Tag Archives: Fish Farms

Rivers & Oceans

DFO Decision: Discovery Island Fish Farms remain closed

According to the Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) press release of February 18, 2022, “There are multiple stressors on wild salmon, including: climate change; habitat degradation and destruction; regulated fishing as well as illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. Given the state of Wild Pacific Salmon, the Government of Canada is taking a highly precautionary approach to manage Atlantic salmon aquaculture in the Discovery Islands area.”

Licenses for the 15 remaining fish farms in this region will not be reissued.

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Rivers & Oceans

16 scientists condemn ‘scientific failings’ of ‘flawed’ DFO report

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Editor’s note: The following article is joint letter to the Honourable Joyce Murray, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard

Academic scientists’ critique of DFO Science Response Report 2022/045

Dear Minister,

We are a group of 16 professors and research scientists who, collectively, have extensive research expertise in fisheries, epidemiology, and the environmental consequences of aquaculture. We write to express our professional dismay at serious scientific failings in a recently published DFO Science Response Report (#2022/045) about sea lice on salmon farms and wild salmon in BC. We are deeply concerned with the report’s flaws and its main, unsupported conclusion: that the presence of parasitic sea lice on wild juvenile salmon is not significantly associated with sea lice from nearby salmon farms.

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Rivers & Oceans

Tussle over sea lice science unfolds as a federal decision on Discovery Islands salmon farms looms

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Critics and supporters of West Coast fish farms are at odds over a recent Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) study suggesting sea lice infestations among juvenile wild salmon aren’t strongly tied to aquaculture operations. 

Using industry-reported data, the aquaculture division of DFO analyzed the likelihood that sea lice from salmon farms are causing sea lice outbreaks in wild fish in four areas on the coast.  

There’s a trend showing a positive relationship between the amount of sea lice on farms and on juvenile chum and pink salmon in those areas between 2016 and 2021, but it’s “statistically insignificant,” the study said. 

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Rivers & Oceans

SRD to look at ‘ALL helpful information’ about fish farms

Editor’s note: While there are no fish farms on Cortes Island, there was one on Raza Island directly north of us. The Discovery Island fish farms were in Electoral Area C.  The following article comes very close to being a transcript of my radio broadcast.  

The Strathcona Regional District passed a motion for staff to prepare a report that ‘consolidates the information on open net pen transition provided to the SRD Board prior to October 2022, and updates.’ 

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Rivers & Oceans

PRV1a in fish farms, an interview with Dr Gideon Mordecai

Editor’s note: In Dr Mordecai’s most recent study, the PRV-1a virus was reported beside fish farms in the Okisollo Channel and Raza Island. Wild salmon infected with that virus would have swam by neighbouring Cortes, Read and Quadra Islands on their way home to spawn. 

Dr Gideon Mordecai is a Research Associate with the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at UBC. He is also the author of more than 20 scientific publications, the most recent of which reported the PRV1a virus was in 70% of the samples they studied from 56 fish farms.

Cortes Currents asked Dr. Mordecai,”Fish farms are claiming that BC’s PRV1 isn’t deadly for wild salmon. Is that true?” 

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