This program was funded by a grant from the Community Radio Fund of Canada and the Government of Canada’s Local Journalism Initiative.
There will be a plan to help displaced fish farm workers, and threatened wild salmon stocks, in the Discovery Islands.
Continue reading There will be a plan To address fisheries and job losses in The Discovery IslandsCanada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Cynthia Bendickson believes an ecological battle along the inside passage of Vancouver Island is looming. It’s not a question of if, but when the invasive European green crab will land on the shorelines of the Salish Sea, says the biologist and executive director of the Greenways Land Trust.
Continue reading Coming Soon: the European Green CrabOriginally published on Cortes Radio, as part of the Deep Roots Initiative, Season One.
Fishing was once a cornerstone of British Columbia’s economy, but we’ve been hearing stories of diminished runs and out of work fishermen for years. On Cortes Island, the fishing industry seems to mostly be spoken about in the past tense. So producer Roy L Hales set to to find out where have all the salmon gone?
Continue reading Where Have All The Salmon Gone?By Roy L Hales
Ignoring the Cohen Commission’s recommendation for a freeze on net-pen salmon farm production along the Fraser sockeye migration route until 2020, the Federal Government has issued licenses. This has prompted the First Nations Wild Salmon Alliance to call upon the Harper Government to immediately implement Cohen’s recommendations. NAFTA is considering a full investigation of Canada’s failure to enforce section 36 of its federal Fisheries Act by allowing salmon aquaculture operations in British Columbia to release “deleterious substances” into waters frequented by wild salmon. Meanwhile Alexandra Morton’s long awaited suit against the Department of Fisheries and Oceans opened in Vancouver today. Morton’s lawyer filed the suit after learning that fish allegedly infected with the piscine reovirus (PRV) had been transferred into an open-pen fish farm operated by Marine Harvest along the Fraser River sockeye migration. BC salmon farms face Multiple Legal Threats .
By Roy L Hales
As many as 70 million sockeye salmon may return to the Fraser this year. These numbers have not been seen for decades and are quite a stark contrast to 1.6 million catch that sparked the Cohen commission a few years ago. That was when Dr Kristi Miller, head of Molecular Genetics at the Department of Fisheries and Ocean’s (DFO) Pacific Biological Station, testified that a ‘viral signature’ of a disease was contributing to as high as 90% pre-spawn mortality in returning Fraser sockeye. One of the reasons there is so much hope for this year, is the returning 2010 run were not infected. But, according to biologist Alexandra Morton, the real key to fighting for the future of BC’s fisheries is Dr Kristi Miller’s lab in Nanaimo.
