wildmanyeah
Crew Member
Removing fish farms is not the silver bullet in salmon recovery
Aquaculture improving?..The Fish Farm Thread
- Thread starter islandboy
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G
gone fishin
Guest
No one has ever suggested removing Open Atlantic Salmon Fish Farms was a silver bullet and their removal would solve all our problems!!
However, most if not all of the unbiased and informed population would agree that that Fish Fars are part of the problem!!
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
The general public believes that over fishing is the cause of fishery declines.
is funny how many times I still see on CBC when there is an article about salmon how all the comments say that the commercial fishery is the reason.
The perception of recreational fishing is bad as well it turning into a dirty sin industry.
I don’t agree with that but talk to younger people who don’t fish or hunt and that’s how they view it.
G
gone fishin
Guest
A large segment of the public also believe Open Net Pen Atlantic Salmon Farms are. as you put it a " dirty sin industry."
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
yeah we’re all in the same boat with a thousand holes and sinking
The question then becomes do we start to plug holes like getting open net cage fish farms out of the ocean and culling some seals and sea lions or do we just keep rowing the boat down to Davy Jones locker?
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
So your advocating for full closures as the solution? Hard to work on solutions that work for everyone, when faced with that kind of ultimatum.
G
gone fishin
Guest
Fish Farms openly admit their Sea Lice kill wild salmon.
Are you advocating allowing Fish Farms to remain in migratory salmon routes and continue to expand?
Would be happy to hear your suggestions on how to solving this part of the wild salmon survival issue.
The way is presently stands the only solution DFO are considering is wide spread closures for Sport Fishers.
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
I don't agree with wide spread closures for sports fishing why would I want that for fish farms. I would much rather have solutions that work for both sides. Then continue to point fingers and demand shut downs.
G
gone fishin
Guest
How about we treat Fish Farms the same way we are treating Sport Fishers.
Reduce their impact by closures in the most sensitive areas and not allowing them to expand?
Not in 2 years or more, RIGHT NOW !
I agree that the decision to close areas for rec harvest was done with little support in science, and instead done for reasons that were not openly and honestly admitted (e.g. seafood trade w USA and following their NOAA/MM act). That just speaks volumes of how decisions are done behind closed doors to protect trade rather than for wild stocks using science - JUST LIKE the FF industry and it's substantial lobby in DFO, CFIA & Ottawa.
The "solutions that work for both sides" is a safe, convenient lie (speaking note) designed to stall change and promoted by PR firms and DFO communications.
If the feds were every actually serious about anything resembling fair and science-based "solutions" - they would instead do an actual environmental assessment on each and every site - which has never been instituted and always resisted on all levels within DFO Aquaculture and the feds @ large due to the FF lobby, lobbyists and lawyers one-sided substantial collusion w the feds and DFO's own conflicts of interest.
That would mean that the feds might have to admit they were doing it wrong - and maybe someone wouldn't get their chunk of seabed to moor their operations and would then scream using lawyers that they need to be compensated. Maybe DFO Aquaculture Branch would be downsized, as well. Ivory castles would fall. Maybe compensation would need to be paid out in a class-action suit to those affected by local stock crashes like commercial, FN & sporties fishers. The Department of Justice is sure aware of these legal threats.
Best instead to let that sleeping dog lie and just coast into retirement - getting some schmuck in the communications branch to float out the words "solutions that work for both sides" into the ministers speaking notes for naive Fishery Ministers and hope that if change happens ever - it will at least happen after retirement.
There is absolutely ZERO incentive for any DFO employee to take any initiative on their own - or the industry (free pumping, free sewerage disposal, free real estate) - and the Deputy Minister's office (an economist from the Privy Council minor royalty legacy) has always been about protecting trade rather than protecting wild stocks. It's been 30+ years of "do what you want to", for the industry up until now - with the Discovery Islands closure - and we all saw the whining about that.
The only change in regulation for that industry has been forced by law from above - and that is assuming the industry doesn't have a direct influence in writing those regulations that evolve from law - like they did with the AARs, and before that with the Designated Works in the CEEA.
That's why the only club I see for change is the implementation of UNDRIP thru Bill C15 - and it will change much more than management of the open NP industry, as well.
The "solutions that work for both sides" is a safe, convenient lie (speaking note) designed to stall change and promoted by PR firms and DFO communications.
If the feds were every actually serious about anything resembling fair and science-based "solutions" - they would instead do an actual environmental assessment on each and every site - which has never been instituted and always resisted on all levels within DFO Aquaculture and the feds @ large due to the FF lobby, lobbyists and lawyers one-sided substantial collusion w the feds and DFO's own conflicts of interest.
That would mean that the feds might have to admit they were doing it wrong - and maybe someone wouldn't get their chunk of seabed to moor their operations and would then scream using lawyers that they need to be compensated. Maybe DFO Aquaculture Branch would be downsized, as well. Ivory castles would fall. Maybe compensation would need to be paid out in a class-action suit to those affected by local stock crashes like commercial, FN & sporties fishers. The Department of Justice is sure aware of these legal threats.
Best instead to let that sleeping dog lie and just coast into retirement - getting some schmuck in the communications branch to float out the words "solutions that work for both sides" into the ministers speaking notes for naive Fishery Ministers and hope that if change happens ever - it will at least happen after retirement.
There is absolutely ZERO incentive for any DFO employee to take any initiative on their own - or the industry (free pumping, free sewerage disposal, free real estate) - and the Deputy Minister's office (an economist from the Privy Council minor royalty legacy) has always been about protecting trade rather than protecting wild stocks. It's been 30+ years of "do what you want to", for the industry up until now - with the Discovery Islands closure - and we all saw the whining about that.
The only change in regulation for that industry has been forced by law from above - and that is assuming the industry doesn't have a direct influence in writing those regulations that evolve from law - like they did with the AARs, and before that with the Designated Works in the CEEA.
That's why the only club I see for change is the implementation of UNDRIP thru Bill C15 - and it will change much more than management of the open NP industry, as well.
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
actually i got that talking point from a skeena steelhead lodge owner, lizzy
Thanks for the explanation, WMY. I was speaking generically about the PR firms and DFO's Communication Branch (AKA The Ministry of Truth sensu Orwell) - not explicitly trying to critique you or your post.
Like mushrooms - I have many years experience being kept in the dark and being fed BS from this industry and DFO. All the way back from when Yves Bastion hijacked the regulatory process (circa 1999) and left us his legacy/mess we are still dealing with today - like exemption from environmental assessments, and promotion of aquaculture and those conflicts of interest within DFO.
Many current DFO aquaculture employees and indeed many current aquaculture workers don't have what they call today "corporate memory" to understand these historic interference's that still exist and continue today. But just slap "sustainable' and a modifier on the front end of whatever you want to do and problem solved.
However, ATIPs and Cohen submissions do record some of those skanky political decisions and play. Reference this document and game plan from the Ministry of Truth as exposed during the Cohen Commission:
Like mushrooms - I have many years experience being kept in the dark and being fed BS from this industry and DFO. All the way back from when Yves Bastion hijacked the regulatory process (circa 1999) and left us his legacy/mess we are still dealing with today - like exemption from environmental assessments, and promotion of aquaculture and those conflicts of interest within DFO.
Many current DFO aquaculture employees and indeed many current aquaculture workers don't have what they call today "corporate memory" to understand these historic interference's that still exist and continue today. But just slap "sustainable' and a modifier on the front end of whatever you want to do and problem solved.
However, ATIPs and Cohen submissions do record some of those skanky political decisions and play. Reference this document and game plan from the Ministry of Truth as exposed during the Cohen Commission:
cuttlefish
Well-Known Member
Different species, same spin.
https://www.reuters.com/business/en...octopus-farm-stirs-ethical-debate-2022-02-23/
https://www.reuters.com/business/en...octopus-farm-stirs-ethical-debate-2022-02-23/
tincan
Well-Known Member
wide spread closures for sports fishing and fish farms are VERY different things.
Sports Fishing:
-Has an impact on adult returning salmon (mostly chinook) to the tune of harvesting 100,000 chinook coastwide each year (plus incidental mortality which we can debate the numbers all day)
-Has little/no impact on early marine survival of juvenile salmon... identified as THE primarily important stage of the salmon life cycle to determine overall salmon run size / sustainability / health.
-Employs 1,000's if not 10,000's of direct and indirect jobs and over a $Billion/year in economic value to the province, scattered throughout coastal communities where there aren't a ton of other options.
-Provides 300,000 salt water anglers each year an opportunity to enjoy our coast doing something they love (fishing) with family and friends and creating priceless memories and instilling a sense of concern for the environment/animals that make BC such a special place in the world.
Open Net Pen Fish Farms:
-Have an significant negative impact on both the 100,000's of adult salmon returning to spawn as well as the 10,000,000's of juvenile salmon starting their lives in the ocean each year.
-These 10,000,000's of juvenile salmon face many other challenges (climate related, predation, habitat loss) that are also components of the cumulative stressors that cause mortality but the issues of pathogen/disease/sea lice transfer from open net pens to these 10,000,000's of juvenile salmon is challenge that salmon currently face that we can eliminate and make survival numbers increase (by how much is TBD but survival rates of juvenile wild salmon in the SOG/JDF have plumetted in recent decades so there is a lot of room for improvement).
-Open-net pen salmon farming employs 100's of direct and perhaps 1,000's of indirect jobs and creates over $Billion/year (some of which stays in BC for wages/taxes but the vast majority of which goes to foreign owners of these farms. Also, eliminating these open net pen farms won't mean eliminating all related jobs... it will mean pivoting the industry to a land-based industry where waste has to be dealt with properly, pathogens and disease and sea lice won't move freely from farm to ocean, and like just about every other farm/business in BC... you'll have to pay market rates for rent / property as opposed to being subsidized to float in BC waters.
Hope you can spot the differences.
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Excellent post tincan. In addition to those legitimate and supported comments you made - I'd like to add some comments/science/data from some experts in this field - esp. Kristi Miller-Saunders and many other salmon experts:
* Both wild and hatchery stocks are subject and exposed to the same existing environmental conditions that depend upon their life history by species and location,
* For species such as resident trout, steelhead, river-type Chinook, and coho - logging and land-use and abuse impacts have had a large and lasting impact,
* Typically, hatchery stocks are exposed to increased mortality - which for CO and CH often is associated with harbour seal predation as juvies,
* For the species and stocks studied by Kristi Miller-Saunders et al., stressors that indicate high mortality include pathogens, high temps and low DOs (climate change effects). The highest levels of mortality are seen in fish that are exposed to more than 1 stressor,
* So in of itself - exposure to increased levels of pathogens - such as sea lice or disease agents - has a CUMULATIVE and EXPONENTIAL effect as it is commonly associated with other stressors,
* In some areas where one would expect wild stocks to have the typically seen increases in ocean survival rates over hatchery stocks - instead they have had large decreases in ocean survival rates and a depensatory effect on management actions - are in guess which areas - areas with open net-cage operations. Examples include comparing Kyuquot to Clayoquot Sounds.
* the presence of external wounds - such as those found from sea lice allow the entrance of disease agents, as well as increase stressors like osmoregulatory function - which again act CUMULATIVELY and EXPONENTIALLY.
* And finally, THE PRESENCE AND INTENSITIES OF PARASITE AND DISEASE AGENTS ARE ELEVATED AROUND THE OPEN NET-PEN OPERATIONS AS WELL.
AND as I have mentioned numerous times - neither DFO nor industry look at or are forced to these interactions as either a condition of licence nor as part of siting criteria or instead an actual environmental assessment. NEITHER are disease outbreaks reported as real-time w geographic coordinates in order to see what these effects are. But somehow the burden of proof has been shifted to those evil ENGO activists to prove these interactions.
* Both wild and hatchery stocks are subject and exposed to the same existing environmental conditions that depend upon their life history by species and location,
* For species such as resident trout, steelhead, river-type Chinook, and coho - logging and land-use and abuse impacts have had a large and lasting impact,
* Typically, hatchery stocks are exposed to increased mortality - which for CO and CH often is associated with harbour seal predation as juvies,
* For the species and stocks studied by Kristi Miller-Saunders et al., stressors that indicate high mortality include pathogens, high temps and low DOs (climate change effects). The highest levels of mortality are seen in fish that are exposed to more than 1 stressor,
* So in of itself - exposure to increased levels of pathogens - such as sea lice or disease agents - has a CUMULATIVE and EXPONENTIAL effect as it is commonly associated with other stressors,
* In some areas where one would expect wild stocks to have the typically seen increases in ocean survival rates over hatchery stocks - instead they have had large decreases in ocean survival rates and a depensatory effect on management actions - are in guess which areas - areas with open net-cage operations. Examples include comparing Kyuquot to Clayoquot Sounds.
* the presence of external wounds - such as those found from sea lice allow the entrance of disease agents, as well as increase stressors like osmoregulatory function - which again act CUMULATIVELY and EXPONENTIALLY.
* And finally, THE PRESENCE AND INTENSITIES OF PARASITE AND DISEASE AGENTS ARE ELEVATED AROUND THE OPEN NET-PEN OPERATIONS AS WELL.
AND as I have mentioned numerous times - neither DFO nor industry look at or are forced to these interactions as either a condition of licence nor as part of siting criteria or instead an actual environmental assessment. NEITHER are disease outbreaks reported as real-time w geographic coordinates in order to see what these effects are. But somehow the burden of proof has been shifted to those evil ENGO activists to prove these interactions.
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wildmanyeah
Crew Member
Fish farms??
"Reid, who is now fisheries manager for the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department"
"Reid said salmon returns in Heiltsuk territory in recent years — particularly from 2019 to 2021 — have gotten to the point they’re plain “scary.”
The Húy̓at watershed on northern Hunter Island, just south of Bella Bella, once saw between 4,000 and 6,000 salmon return in its four rivers. In 2021, just 100 salmon returned across four rivers in the watershed, according to Heiltsuk monitoring.
The Neekas River, north of Bella Bella, is viewed as an indicator waterway for the health of salmon, Reid said. Between 1960 and 1970, an average 47,000 salmon returned. By 2010, its ten-year average return had declined to 29,000 salmon, according to data Reid collected from Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
In 2021, just 750 salmon total returned to the Neekas, Reid said."
Rivers across the central coast of British Columbia have seen significant salmon declines, but Reid said there is less public attention in his region. He fears people aren’t aware of just how much salmon are struggling on the central coast, along with other marine food sources that have been hard-hit like rockfish, seaweed, abalone and herring.
"Reid, who is now fisheries manager for the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department"
"Reid said salmon returns in Heiltsuk territory in recent years — particularly from 2019 to 2021 — have gotten to the point they’re plain “scary.”
The Húy̓at watershed on northern Hunter Island, just south of Bella Bella, once saw between 4,000 and 6,000 salmon return in its four rivers. In 2021, just 100 salmon returned across four rivers in the watershed, according to Heiltsuk monitoring.
The Neekas River, north of Bella Bella, is viewed as an indicator waterway for the health of salmon, Reid said. Between 1960 and 1970, an average 47,000 salmon returned. By 2010, its ten-year average return had declined to 29,000 salmon, according to data Reid collected from Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
In 2021, just 750 salmon total returned to the Neekas, Reid said."
Rivers across the central coast of British Columbia have seen significant salmon declines, but Reid said there is less public attention in his region. He fears people aren’t aware of just how much salmon are struggling on the central coast, along with other marine food sources that have been hard-hit like rockfish, seaweed, abalone and herring.
The safe response and narrative from this industry and it's pundits is so unfortunately predictable, disingenuous and ultimately unprofessional.
Nobody has ever suggested that open FF operations are the ONLY stressor on wild stocks. The debate is instead on how big and when/where/scale of those impacts/stressors - and would be at least in part answered with actual environmental assessments as a risk mitigation methodology looking @ actual scoping of effects in conjunction with public reporting of all disease outbreaks, and sampling wild stocks during and after those disease/parasite outbreaks. NONE of which is currently done purposely staged with the collusion of upper echelon DFO admin as shown in previous posts.
For industries and people familiar with environmental assessments - they know that irrespective of other impacts - they are responsible for theirs. They also know that impacts are cumulative and as impacts/stressors increase in numbers and severity - the remaining non-impacted habitat and biological communities that support life histories and growth/rearing become MORE IMPORTANT - rather than less.
In other words - additional impacts/stressors are MORE SERIOUS and have a higher potential risk and impact.
and ultimately - there is no "get out of jail free" card by pointing fingers at somebody else.
And PR firms and communication branches actually get paid often big $ to lie about this thereby confusing people - which is their intent. Thanks for pointing out that tactic, WMY.
in other news:
salmonbusiness.com
Salmon Row: How Iceland is building a major land-based salmon farming hub
A new land-based salmon farm is just the latest in a series of speculative ventures that could potentially turn a corner of southwest Iceland into a major salmon hub. Geo Salmo is the most recent in a series of land-based salmon start-ups to announce plans for the construction of flow-through...
salmonbusiness.com
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