Tag Archives: DFO

Rivers & Oceans

Two year renewal of fish farm licenses

Fisheries and Oceans Canada announced a two-year renewal of licences for marine finfish aquaculture facilities outside of the Discovery Islands. 

“I have mixed opinions about the announcement. I think there’s some good things and there are some not so good things,” said Stan Proboszcz, senior scientist with the Watershed Watch Salmon Society. “They received a license for two years based on these conditions and those conditions are rules that the salmon farms need to follow. Part of the problem is, we actually don’t have a copy of those rules yet.”

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Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

‘We’ll do it ourselves’: Weary of waiting on Ottawa, First Nation sets up marine protected area

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A First Nation in B.C. celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day by taking action where the federal government has not by establishing a new marine protected area in the Great Bear Coast. 

Kitasoo Xai’xais First Nation (KXFN) elected Chief Doug Neasloss and the nation’s hereditary chiefs formally and unilaterally announced the Gitdisdzu Lugyeks (Kitasu Bay) Marine Protected Area (MPA), a 33.5-square-kilometre ocean protection zone in their traditional territories near Laredo Sound, 500 kilometres north of Vancouver.

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Disaster

West coast expedition explores deep-sea habitat never seen before

Editor’s note: Vancouver Island’s last major earthquake was in January 1700 and measured +9 on the richter scale. Earthquakes of this magnitude occur roughly every 500 years (but could be as little as 200 years or as much as 1,000 years – Dr. Gerard Fryer, University of Hawaii). The largest local earthquake in more historic times only measured 7.3 and occurred in 1946. The epicentre was Cumberland, Union Bay and Courtenay, where 75% of the chimneys crumbled, but building swayed as far away as Vancouver. There were reports from Campbell River, Powell River and on Cortes, Quadra and Read Islands. 

By Melissa Renwick, Ha-Shilth-Sa, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Deep under the ocean’s surface off the west coast of Vancouver Island lies a mountain range of around 50 underwater volcanoes – measuring from 1,000 to 3,000 metres high. 

These seamounts, as they’re more accurately named, are the reason earthquakes and tsunamis threaten British Columbia’s coast, said Cherisse Du Preez, head of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s (DFO) deep-sea ecology program.

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Rivers & Oceans

‘We are salmon people’: First Nation leaders in B.C. demand audience with fisheries minister

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Editor’s note: The Klahoose, Homalco and Tla’amin First Nations are among the 102 First Nations demanding that fish farms be moved onto land.

It’s been nearly five years since Tribal Chief Tyrone McNeil has pulled salmon from the Fraser River and strung fish over wooden racks to dry in the wind, preserving food for his family and his people’s ancestral traditions. 

He and other First Nations leaders and communities in B.C. dependent on salmon are grieving the ongoing disappearance of the fish that defines them. And they are angry Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) continues to deny their constitutional right of first access to fish, said McNeil, president of Stó꞉lō Tribal Council. 

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Rivers & Oceans

Waiting for DFO to decide the fate of open-net pen fish farms

Sometime in the next three weeks, Canada’s Minister of Fisheries, Joyce Murray, will decide whether the licenses for 79 fish farms will be renewed. 

“I heard a rumour that the minister laid out her options or her ideas to cabinet and cabinet has the plans right now. They’re  figuring out what to do. We can expect an announcement quite shortly on the plan around the transition of farms out of British Columbia and also the licensing decision,” said Stan Proboszcz, senior scientist with the Watershed Watch Salmon Society.

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