs do.

Alaska does not allow 'fish farms' like BC, Canada. Alaska does not have the PRV virus and lice problems that BC does.

The PRV virus is imported to Canada from Norway because the Alantic salmon eggs are infected with PRV. After the fish farm industry screwed up Norway, they had to move production to other countries. It appears that the Canadian government has sold out to the fish farm companies.

The problem with salmon is 'humans'. We seem to not care much that we are damaging a natural resource that our future decedents might have to rely on. Native salmon has fed the people and animals and forest of this coast for 10-15,000 years. And we have 'killed' it off in less than 100 years.

This is my opinion.
 
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