First Nations' Lawsuit to Protect Wild Salmon

First Nations Chiefs apply to bring a class action suit to protect the wild salmon of BC from fishfarms.

Chief Bob Chamberlin :

"We look forward to stripping away the denial the provincial government chooses to trot out when it comes to the aquaculture industry. We look around the world and we can see the problems this industry represents. We also are very aware of the delay, deny, and distract approach that industry has and which our provincial government has whole-heartedly embraced. ... We will not stop. We will protect the wild salmon and we will protect the environment of our people."
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From the people of Canada to the people of Norway

"Dear Norway: Help Save Canada's Wild Salmon" - an excellent new short doc from Damien Gillis being shown at the Aqua Nor trade show right now in Norway. Go.

When even John Fredricksen, owner and largest shareholder of Marine Harvest, one of the big three Norwegian companies which control over 92% of BC open-net salmon farms, says :

"I'm concerned about wild salmon. Move salmon farms out of the path of wild salmon"

then you have to wonder what the hell Canada Fisheries and Oceans Minister Gail Shea is doing over there promoting "Canada's sustainable aquaculture" at the trade show.

Featured prominently near the top of the homepage of the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Aquaculture website is an entire page devoted to : Facts About Sea Lice in B.C.

To correct misinformation about sea lice on the West Coast, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) offers the following facts:

Sea lice are naturally occurring, minute parasites that have existed for millions of years.

• No direct cause and effect relationship has been established between sea lice from salmon farms and the abundance of wild populations of pink and chum salmon in the Broughton Archipelago.
• DFO scientists have determined that virtually no mortality due to sea lice occurs in juvenile pink salmon of 0.7 grams or more in weight. The percentage of juvenile pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago that weighed less than 0.7 grams and had sea lice infections that were equal to or above the lethal threshold has been very low in the area over the past several years. Only 4.5 per cent of juvenile pink salmon were in this category in 2005, and that percentage had declined to zero by 2008.

Zero. Ok, so there's zero problem here, according to the people we employ to protect our salmon - and by extension the grizzly, the bald eagle, the killer whale, First Nations livelihood and culture, and all the crustaceans - crab, shrimp, lobster - affected by fish farm dumping of crustacean-killing pesticide-laced food into open fish tanks to kill the sea lice.

Elsewhere in the world - Norway for instance, and Scotland, Ireland, and Chile - people have already figured this out. Fisheries and Oceans Canada has not.

We are now appealing directly to the king and people of Norway and the shareholders of the fishfarms for help.

Protest : Thursday Aug 20 at noon, Pender and Burrard, in front of the Fisheries & Oceans Canada office in Vancouver

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Fish 'N Flush Farming

Despite a recent scientific paper warning that parasitic sea lice infestations from fish farms could wipe out 99% of wild Pacific pink salmon within 4 salmon generations or 8 years, don't expect to see any radical mobilizing action from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans any time soon.

Not only is fishfarming part of the DFO mandate, the DFO deputy executive director of the Office of Sustainable Aquaculture expects fish farming to overtake industry fishing soon :

"While the salmon farming industry nearly doubled in size between 1997 and 2005, output from the wild commercial sector fell by more than 30%."

"They don’t believe their interests are in conflict."

"Fisheries scientists try to stay neutral"

"They want to avoid polarized debate."

"A transition to a floating closed containment system could possibly be phased in over 10 years."

Trouble is if this latest scientific paper is correct, the pink salmon don't have 10 years.

Last year, marine ecologist John Volpe of the UVic said that sea lice from fish farms kill up to 95 % of wild juvenile salmon that pass by the open net fish farms.

Yet according to independent researcher Alexandra Morton , "some see wild salmon as just too costly to protect - they require a long corridor of protection from the tops of the rivers all the way out to the ocean and this would "force the politicians to say no to all the hands that feed them."

As a result, "big industry [including logging and offshore drilling] fit well with salmon farms," she says "

So there ya go.

Pink salmon routes and fish farms in Broughton archipeligo, BC.