alexandra morton

alexandramorton.ca

I have so many requests for my books I have built a website to sell them and some of my artwork and photographs;

Is Your Dinner Diseased?

On April 1, 2006 The Salmon farmers shut the door on disease testing of their fish on the feedlot sites (Ministry Agriculture and Foods) This seems wrong. Can all feedlots in Canada chose not to have their animals tested on site? While the fish are probably tested somewhere down the line before being sold to the public, allowing BC salmon feedlots to refuse disease testing is not not safe for our wild fisheries and certainly leads a person to suspect there are disease issues they are hiding. If you want to do something about this you can go to salmonaresacred.org right-hand column and download and print this 8x10 poster and place wherever farm salmon are sold. Photograph where you have posted this if you wish and send the picture to salmonaresacred.org.

We don't have big advertising budgets, but we are a large number of people....the salmon people. Government has failed us here, it is up to us.

Draft regulations or is it Daft regulations?

September 7, 2010
Mr. Edward Porter, Team Leader, Regulatory Operations
Aquaculture Management Directorate, Fisheries and Oceans Canada
200 Kent Street, 14th Floor, 14-S010, Ottawa, ON K1A 0E4

Dear Mr. Ed Porter:

Let me say first that I find it wrong that you demand people respond to sweeping changes to the salmon feedlot regulations while they are on vacation.

In regards to your Fish Pathogen and Pest Treatment discussion document, I feel I have to be frank and say….. you have GOT to be kidding!!

“Under these proposed regulations the above categories of substances, when used to treat or destroy fish pathogens and pests would need to conform to the following conditions:

• The Responsible Minister is satisfied the deposit will not adversely affect non target fish, fish habitat or man’s use of fish outside the treatment area as determined through a risk assessment conducted to the satisfaction of the Responsible Minister.”

Leaving the release of drugs and pathogens up to a Minister is a recipe for corruption, damage to our oceans and public resources and a threat to public health. Who wrote these new regulations, a CEO in Norway? Fisheries Minister Shea, seems to have very little idea of what is going on out here. As an example she thinks there is no strong evidence that the virus ISA can be imported with Atlantic salmon eggs even though scientific papers offer the opposite conclusion. Minister Shea’s unsubstantiated opinion is being used to allow continued import of Atlantic salmon eggs. This combined with the recent discovery of the HSMI virus in over 400 Norwegian salmon farms over the past decade means eggs have entered this country potentially carrying ISA virus and HSMI virus. When you combine this with the BC salmon feedlot industry’s refusal to release disease records it makes a person concerned. Ministers are political figureheads they are not equipped to make significant decisions at their whim.

Since April 1, 2010 a provincial minister, Thompson (MAL), is actually allowing salmon feedlots to turn away government vets from testing farm fish for disease. This appears on their website. This is a Minister making a decision that is not good for people, it is good for foreign owned companies.

What good is it to the people of this coast, if a Minister 100s or 1000s of km away is “satisfied,” when people are gathering food in the ocean around these feedlots with no information about disease and the toxic anti-parasite drugs, antibiotic and disinfectant use. Salmon feedlots are the only feedlots that never shovel manure. They dump it all straight from their livestock, through nets into the public waters of Canada. The drug used to kill sea lice is neurotoxin. A Minister thousands of km away may find herself “satisfied”, but what of the woman feeding her child from the sea. Work I am currently involved in shows impact on bacteria from salmon feedlots covers an enormous area.

By leaving important decisions open to a Minister’s discression you make them vulnerable to legal disputes over toxic substances entering the food chain, you open the door to Prime Ministers rewarding benefactors with easily “satisfied” Ministers. There have to be hard and immutable laws about exposing the public to toxic chemicals. This cannot be left to a Minister!

You must protect the public from feedlot drug use and feces. Put these operations on land in biohazard secure tanks.

Clearly Stephen Harper is prepared to go into the next election without the support of British Columbians.

Alexandra Morton

The Legendary Run Continues

The Pacific Salmon Commission formed in 1937, which manages Fraser sockeye, not Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) upgraded the 2010 Fraser sockeye to 34 million last week. This is the biggest run since a narrow canyon in the Fraser River, called Hells Gate was accidentally blocked by a Canadian Northern Railway blast in 1914. While some rock was removed that winter, salmon could not get through if the river was low as happened in 1941. No one knows exactly how large the Fraser salmon run was prior to European arrival but it was likely it was 60 - 100 million fish in the big return years when several large runs all came into the river in the same year. Hell's Gate's fishways was built by a joint Canadian-American Commission and completed in 1946 and finally gave Fraser Salmon reliable access to their river again.

This however was not the only problem we caused these fish. In 1898 a dam with no fishway at all was built across the Quesnel River, nearly wiping out this Fraser sockeye run. Only 200 returned in 1937. The Upper Horsefly has been heavily logged and cattle graze to the river bank. In 1908 a logging company built a dam just below the Adams Lake, Canada's most productive spawning ground. Logs were held in the lake until spring and then the water and logs were released and thrashed their way through the prime spawning gravel of the Lower Adams. This went on until 1921. The first sockeye to return after the dam ceased operation in 1922 founded a run that rebuilt to 15 million in 1958 (PFRCC).

Today we are running blind with this precious resource. Despite over 100 years of science and restoration efforts scientists can't tell if it is going to be a boom or bust year. This is not because they are not good at what they do, it is because there is something affecting Fraser sockeye that no one is measuring. Among the possible list of things disease from the salmon farms on the Fraser sockeye migration route is something that could kill millions of fish. Because the federal and provincial governments refuse to demand disease data from the Norwegian fish farm companies no one knows what is going on. There are two scientific reports on multi year epidemics of the IHN virus, which is lethal to sockeye, on the Fraser sockeye migration routes (St-Hilaire et al. 2002, Saksida 2006), but nothing has been done to limit these epidemics nor study their impact on Fraser sockeye.

We now know that these fish can return in very large numbers to the benefit of British Columbians. This is not a corporate resource, this is a public resource. Corporations have lobbiests and media consultants and large sums of money to convince government their needs should come first. Many of you have received large brochures from the salmon farm corporate lobby. We, the public don't have those financial resources but there are many of us. What we can do for our fish is each and everyone of us get the message out.

To be continued......

Sockeye 2010 - Legendary

The headlines from around the world are awash in what people are calling “perfect storms.” Drought, fires, floods, the poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico, oceanic dead zones. But here in BC we are awash in the perfect miracle. Two years ago tiny sockeye smolts traveled down the Fraser River, past towns and villages and through the urban sprawl of Vancouver, they went out to sea where things went right and are now returning in numbers reminiscent of 100 years ago. The Fraser sockeye have erased 100 years of abuse, greed and negligence and are offering us a second chance.

There are many runs within the Fraser sockeye population and the damaged ones remain low, but the growing 2010 run offers the rare and exceptional second chance to save this resource for us and for future generations. The 2010 Fraser sockeye are carrying over 125 million pounds of nutrients to us, to the forests, to the lakes, to the whales, bears, eagles, our communities and the people around the world who will be buying Fraser sockeye fresh, canned, smoked, frozen and salted. They are doing this without our knowing they even existed. They did this for free.

There are so many 2010 sockeye it is hard to find canning jars, the Vancouver processing plants are shipping some fish north to create hundreds of jobs in Prince Rupert. Little fishing communities like Sointula are alive with optimism, smiles, energy, money! First Nation people whose bodies have come to depend on salmon after 8000 years together will be nourished after several years of no salmon. The growth rings on millions of trees will be broad, marking the legendary run of 2010, it will be a bandwidth scientists will use as a reference point for the next 100 years. As leaves and new needles stretch out next spring they will absorb record amounts of carbon and produce pure clean oxygen. We don’t pay for the trees to do this, but they do it anyway and the people on this side of the planet will breath air made by trees that absorbed the 2010 sockeye into their roots. The rainmaking machinery of ocean air sliding up tree-clad mountains will be assured to bring us water. Thousands of people will absorb valueable omega oils, unborn and nursing orca babies will be sleek and glossy. The tourism and commercial fishing folks will spend money made from these fish in their towns all winter. These fish are good for our world!

But we don’t know how this happened. The agency we pay to manage our fish, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, is running blind. They were not aware of the coming crash last year, nor the biggest return in 100 years this year.

This is inexcusable. We pay their bill and we can demand better service. Fisheries Minister, Gail Shea, was quoted recently saying Mother Nature is in charge….as she hands out money to the Norwegian salmon farming industry to make a sea lice vaccine to fight the drug resistant lice that DFO told me all winter do not exist. Wrong Ms. Shea, you are in charge of caring for these fish.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada should not be investing public funds into privately operated fish feedlots when their mandate is wild fish. We have an extremely damaged run now growing a new generation in the lakes and a spectacular run coming home. What we need is answers as to why the sockeye run is swinging between such extremes one year to the next. DFO has an extremely lackadaisical attitude toward our sockeye after they leave the river. After watching DFO flounder around trying to study sea lice in Broughton I feel they are out-dated, irrelevant and likely corrupt and we should move forward without them, phase them out.

What needs to be done is follow the fish as they travel the coastal waters of BC. DFO is too ill-equipped to do this, but projects like the POST study combined with small boat hand purse seines could bring us a wealth of information about the challenges our fish face be it food, temperature, farm disease, predators, chemicals. Unless we get a new Minister of Fisheries and new Director General for DFO Pacific Region this is never going to happen and we are going to continue blundering around trying to sample sockeye after they have left the Strait of Georgia, squandering public money and telling us Mother Nature is in charge.

Until DFO is reworked top to bottom I think all who would like to see the miracle of the 2010 sockeye happen again should just do the work ourselves. Talking with DFO is useless, they cannot even accept the science that has been done for them. They are a political entity messing around with a biological resource and it is not working.

I hope the Legendary 2010 Fraser sockeye remind people that the natural world is a powerful mechanism that offers everything we need. We cannot let anyone suspected of damaging this extremely valuable resource to keep secrets. This is a chance to get it right! There is no law saying we cannot manage our own resources and that is what we should do.

This post is dedicated to the wonderful and dedicated friend, fisherman and research Steve Bergh who I am sure is watching these sockeye from wherever he is now - Thank you Steve for all your work to protect these Fraser sockeye.

Salmon Feedlots are on expired leases

Fish farms operating without valid Crown Land tenures
Biologist applies for expired salmon feedlot licenses

(August 23, 2010, Broughton Archipelago) Salmon Feedlots in the Broughton Archipelago are operating on Crown Land tenures that have been expired for years. This week biologist Alexandra Morton has applied for these licences to return them to their natural state to grow wild fish to the much greater benefit of British Columbians and the BC economy.

Crown Land is public land that the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MAL) leases to people and companies. MAL is also in charge of regulating the salmon feedlots.

“I don’t know how these foreign companies can be in full production for years on expired tenures, but these sites are the fishiest places in the Broughton where we once found the highest concentrations of herring, salmon, prawns and other species,” says biologist Alexandra Morton, “I have made detailed application to MAL to use these sites for what they have done so well for 8,000 years - grow wild fish to the benefit of the people, the economy and future generations who might appreciate the food security in the years to come.”

Morton’s applications recognize how the natural architecture of the sites perform to produce up-wellings, tide lines and back eddies that attract and feed valuable public fisheries, including prawns, rock cod, wild salmon, herring and other species. Some of the salmon feedlots violate provincial aquaculture-free zones. She writes in the applications:

“I offer that my intended use better serves Crown Land’s mission statement “to provide the greatest benefits for British Columbians.”

The salmon feedlots had “Licences of Occupation,” which are a lesser form of tenure and are not surveyed, considered short term, non-exclusive, non-registerable and intended for only “minimum improvements.”

“A disturbing lawlessness surrounds this industry, they post “no trespassing” signs on non-exclusive leases, that they let expire. On April 1, 2010 they slammed the door on government inspection for disease, while their pathogens free-flow into our richest fish habitat. This industry was unlawfully given to the province to manage who appears to let these companies do whatever they want. Privatizing ocean spaces and owning fish in the ocean is unconstitutional in Canada, is that why the leases have not been renewed,” asks Morton? “It is time we find out what is the relationship between this Norwegian industry and all levels of our government.”

“The Musgamagw Tsawataineuk Tribal Council fully supports Alexandra securing these leases for safe-keeping as a means to preserve wild salmon stocks and the integrity of our eco-system. We look forward to working side by side with her on this,” states Chief Bob Chamberlin.

Morton thinks people in Nootka Sound, Port Hardy, Discovery Islands and Clayoquot Sound should also look into whether those leases are expired. Contact “Front Counter BC.”

“Bottom line is wild fish belong to us and if we don’t take a stand and look after them ourselves no one else is going to,” says Morton, “there are a lot of rotten politics around this. I hope this year’s legendary sockeye return reminds people of just how valuable wild fish are to us.

In May 2010 5,000 people walked with Morton to the steps of the BC legislature to tell the government to get salmon feedlots out of the ocean. www.salmonaresacred.org

Fraser sockeye run Legendary!

The 2010 Fraser Sockeye return is a phenomena. The fishermen have not seen it this good for 50 years. They keep thinking the last sockeye has entered Johnstone Strait, but the fish just keep pouring in from the Pacific at both ends of Vancouver Island. I go and float with them every morning in Queen Charlotte Strait and whatch them finning all around me, rolling at the surface like porpoises, always pointing south, never stopping. Hundreds of miles away newspapers in Fraser River towns are reporting an economic boon fromall the people pouring in to the fish.

Ah this is one amazing animal….. They are so successful they can share their wealth prolifically and still reproduce themselves. This run is reminder of what this fish can do, its sheer ability to generate life and capacity as an economic powerhouse.

The Fraser sockeye scientists did not know this many sockeye were going to return. The indicators were all good, but the enormous unexpected decline last year has made them cautious. They are running blind because they don’t know what is turning the sockeye on and off.

What the scientists do know is that this lineage of Fraser sockeye has consistently been less damaged than all the other year classes. They don’t know why. The many runs of Fraser sockeye are like strands of a rope. Each are a distinct line coming and going to sea in different years, using unique spawning grounds and they twine together to make one of the largest salmon returns in the world. Most of the lines are declining severely. What we have this year is an exceptionally good return of the last thriving lineage. This is not a rebound. The young of last year’s feeble return are in the lakes and awaiting their turn. If they suffer the fate of their parents they are extinquished.

Last year’s crash was so shocking because as smolts the 2009 sockeye had been large and numerous. To predict run sizes scientists use numbers like the size and number of smolts that went to sea, the seawater temperature, plankton density, how many jacks return early and other factors. This is not all that different from how fishermen predict runs, just more math! Over the past 18 years the ability to predict Fraser sockeye has become increasingly difficult. To scientists this means there is something they are not measuring, something new has arrived on scene since 1992s.

The scientific measurements indicated the 2010 sockeye would be large, but the scientists could not risk giving people false hope. Llast year was a harsh lesson for all. We are running blind on a resource that brings an enormous pulse of wealth the entire coast of BC and then into the river where they feed a watershed covering 60% of British Columbia.

The 2010 sockeye are telling us the river and ocean can still make phenomenal number of fish! It is up to us if we get to keep them coming home like this.

Salmon feedlots release pathogens into public waters, but slam the door on government disease monitoring

The salmon feedlot owners are now refusing to allow the provincial government of British Columbia to test the fish in their pens for disease as of April 1 2010, they will not even permit access to their dead fish.  I don't know how these feedlots are getting away with this, but they must have reasons for such extreme secrecy.   This could become law in December when regulation of salmon feedlots in BC moves from the provincial to the federal government of Canada. The decline of the Fraser sockeye is strongly correlated with known disease outbreaks in salmon feedlots (see below). The federal government is allowing public comment for only 30 more days in the middle of summer when everyone is resting and on vacation.  Unfortunately, this is up to you, if enough people oppose the deregulating of salmon feedlots the regulations will be rewritten. It seems wrong to allow them to flush all their waste into salmon habitat, while preventing government disease monitoring. Consumers and the markets must reject such a careless product.

Here is the link to the petition at www.salmonaresacred.org

Dear Government of British Columbia

I have been writing to Dr. Mark Sheppard vet at BC Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (BCMAL) about whether or not IHN virus is a reportable disease for salmon feedlots.  The Canadian Food Inspection Agency made 23 fish diseases “immediately notifiable diseases” last December, so it would seem an easy question for him to answer, but he refused to say  “yes” or a “no.”  And now I know why.

The reason for my question is because the decline in productivity of Fraser sockeye is alarmingly correlated with massive IHN outbreaks in salmon feedlots on the Fraser sockeye migration route going back to 1992.  These outbreaks were kept secret in some cases from the Ministry of Environment Lands and Parks. Government took no action to remove the highly infectious fish and the virus spread to other feedlots exposing many generations of Fraser sockeye to highly unnatural pathogen levels. DFO scientists have published papers stating IHN is lethal to sockeye and should not be allowed to thrive in salmon feedlots, but DFO and the province stood by and did nothing. DFO has found IHN in Fraser sockeye in the years of the IHN epidemics.

The correlation is so alarming we have to know what is going on in the captive salmon if we are going to protect the wild salmon. ! We all know feedlot disease amplification is dangerous to humanity, and food security.  The sockeye scientists report this generation of Adams sockeye has been one of the least affected by the decline.  We need to backtrack through the years that this run was exposed to the salmon feedlots and examine if there were disease outbreaks or not. Unless we can learn these things we are running blind and can only blame ourselves for the problems.

On March 1 the Office of the Information & Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia (Order F10-06) decided that the salmon feedlot disease records in the possession of BC Ministry of Agriculture and Lands had to be released to a Freedom of Information applicant. In the decision adjudicator, Michael McEvoy, quotes the four big biggest companies in BC stating that if their disease records are released to the public they would never give government access again. This suggest extortion.

On April 1 they apparently made good on their threat:
 "Fish Health and Lice Monitoring audits by BCMAL   ceased  as of April 01, 2010 when live fish and carcasses were  no  longer volunteered,  or made available, to BCMAL Fish Health  Program  staff.": http://www.al.gov.bc.ca/ahc/fish_health/Summary_FH_HMP_Q2_2010.pdf

Do you realize you have allowed an industry that is unconstitutional in nature to threaten government?   These salmon feedlot-owners refuse to allow the government of British Columbia access to “their” dead fish even though they do not clearly own those fish and flush all waste into public waters.

Canada knew this industry was unconstitutional in 1984 when they had a report commissioned by that offered 3 courses of action to amend this....none of which were taken. Instead the industry was unlawfully transferred to the Province in an attempt to hide the fact that no one in Canada is allowed to privatize ocean spaces, nor own fish in the ocean. In a Letter of Understanding signed Jan 23, 2001 British Columbians paid $70,000 for a database containing salmon feedlot disease information that is so secret BCMAL promised to not even give it to their enforcement officers.  The disease information BCMAL does release is so incomplete it failed to report the IHN epidemic in Broughton in 2003.

The province of BC has stood by while this industry took a bold step step exerting powers the Constitution of Canada does not offer.  I realize you are almost free of regulating this industry, but you are now responsible for 5 months of no fish health audits of salmon feedlots and you continue to lease the land of British Columbia to this industry. The Crown Lands Mission Statement is Excellence in the administration of Crown land to provide the greatest benefits for British Columbians.

I ask you is it “excellence” and in the interests of British Columbians to allow these companies to successfully threaten government and make up their own rules?
None of this is legal, the displacement of the public from public waters, the industry pretending they own the salmon in the ocean, allowing these corporations to prevent government from examining the health of fish in Canadian waters, and your regulation of this industry for the past 20 years. Out neighbors to the south are on an entirely different program to restore their runs of wild salmon.

If the governments of Canada refuse to adhere to the Constitution we are no longer a democracy.

Alexandra Morton

------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Critical - Public input required

The federal government has released their proposed Federal Pacific Aquaculture Regulations with a sixty-day public input period. These regulations roll back the safe-guards we have in British Columbia to prevent heavy industrialization and privatization of the coast at the expense of our communities. Once these regulations pass there will be no further public input on how each salmon feedlot licence is written, how many wild fish they can take and what diseases they must report. The federal licences will be issued without First Nation or other consultation and can be expanded without an environmental assessment. I feel there has to be enormous response or else we all lose, even the people working in the industry, because no retailer is going to want to be in possession of a seafood product authorized to “Harmfully Alter, Disrupt and Destroy” parts of the North Pacific. Oddly these regulations will not apply to the east coast of Canada, where the Minister of Fisheries resides.

There are several options for you to act by the deadline September 12:

See my letter below which interprets the proposed regs and provides a direct link to them

write to Ed Porter who is accepting public input PAR-RPA@dfo-mpo.gc.ca

Sign the petition

You can see my presentation on the strong correlation between disease in salmon feedlots and decline of Fraser sockeye "What's New"

I know it is very hard to react to everything that comes at us, so I have tried to make this easy for you. However, I can’t turn this looming disaster, it requires each and everyone of you and your friends and family. Please pass the petition to all you know.

To stay up to date please frequent www.salmonaresacred.org I will let you know how many people have signed. Volunteers are hosting events throughout BC this summer to link all of us together and this information will be posted. The T-shirts left from the migration are on my website www.alexandramorton.ca and proceeds go to this effort.

The Get Out Migration brought thousands of people together, but government does not want to hear from our communities nor of our need for good health in our environment and our bodies. Clearly there needs to be more public response. That is all that is required to fix this. I will continue to push for protection for salmon feedlot workers, as this is a government mistake and they need not bear the cost of this to our coast.

I think we will have a good Fraser sockeye run this summer and that should tell us the ocean and the river are still highly capable of feeding this coast! This generation of sockeye has shown one of the least declines and we need to investigate why this run is good and the others have failed so badly. If we allow government to let salmon feedlot companies hide their disease outbreaks this investigation will be incomplete. If there is no salmon feedlot disease problem, there should be no reason for secrecy.

Hundreds of people have said “I am behind you Alex,” but this is not working. We have to stand shoulder to shoulder, where we are all peacefully and strongly visible. This is the only way to save ourselves and our planet.

Alexandra Morton

July 28, 2010

Ed Porter, Team Leader, Regulatory Operations
Fisheries and Oceans Canada
PAR-RPA@dfo-mpo.gc.ca

Dear Mr. Ed Porter:

I am responding to the 60-day public comment opportunity on the proposed Federal Pacific Aquaculture Regulations http://www.gazette.gc.ca/cg-gc/about-sujet-eng.html (left column “Part I Notices and Proposed Regulations” Vol. 144, No. 28, page 1933).

When BC Supreme Court ruled that the federal government must take over regulation of salmon feedlots, the intent was to bring the industry into compliance with the Constitution of Canada. But what Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are trying to do instead is remove safeguards established by previous governments and open the door to privatizing the ocean, which is prohibited by the Canadian Constitution.

With his document Harper not only licences massive ecological damage, he depreciates the market value of BC feedlot salmon. No reputable retailer can afford to be seen with a seafood product raised under a licence to “harm, alter, disrupt and destroy” the ocean. The federal licences will be issued without consultation with First Nations.

“Increasingly stringent international standards are driving seafood importing nations to require Canada to certify health (disease) status, not just food safety, of live aquatic animals and their products. … Canada cannot meet these standards, and is facing increasing challenges to export market access. Canada is already subject to a lesser market access than the United States, Europe ...“ http://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2009/2009-12-19/html/reg1-eng.html

Canadian pathologists warn against holding millions of diseased salmon in pens (Traxler et al. 1993) and the graph below demonstrates the reason. There is a strong correlation between salmon feedlot epidemics and the declining Fraser sockeye. This must be examined, but the provincial government is stonewalling release of salmon feedlot disease records and Harper is stepping in to help.

These draft regulations ignore the International (OIE) and the Canadian Food and Health Inspection Agency standards by exempting salmon feedlots from full disease reporting. Harper is not only offering Norwegian companies the right to leave infected salmon in the water, he is protecting them from liability. If government and the industry are willing to throw away premium market value for disease secrecy we are warned this is a dangerous and strong priority.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is also offering these Norwegian companies blanket authorization for “Harmful Alteration, Disruption or Destruction” of fish habitat (Section 35(1) Fisheries Act). This ignores the value of the oceans to communities across British Columbia. Oddly, these rules will not apply to eastern Canada, where the Minister of Fisheries resides.

Harper is going to legalize destruction of wild fish that become trapped in the pens, attracted by the bright lights and food in the water. There are no surplus wild fish and so this by-catch will compete with fishing quotas. Many feedlots are in rock cod conservation areas where fishermen are not allowed, but the feedlots will continue trapping unknown amounts. This is bad management and will affect herring, sable fish, salmon, lingcod and other important wild fish.

The federal Conservatives are proposing salmon feedlot licences be granted and amended without environmental assessment. This violates strong public demand for healthy coastal waters, but neatly resolves the irreconcilable issue of dumping over a ton/day/site of industrial waste into salmon habitat. These are the only feedlots that never have to shovel manure and chemical waste as it flows conveniently into public waters.

It is dangerous to humanity, (risking food security, drug resistance, disease mutation) to allow feedlots to contaminate natural environments with disease. Feedlots remove all the natural disease control mechanisms and thus allow viruses to mutate, multiply and jump to new species.

Because Mr. Harper is proposing to remove standards designed to protect the ocean from Norwegian feedlots, retailers like COSTCO will have to decide if their mission statements honor government or their customers. Promising to “Exceed ecological standards required in every community where we do business,” is meaningless if there are no ecological standards.

Salmon feedlots are an “ecology of bad ideas,” struggling to control disease with drugs, corrupting the foodchain by using warm-blooded animal products, plants and fish from the southern hemisphere as feed, displacing local businesses, turning a public resource into a corporate commodity with no public access, dyeing their fish pink to resemble salmon. If jobs were the goal, the federal Conservatives and BC Liberals would be working with the BC companies developing sustainable land-based aquaculture to create a viable, world-class product. Instead Mr. Harper is proposing to change the laws of Canada to allow unchecked pollution by a 92% Norwegian-owned industry associated wild salmon declines worldwide. Wild salmon are thriving everywhere this industry does not exist (Alaska, Iceland, western Pacific, areas of BC).

These proposed regulations are a signpost. If this was about fish, attention would have been paid to the market value of the product. Instead it risks one of the last naturally producing salmon regions in the world for a depreciating commodity. What these draft regulations do is clear away legislation established to protect Canadians and our coast from industrialization and privatization.

Ed Porter, the proposed Federal Pacific Aquaculture Regulations do not protect the interests of Canadians or the world and must not be adopted.

Sincerely,

Alexandra Morton

The Fraser sockeye decline began at the same time government failed to cull millions of IHN virus infected feedlot salmon on the Fraser River migration routes. Government ignored federal scientists who state infected Atlantic salmon should not be permitted in pens (Traxler et al 1993). The federal government also ignored warnings from their scientists that would have saved the North Atlantic cod. When the cod went extinct the Hibernia Oil wells appeared on the Grand Banks – the most generous food-producing area humanity will ever have was exchanged for oil.

salmon feedlot disease secrets

July 13
Hello

Sockeye appear to be doing very well from the Columbia River to Alaska! Even the Fraser forecast is cautiously optimistic. If we get a good run back to the Fraser we will know the river and the ocean are still functioning, whatever has happened to all the other year classes, is something else.

The new proposed Pacific Aquaculture Regulations have been posted to the Canada Gazette website at for a 60-day public review period. The contact is Ed Porter, PAR-RPA@dfo-mpo.gc.ca.

Each licence under this new regime will vary site to site and the diseases they have to report and the amount of wild fish they can catch in their pens will vary. This is disturbing. I hope may of you will take the opportunity to comment that salmon feedlots in the ocean need to report all their disease outbreaks.

This is an article from today on a new salmon feedlot disease in the Atlantic. They report over 400 outbreaks in 11 years and it is now in the wild. Scientists just identified the virus as HSMI and it is generally fatal to fish. Obviously, the eggs imported to BC have not been checked for this virus. Will there be a response from our Minister of Fisheries on how we can be sure this has not spread here?

I just published this article on the secrecy of salmon feedlot disease outbreaks in BC.

The Cohen Inquiry is a massive undertaking. We have requested salmon feedlot disease outbreak information so it can be examined in relationship to the declining Fraser sockeye productivity. Hopefully they will comply. DFO genetic research is reporting that Fraser sockeye are being strongly challenged by a virus, but they do not know which virus yet.

You can follow this work at Salmonaresacred.org

Alexandra Morton

June 20 update

June 20, 2010

Hello Salmon People

The effort to protect our wild salmon from salmon farm pathogens, pollution and by-catch continues to grow. We are keeping abreast of the issues at:

www.salmonaresacred.org

Hundreds of people have been mobilized by the Get Out Migration writing letters, holding meetings, demanding answers from their politicians and the science continues. The sockeye leaving the Fraser River are once again heavily infested with sea lice near the salmon farms. This picture shows a juvenile sockeye with 14 young sea lice caught near salmon farms off Campbell River.

The salmon farmers have put government on notice - they will not be volunteering any further disease information again. The secrecy around salmon farm disease is a red flag and the people trying to answer why the Fraser sockeye are dying are running blind. The Fraser sockeye decline began at the same time as salmon farm outbreaks of IHN. IHN virus is lethal to sockeye and the fish feedlot outbreaks represent pathogen loads higher than wild sockeye have ever experienced. See attached graph. It is unacceptable that they demand to operate in secrecy in public waters when there is clearly cause for concern. The Governments in power have done nothing to protect BC from these disease outbreaks, in fact they have aided in the cover-up.

Our westcoast Federal Fisheries Critic, MP Fin Donnelly asked Canadian actor William Shatner to lend his star power to this issue and you can see the result at:
http://www.findonnelly.ca/

The Cohen Inquiry into the Fraser sockeye decline is under intense scrutiny for hiring people connected to DFO to investigate DFO. Meanwhile, scientists who have worked on impact of aquaculture were rejected due to their connection to me. However, we have the same lawyer as won our BC Supreme Court challenge, Greg McDade, and we are optimistic that this Inquiry can be a powerful process to reveal the scope of impact of salmon farms on the Fraser sockeye. I encourage all to visit their website frequently and see the submissions. There is one posted there now from hockey star Willie Mitchell who has a deep personal interest in salmon. http://www.commissioncohen.ca/en/

We are hopeful that this year’s Fraser sockeye return will be a big one because this lineage has shown the least decline. There are numerous Fraser sockeye runs and year-classes. These strands twist together like a rope. If we get this strand back, we are lucky but it does not mean the ones we are losing have recovered. Each generation of salmon stands alone, but also are critically linked genetically and ecologically. They cannot thrive alone.

As the inquiry turns up the heat on salmon farming, the attacks have disintegrated to mud-slinging. Below are two links to the National Post that cast doubt on anything this paper has ever published. The money reported in this article must include everything related to wild salmon research, I don’t believe the environmental organizations have received anything close to this for working on salmon farm issues. As well, I have been in the middle of this for 20 years and have never been approached by Alaskan interests. These writers are grasping at straws. Their source on this was reportedly hired by MP John Duncan, a salmon farm advocate. The scientific community is responding and we will be posting these as they come in on salmonaresacred.org

http://www.financialpost.com/news/Salmon+farm+battle+about+competition/3167822/story.html

http://www.financialpost.com/This+science+fishy/3169251/story.html

Letters to the editor

The Cohen Inquiry funding is scant and so donations would be helpful. There is an avalanche of documents to review. I hate asking for funds, but there is a Pay Pal button on the Salmonaresacred.org website. Since this work would be considered political by Revenue Canada there are no tax-receipts possible. My operations are frugal with no office rental and an abundance of incredible volunteers, so the tiniest donations count and go straight to the work.

Our next court date on the charges against Marine Harvest for illegal possession of wild salmon and herring is this Tuesday. We hope the Department of Justice will appear in court and move forward on this very important case to investigate the rate of wild fish consumption by the salmon farming industry. While the DOJ has assumed our charge we have not abandoned the case.

Rising out of this fracas is Canadian landbased fish farming technology. Farming salmon is never going to feed the world because it takes more fish than it makes, but aquaculture has a place and there are Canadian engineers, communities and organizations who are going to lead us out of this mess offering jobs and a product and technology that Canada can be proud of. Some supermarkets, such as Overwaitea in Canada are currently sourcing land-based salmon from Washington State, which is an opportunity missed. click here As well, one of the 4 main supermarkets in Norway, ICA, announced that fish farmers must move into closed containments within 3 years, or they will remove farmed salmon from their close to 1000 stores in Norway, Sweden and Holland. Between disease, drug resistant lice and their markets the fish farm industry will have to move into tanks and hopefully Canadian fish farmers who are ahead of the curve will reap the benefit.

COSTCO is a major buyer of BC farm salmon.

I was given an honorary Doctorate of Science from Simon Fraser University last week for the research I have done on salmon farm-origin sea lice. This was an enormous personal milestone and should help those who are trying to evaluate what we know about the impact of farm salmon on wild salmon. Simon Fraser University has become a leader in wild salmon research, conferences and education.

There are never enough funds to do the ongoing research in the field and through the documents and so I have launched an online store to continue supporting myself www.alexandramorton.ca is a way for me to remain financially viable and keep my voice free and unencumbered.

Thank you, to all of you. Our numbers are growing, we are concerned about the people who work in the salmon farming industry, but we will continue to powerfully, peacefully and unrelentingly protect what belongs to all of us and the future – wild salmon. Wild salmon are thriving everywhere in the North Pacific, except where there are salmon farms.

Dr. Alexandra Morton DSc (honoris causa)