March 11, 2022
Dear Minister Joyce Murray.
On March 3, 2022, I met with members of your Aquaculture Management Division (AMD).
They said they are recommending 6-year licences be issued to the salmon farming industry when all the BC licences expire this summer. That’s three years past the mandate issued by the Prime Minister to transition salmon farms by 2025.
They said Rebecca Reid, Director General, Pacific Region, was the decision–maker, not you.
They said no wild salmon conservation concerns have been brought to their attention. They are regulating salmon farms in Clayoquot Sound where salmon runs are nearly extinguished in both logged and unlogged watersheds. Research on the harm to Chinook salmon by the ubiquitous Atlantic blood virus PRV was done in the Creative Salmon farms in Clayoquot, i.e. rupturing their red blood cells. DFO field staff know Mowi, Cermaq and Grieg are losing control of their sea lice coastwide causing widespread harm to young wild salmon. And yet reportedly there is no awareness of any of this within the AMD.
When asked if they had followed up on a potential Breach of Licence - release of sea lice from mechanical de-lousing vessels - they said they did not know how to sample this effluent. This treatment water flows from a pipe sticking out of the side of a barge. Many of us are sampling this effluent, which is how we know sea lice are being released.
My sense of DFO’s Aquaculture Management Division is they see themselves existing outside the DFO mandate. They and senior managers in Ottawa are unreasonably resistant to evidence that wild salmon exposed to salmon farms are not surviving. They have made it clear that salmon are not their concern.
Whether industrial salmon farming licences are renewed on the BC coast is of national consequence as wild fisheries collapse around the world threatening the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon and support life. BC scientists have become global leaders in tracking the seepage of disease organisms from salmon farms pioneering powerful next-generation disease-tracking technology. They are issuing warnings.
I am writing to ask that you personally make the decision whether to renew salmon farming licences on the BC coast this summer. The extinction trend of wild salmon exposed to salmon farms seems more likely to be weighed against the demands of industrial salmon farming in your office, than Rebecca Reid’s. They are an aggressive industry, but this is a wild salmon decision. While Mowi, Grieg and Cermaq squandered the support offered to move into tanks on land, that opportunity still exists for them. However, as each run of salmon goes extinct 10,000+ years of evolution are zeroed. Wild salmon are forced to start all over again in the harsh crucible of climate change and the ecosystems they support, in which we exist, are dangerously weakened.
As soon as their marine licences expire, the salmon farming industry will move into tanks on land. The question you face is whether we want to do that before or after valuable wild salmon runs are extinguished by this industry? The previous minister of fisheries took an incredibly brave step that cleared most of the Fraser River migration route, but the entire west coast of Vancouver Island remains under the influence of industrial salmon farm waste.
Thank you for reading this,
Alexandra Morton