Posted on Saturday 3 May 2008
Together, we can save BC’s wild salmon
Alex Morton explains how the sea lice from fish farms affect the wild salmon stock in the Broughton Archipelago:
Since 2001, I’ve produced study after study proving that sea lice from fish farms kill wild salmon. Now the wild pink salmon in British Columbia’s Broughton Archipelago are just three generations, four years, away from extinction, as reported in the December 14, 2007 edition of the prestigious Science journal.
The main culprit is sea lice, from fish farms. Normal and benign in adult salmon, even one louse is lethal to a juvenile.
Dying salmon fry with lice attached
Without human interference, lice die off in the autumn as adult fish head upstream into fresh water. Fish farms provide what these parasites don’t naturally have – millions of available hosts close to the rivers, year-round. So lice numbers explode around farms. In the early spring, newly-hatched pink salmon run a gauntlet of farm-lice. Each generation, there are fewer and fewer small salmon fry making it safely out to sea. And these pink salmon are BC’s keystone fish, the species on which the eco-system depends. Everything feeds on the pinks – other salmon species, whales, bear, even the forest itself.
Map of the Migration
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The map thumbnail links to a Google map showing Fish Farms of the Broughtons. |
The banner at the top of the page shows what a healthy salmon fry looks like as it begins its spring migration out to sea. In areas like the Broughton Archipelago, where there are salmon farms on their migration route, the small fry salmon don’t look like that for long.
None of this is news to the people of Ireland or Norway. They were years ‘ahead’ of Canada in putting fish farms on wild salmon migration routes, and have lost many of their wild salmon runs. In July 2007 Norwegian oil and gas billionaire John Fredriksen, himself the principal shareholder in the world’s largest salmon-farming company, Marine Harvest, stood on a Norwegian river-bank, holding his fishing-rod, and told a reporter that “salmon farms should be in places without wild salmon.” Telegraph, Jan. 04, 2008
For some reason the British Columbia government and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans seem to disbelieve the mountains of research from around the world that shows that wild salmon populations will not survive in proximity to fish farms.
This tide to extinction can be turned. Your emails this winter have been an inspiration.
“What can we do?”
- Join us. We can stand up and be counted - politicians need to know how BC feels about losing wild salmon.
- We need to look at the status of the fish farm leases that are most damaging to wild fish, and move those farm fish.
- Because government and industry wouldn’t move the fish farms off the migration routes, we applied to medevac the young wild salmon out to sea past the farms.
- Now it’s early May 2008, the juvenile salmon have begun their spring migration, once again swimming into the soup of sea lice and effluent surrounding the industrial fish farms. With no government action in sight, we are forced to launch a legal action.
Together, we can do this.
Alexandra Morton R.P.Bio.
www.raincoastresearch.org
Adopt a small fry, save BC’s wild salmon.
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Let your voice be heard - with or without a donation - Join the Pacific Coast Wild Salmon Society.
Send the Premier of British Columbia your thoughts premier@gov.bc.ca
Find out more about the Broughton research station at http://www.callingfromthecoast.com/
How to Medevac a wild salmon run, March 2008
The young wild salmon entering the ocean from the Ahta River are threatened by sea lice from the nearby Glacier Falls fish farm so we are planning to move them by boat over the louse-infested waters around the fish farm.
The young salmon will enter saltwater on their own and become naturally acclimatized to the sea water. In a bay beyond the river the schools of young fish will be surrounded with a long beach-seine net and dipped up in buckets. Each bucket will be gently poured into a tank aboard an open boat.
A hose from this tank will pump seawater into the tank so the fish will have oxygen and can "taste" the water as we slowly move the boat westward. This should allow the fish to imprint their internal map on how to get back to the river. Sea lice and fish farms are along the shoreline so we will steer down the middle of the channels. We will not take the entire run, we will leave some fish so that we are not handling the entire run.
I have studied surface currents in this area and when we get well past the fish farm we will release the fish in a bay that we know is suitable for these young salmon with proper salinity and temperature values as well as abundant planktonic food.
There is a long history of moving salmon like this, around dams, over rockslides in rivers and out of drying pools during droughts. This would simply be a new application.
This is NOT the best solution. - The best solution would be to get the pathogen-laden farmed fish out of the wild salmon migration routes. - But after 7 years of examining young salmon dying of farm sea lice each spring, something must be done NOW to protect the wild salmon - before there are none left.
March 24 2008
As I await DFO’s decision whether or not to grant a permit to transport young wild salmon out of harm’s way past the fish farms I have been checking on the fish. As of a week ago there were no young salmon coming out of the Ahta River yet, though there are a few little pioneers here and there along the coastline. This cold spring weather will slow the migration out of the rivers. Your donations have made it possible for me to charter a boat for the medevac, if I receive permission from DFO. If I do not get permission from DFO there will be some tough decisions. If I can raise enough funds there are two other options that I will try; a legal challenge and purchase of the most troublesome leases. One of the problem farms this year (Glacier Falls - Marine Harvest) has already been moved twice at public expense, and yet is currently restocked and you have kindly donated money to move young wild salmon safely past it. We need to get off this losing treadmill. Please forward this website to any you think might be interested in lending these small fry a hand. Let me know if you have a website that could host the Adopt a fry button. Thank you.
March 26 2008
Today I went to the Ahta River. Despite the snowstorm there were both pink and chum salmon exiting the river. This means the clock is ticking on our opportunity to move these fish out of harm’s way. I am still awaiting word from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) on whether I will be granted permission to move some of the Ahta River salmon fry along their migration route past the two fish farms that stand in their path to the open ocean. A DFO team will be in the Broughton Archipelago capturing and killing tens of thousands of salmon fry for research on sea lice. It does not seem unreasonable to be given the opportunity to capture fry to save them from sea lice. This decision rests with Mr. Paul Sprout sproutpa@pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca
April 4 2008
Fisheries and Oceans Canada hand-delivered their response to the application to medevac young wild salmon fry out of danger past fish farm sea lice. They said “no.” This was not unexpected. Granting me a permit would have cast doubt that fish farms are responsibly sited in wild salmon nursery areas.
DFO indicated that they would like to focus on the rivers instead of the fish farms. There might be some benefit to this, however the Kakweikan River produced 1 million spawners in 2000, just before the lice epidemics began. In 2001, the offspring from that run went to sea; 98% had significant lice loads and 99% failed to return to the river. I don’t think a spawning channel will ever produce enough fish to make it through the lice.
Today, twenty-two of the Broughton fish farm leases have expired and the renewals seek a 20-year tenure and expansion. I don’t see how Broughton salmon stocks can survive this.
I will be filing a petition to strike down British Columbia’s aquaculture regulatory mechanism. Adopt-a-fry has raised $10,000 we need $50,000 sustain this legal effort.
Please contact me for further information or donate to adopt-a-fry, if you would like to help. Only the public can save our wild salmon now.
As for the medevac, this is difficult decision. If I move the fish without a permit I could be in debt the rest of my life! If I don’t I should stand accused by future generations of not doing what I can.
April 10 2008
This website has been posted for less than 2 months. We have raised enough money to pick up young wild salmon and move them out of harm’s way, away from the sea lice coming from fish farms. However, on April 4, 2008 Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) made the decision not to give us the permit to do this, even though their own enhancement facilities, move salmon fry. What should a person do when they have the ability to protect one of earth’s keystone species and the authorities say no, for perhaps only political purposes.
Wild salmon are essential to our forests, First Nations, the whales, the $1.6 billion wilderness tourism industry, the BC. economy and B.C.’s stature on the world stage for the 2010 Olympics. One of the things I am going to do is go to court to bring reason to this situation. So far we have raised $10,000., we need $50,000. If you are interested in helping, please adopt a salmon fry and pass this website to your friends.