Category Archives: Rivers & Oceans

Rivers & Oceans

Ministry of Fisheries tours West Coast fish farming areas

“Last week, the Minister of Fisheries, Joyce Murray, went on the road and she traveled the length of Vancouver Island talking to people, First Nations environmental organizations, scientists, about the transition of salmon farms in British Columbia. This is incredible. I’ve never seen a minister go on the road before, and I have so much respect for her for doing this,” said independent biologist Alexandra Morton.

A BC Salmon Farmers Association spokesperson emailed a list of facilities Murray visited:

  • Cermaq Canada’s Millar Channel farm and semi-closed containment site in Clayoquot Sound. 
  • One of Creative Salmon’s Chinook farms and their processing plant in Tofino. 
  • MOWI’s Shelter Pass farm in Port Hardy and their Big Tree Creek Hatchery in Sayward. 
Continue reading Ministry of Fisheries tours West Coast fish farming areas →
Rivers & Oceans

Canada’s not prepared to handle marine cargo spills, House committee finds

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A parliamentary committee wants Ottawa to limit the environmental damage and plug response gaps for marine cargo spills after a container ship lost more than 100 sea cans and was immobilized by a stubborn fire on the B.C. coast last year. 

Continue reading Canada’s not prepared to handle marine cargo spills, House committee finds →
Rivers & Oceans

Salmon Runs in the midst of a West Coast Drought

The drought conditions settling throughout the West Coast are another example of what Fisheries and Oceans Canada has identified as the #1 threat to BC’s endangered salmon population.

“While there are many stressors that affect Pacific salmon survival, climate change is rapidly superseding these threats,” DFO media spokesperson Lara Sloan emailed Cortes Currents.

Continue reading Salmon Runs in the midst of a West Coast Drought →
Rivers & Oceans

I swam with the salmon — they taught me about dignity and strength

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

After hiking along the Campbell River in unseasonably warm September sunshine, wrestling my middle-aged body into a wetsuit is no easy feat. 

But I’m determined to get a new angle on the iconic West Coast keystone species I so regularly write about as a reporter. I’m going swimming with salmon. 

Continue reading I swam with the salmon — they taught me about dignity and strength →
Rivers & Oceans

Salish Sea Rising

Originally published in the Watershed Sentinel

By Delores Broten

Thirty years ago, I was running the tiny Friends of Cortes Island office out of the community hall at Manson’s Landing. This led to many interesting and sometimes passionate conversations. One regular visitor was Basil Seaton, veteran of the internment camps for British soldiers in Burma during World War Two. Basil took it as his mission to educate me about climate change. I remember in particular a floppy disk he brought that contained various climate change scenarios.

Fast forward thirty years. My computer is more like a Ferrari than a horse and cart, and the Province of British Columbia advises communities to plan for one metre of sea level rise by 2100, and two metres by 2200. But the predictions are still all over the place, depending on the modelling used and the assumptions made.

Continue reading Salish Sea Rising →