March 7 - This was a very interesting week and made me think hard. In the face of unjustifiable denial by our government, failing salmon stocks and serious fish farm outbreaks I will be making an announcement at my talk March 14 2:00 pm Florence Filberg Centre, 411 Anderton Rd., downtown Courtenay. I will also post it on this blog.
No Action to Save Wild Salmon…. Again
At the scientist think tank held by Simon Fraser University last December, the only action we could come up with to actually protect this spring’s sockeye out-migration was to clear a migration route of salmon farms through the islands off Campbell River. This has not been done. This week DFO is already downgrading this summer’s run of salmon.
A group of local tourism operators, environmental groups and myself signed a letter also calling for closure of salmon farms in the Wild Salmon Narrows off Campbell River.
The provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MAL) still has not answered the question: how can they state there is no evidence of drug-resistance in the Grieg sea lice when their own data, posted on their website suggests the exact opposite. (See Nootka video below). In addition to the MAL data, I received this graph revealing extremely high sea lice levels on the Norwegian Grieg farm we visited in the video, followed by a brief decline after drug treatment (to levels still above the provincial limit) and then rapid rise again immediately. This graph strongly suggests drug-resistance.
Will the province answer me this week? A landmark decision just last week should help.
After a four year battle, fish farm disease and sea lice data collected by the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MAL) has been ordered released. The Norwegian company Mainstream argued releasing their disease information would damage their business. MAL agreed to hold this information private even though these pathogens are in public waters. The Information & Privacy Commissioner disagreed and ordered MAL to release the information within 30 days. We await to see if MAL will appeal to protect the fish farmers. see article
NBC News did a piece on the BC salmon farming impact: Plight of Pacific Salmon uncertain March 3
CTV did a story this week on the food quality of farm salmon vs wild:
They report:
Vitamin D: Wild: 533 I.U. / Farmed: 60 I.U.
Vitamin A: Wild: 154 I.U. / Farmed: 40 I.U.
Fat content: Wild: 2.5% / Farmed: 13%
PCB content: Wild: 5 parts/billion / Farmed: 27 parts/billion
New research shows that the politically active are the happiest folks! So what are we waiting for?
