Tag Archives: Alexandra Morton

Rivers & Oceans

Pink Salmon Run Looks Good for 2022  

Large numbers of pink salmon are returning to our area this summer. 

“I am seeing these pink salmon return – their numbers appear huge, they are leaping everywhere, finning along the surface for hundreds of kilometers,” emailed independant biologist Alexandra Morton.

Lara Sloan, a communications advisor with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), wrote they are expecting a strong return to the Campbell River, based on the strong outmigration from the 2020 brood, cooler ocean temperatures and better food. 

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Rivers & Oceans

Before the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans: Was DFO’s ‘minimal risk’ assessment a cover-up?

(Click here to access other presentations taken from the Committee.)

At the May 12 session of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, Stan Proboszcz, senior scientist at the Watershed Watch Salmon Society suggested that DFO covered-up some of its own research when it concluded fish farms pose ‘minimal risk’ to wild salmon. He said they appear to have reduced the number of science risk assessments from 10 to 9 because the evidence indicated sea lice harm wild sockeye.

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Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

Hereditary Chiefs flotilla protesting Raza Island fish farm

Editors note: Cortes Currents was notified that this event has been put on hold due to an illness. They plan to reschedule it in the near future.

The Hereditary Chiefs of the Laichkwiltach, We Wai Kai and K’omok First Nations will be taking a protest flotilla to the Raza Island fish farm on Saturday, May 14,2022.

“We three Hereditary Chiefs have jurisdiction and have the right to stewardship over the waters and lands of the Laichwiltach Nation, unceded waters and lands of the Discovery Islands,” wrote Hereditary Chief George Quocksister Jr of the  Laichkwiltach First Nation on his facebook page.

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Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

Cermaq Canada reoccupying Raza Island fish farm

It has been three weeks since a federal court ruled that former Federal Fisheries and Oceans Minister Bernadette Jordan breached the rights of B.C. salmon farmers to procedural fairness, when she ordered them to phase out their operations in the Discovery Islands by June 2022. Now Cermaq Canada is returning to its site on Raza Island. 

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Rivers & Oceans

47 days until a decision must be made: sea lice and pathogens

As we get closer to June 30, when the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has to decide whether to reissue the licenses for 79 British Columbian salmon farms, independent biologist Alexandra Morton points to yet more problems. 

A recent Global and Mail article revealed the existence of a decade old Department of Fisheries (DFO) report about the ‘transmission of the PRV virus from farmed to wild salmon.’

Morton said the fish farm industry has exceeded the three lice per fish threshold every week since the out-migration season began on March first. Two to five active farms have exceeded that limit every week, for the past five weeks. Morton claims that no sooner had the industry brought the lice on one farm under control, than another exceeds the limit. 

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