By Roy L Hales
My interest in British Columbia’s fish farms began with Alexandra Morton’s fim “Salmon Confidential Documentary” and you can find a distillation of her arguments, as well as other articles critical of this industry on this website. I recently became convinced there is another side to this story that we haven’t been hearing. So, at Marine Harvest’s invitation, I went visiting Philips Arm Salmon Farm.
In 2002, the number of pink salmon returning to the Broughton Archipelago was only 3% of normal. Alexandra Morton subsequently co-authored a study reporting that 68 – 98 % of the fish tested in this area had the sea louse “L. salmonis.”[1.] A University of Toronto study links the 2015 sea lice epidemic to fish farms in the same area. The article that follows is based on Marine Harvest Canada’s (MHC) Ian Roberts’ response to anti-salmon farm critics.
Continue reading Ian Roberts’ Response To Anti-Salmon Farm CriticsBy Roy L Hales
Wildlife biologist Alexandra Morton has been wanting to get a close look at the salmon inside a fish farm for years. She got her opportunity on August 23, when the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw nation boarded Marine Harvest’s Midsummer fish farm in Kingcome Inlet, BC. The video below shows what Morton found after lowered a Go Pro camera into the pens for ten minutes. She calls this hard evidence from the inside.
Continue reading Hard Evidence From The InsideBy Roy L Hales
There have been salmon die-offs since the mid-1990s. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was on the verge of addressing this issue more than a decade ago. Vested interests objected. The idea was shelved until last year’s drought. After water temperatures rose 4 degrees above the lethal ceiling (68 degrees F), 96% of the returning adult sockeye died before they could pass beyond the Lower Granite dam. Now a coalition of environmental groups is forcing EPA to protect salmon in the Columbia and Snake rivers.
Six to eight hundred adult Chum Salmon used to come up Hansen’s Creek. Now there are 30 in a good year and as few as 3 in poor ones. Though we were talking about Cortes Island, this is a common phenomenon along the West Coast of British Columbia. What happened to the salmon?
Continue reading Cortes Streamkeepers in Basil & Hanson Creeks: What happened to the salmon?
