Barbender = June Sharkey?
Food for thought? Perhaps you eat to much ISA, or Virus of the month there pal.
GLG
About June Sharkey
I am a firm supporter of resource based industries on and around Vancouver Island. I have friends who work in these industries and I am tired of seeing the bullying done by these so called "peaceful protesters." My main focus will be on the fish farm protesters because they are very active in my community.
I'll take Alaska's salmon ranching over the present risks of farming in B.C. any day. If any one of the present "For-Proft" fish farm companies wants to take up rearing chinook and coho to smolt on land and then a year in pens of feed and release on a "not-for-profit" basis, I would support no problem. Government and local communities would support the total cost of operations and all the returning salmon would be destined for local river systems for that community. The influx of tourism dollars would likely outweigh all the costs. Hmmmm Seems to me this is almost a ....... hatchery program, yeah that 's it. I wonder how succesful those are? Lets look at the Columbia river program. How is that system and hatchery program doing?
after the collapse of the atlantic salmon net pens in Chile, they shifted gears and now raise chinook, coho and steelhead. of course because of their southern lattitude, these species were not present to begin with so no conflicts with native fishes. the AK story is interesting from a number of perspectives. i would wonder if they have exceeded the typical <1% return rates for these hatch/pen jobs. if they have done that, then perhaps they have solved a significant problem for the hatchery industry, incapable smolts. they have also saved or propped up, depending on how you look at it, the commercial fishing industry. add to that the tourism dollars from folks headed north to cash in on very generous bag limits and it sure looks like a pretty good story to tell. now all you in BC have to do is get ride of the norwegian influence and maybe you would have a success story to tell as well.
More than that Alaska is working with Pacific Salmon that are native. They have evolved here and are resistant to locally evolved diseases and parasites under normal circumstance (no Atlantic salmon fish farms to amplify diseases and parasites and introduce and mutate new ones that pacific salmon have not evolved with).
Atlantic Salmon in our coastal waters are an introduced alien species. When has that ever worked out well for native species?
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