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Help stop a huge new salmon farm!
On June 25th, the Strathcona Regional District approved the zoning application for one of two new Grieg Seafood open net-cage salmon farms in Sunderland Channel, in the northern Georgia Strait. At 4,400 metric tonnes, the farm at Gunner Point would be one of the largest on the BC coast!
Another open net-cage salmon farm in the northern Georgia Strait where wild salmon from as far away as Oregon and up the Fraser River migrate, not to mention salmon from local Vancouver Island rivers, would be a disaster. The proposed Gunner Point farm would be at the bottleneck of this migratory corridor, where its wastes, disease, and parasites will put additional stress on wild salmon stocks that are already facing myriad threats.
It’s not too late to put a stop to this! The final decision for whether the farm will be approved will be in the hands of the provincial government and we are asking the Honourable Steve Thomson, Minister of Agriculture and Lands, to deny this application and invest in a fund for the development of closed containment.
Please, send Minister Thomson this fax and it will be cc’ed to several others with the political power to deny Grieg’s application, including Minister Gail Shea of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and BC Premier Gordon Campbell.
http://farmedanddangerous.org/fax/stop_gunner_point
Read more in CAAR’s press release about the Regional District’s approval.
Notes from the Broughton
Recently, CAAR fish biologist Stan Proboszcz had the opportunity to support some of the top-notch research going on in the Broughton Archipelago -- BC's epicentre of sea lice research.
We're sorry we can't transport all of you there to see the impacts of the salmon farms and the researchers at work, but a slideshow of Stan's pictures will give you a glimpse of the rich biological world that locals and scientists are working together to protect.
The Broughton Archipelago is one of the most aggressively farmed areas in BC. One simply has to take a short boat ride through the area to see that the farming industry has a strong foothold. The negative impacts associated with the industry couldn’t be clearer to the people who reside in the area, as they see it with their own eyes every day. The residents have a unique bond with each other as a result of the encroachment by the industry.
A flurry of research is conducted out of the Salmon Coast Research Station (www.salmoncoast.org) located in the heart of the Broughton and most of it focuses on studying the effects of industrial salmon farming on the surrounding ecosystem. Projects underway include work on understanding the transmission dynamics of disease and parasites from farmed salmon to wild flatfish and finfish.
In addition, CAAR and Marine Harvest are jointly supporting a study in the region. The study, led by Dr. Martin Krkosek, is examining sea lice levels on pink and chum salmon in relation to current salmon farm management practices in the area and a partial fallow of farms on the Tribune Channel, Fife Sound migratory route.
If only more people in doubt of the negative impacts of the farms (maybe even our federal fisheries and oceans minister) could get out and spend some time in the Broughton, change might occur at a quicker pace.
The social costs of an unsustainable salmon farming industry
Over the past year and a half we’ve brought you news about the near collapse of Chile’s salmon farming industry due to the outbreak and spread of the Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA) virus. Now we're sharing a video news story that explores the social side of this catastrophe.
The ISA virus, first reported in Chile in the fall of 2007, has wreaked havoc on the coastal ecosystem because the industry’s open net-cage systems cannot effectively contain it. The disease has spread from net-cage to net-cage covering thousands of kilometres of the Chilean coastline.
This video, from Al Jazeera news, provides yet another side of this story: the effect that this crisis is having on the people of Chile. The carelessness and unsustainability of the largely unregulated salmon farming industry in Chile has taken a major toll on the thousands of laid off industry employees, their families, and their communities. This experience demonstrates the undeniable connection between ecological damage and social disruption.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/06/2009671906886171.html
Together with our global allies and supporters, CAAR is committed to pushing the industry operating in BC to transition to closed containment in order to spare our wild fish stocks, marine ecosystems and communities from this kind of turmoil. We hope that BC can be a leader in more sustainable technologies that can be used worldwide. Thank you for your support and dedication!
Wild Salmon Narrows campaign heats up
We recently sent out a special action alert about CAAR’s new effort to clear the Okisollo Channel, or Wild Salmon Narrows, of open net-cage salmon farms. The government and industry took notice!
We’d love to keep you informed and let you know ways you can help. Please sign on to the Wild Salmon Narrows email series and be a part of the effort to finally get net-cage salmon farms out of the water -- for good!
http://farmedanddangerous.org/page/safesalmonroute
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