Little Hawk
Active Member
Thought I'd share my reply to Fred Hawkshaw's email I received today.
Fred is a commercial fisherman active in conservation issues and tireless in his 'Watch-Dog' efforts to keep Government and industry in line.
One of his latest concerns is a proposal from an American fish-processor to dump 7000 m/tons of unprocessed fish-offal at sea in Canadian waters. Though I wholeheartedly concur with his concerns, I took the opportunity to share with him my similar concerns about the pollution-issue from salmon-farming. Though sea-lice and disease transfer as well as escaping alien fish have made plenty of headlines with the media in BC, pollution from salmon-farms is still pretty much 'swept-under-the-rug' and certainly the industry ( and apologists' like Sockeye, who will no-doubt chime-in with his feeble damage-control antics) would just as soon keep it all 'Hush-hush'...
Howdy Fred,
Thanks for keeping me in the loop on this stuff. Your passion for the welfare of Pacific Salmon and the health of our precious marine ecosystems is both evident and infectious.
If only I could get more people - including you - to grasp the enormity of the pollution issues caused by the salmon farming industry on our coast. Typically, front line salmon farming news surrounds the sea-lice and disease-transfer or escaping fish problems; the pollution end of it seldom gets press, nor do the NGO's rant about it much. Like you inferred previously, the prevalent mentality is that our wonderful ocean will just 'suck-it-up' and it'll go away. Same as you, I don't subscribe to that ideology.
Nearly ten yrs ago when I first began to research the salmon-farming industry (for an essay I wrote for a night-school English class) I stumbled upon a publication - I think it was an NOAA report, I've since lost the data - that stated that a typical net-pen salmon farm dumped the daily equivalent raw-untreated sewage into the ocean as a city of 500,000 people. I echoed this data in a salmon-farming article I wrote for BC Outdoors Sportfishing Magazine (pub. May 2002) and to my knowledge it has yet to be formerly contested. At that time there were well over 100 active farms on our coast and to this day I still haven't gotten over learning this; it leaves me sick and disgusted, both with these 'big Norwegian doggies' for sh!tting in our front-yard and our collusive government for allowing the situation to prevail.
I support the analogy of comparing raw-human sewage as a benchmark to put the fish-farming pollution issue in perspective; both share many of the same constituents, ie., heavy metals, toxic chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and organic compounds. As a conservative example let's use sewage data from the city of Victoria (where I live) published in a report submitted to the MOE a few years back. As you may be aware, Victoria still dumps untreated sewage directly into the Juan de Fuca. As I stated previously, my research back in 2000 or so correlated an average fish-farms pollution contribution to that of a city of 500,000 humans. Victoria's two sewage outfalls service about 350,000 people, that's 30% less than 500,000 but hey, let's cut the Norwegians some slack here because after all their wonderful industry creates about 1000 or so medial-paying jobs in some of BC's most remote communities.
While you contemplate the ramifications of 7000 m/tons of fish offal being periodically dumped upon Mother Nature, consider this, Fred:
- in 2004 the combined output of raw-sewage of the McCauley and Clover Point outfalls was averaged at 92,000 cubic/meters per day.
- multiply that by a modest 100 active farms and we arrive at 9,200,000 cubic/meters per day, dumped directly into some of our most pristine marine ecosystems.
- that equates to 6,388 cubic/meters PER MINUTE - 24/7!
And people wonder why I'm so adamant about getting these bastards out of our water.
Standing for Wild Salmon,
Terry Anderson
Wild Salmon Alliance
Fred is a commercial fisherman active in conservation issues and tireless in his 'Watch-Dog' efforts to keep Government and industry in line.
One of his latest concerns is a proposal from an American fish-processor to dump 7000 m/tons of unprocessed fish-offal at sea in Canadian waters. Though I wholeheartedly concur with his concerns, I took the opportunity to share with him my similar concerns about the pollution-issue from salmon-farming. Though sea-lice and disease transfer as well as escaping alien fish have made plenty of headlines with the media in BC, pollution from salmon-farms is still pretty much 'swept-under-the-rug' and certainly the industry ( and apologists' like Sockeye, who will no-doubt chime-in with his feeble damage-control antics) would just as soon keep it all 'Hush-hush'...
Howdy Fred,
Thanks for keeping me in the loop on this stuff. Your passion for the welfare of Pacific Salmon and the health of our precious marine ecosystems is both evident and infectious.
If only I could get more people - including you - to grasp the enormity of the pollution issues caused by the salmon farming industry on our coast. Typically, front line salmon farming news surrounds the sea-lice and disease-transfer or escaping fish problems; the pollution end of it seldom gets press, nor do the NGO's rant about it much. Like you inferred previously, the prevalent mentality is that our wonderful ocean will just 'suck-it-up' and it'll go away. Same as you, I don't subscribe to that ideology.
Nearly ten yrs ago when I first began to research the salmon-farming industry (for an essay I wrote for a night-school English class) I stumbled upon a publication - I think it was an NOAA report, I've since lost the data - that stated that a typical net-pen salmon farm dumped the daily equivalent raw-untreated sewage into the ocean as a city of 500,000 people. I echoed this data in a salmon-farming article I wrote for BC Outdoors Sportfishing Magazine (pub. May 2002) and to my knowledge it has yet to be formerly contested. At that time there were well over 100 active farms on our coast and to this day I still haven't gotten over learning this; it leaves me sick and disgusted, both with these 'big Norwegian doggies' for sh!tting in our front-yard and our collusive government for allowing the situation to prevail.
I support the analogy of comparing raw-human sewage as a benchmark to put the fish-farming pollution issue in perspective; both share many of the same constituents, ie., heavy metals, toxic chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and organic compounds. As a conservative example let's use sewage data from the city of Victoria (where I live) published in a report submitted to the MOE a few years back. As you may be aware, Victoria still dumps untreated sewage directly into the Juan de Fuca. As I stated previously, my research back in 2000 or so correlated an average fish-farms pollution contribution to that of a city of 500,000 humans. Victoria's two sewage outfalls service about 350,000 people, that's 30% less than 500,000 but hey, let's cut the Norwegians some slack here because after all their wonderful industry creates about 1000 or so medial-paying jobs in some of BC's most remote communities.
While you contemplate the ramifications of 7000 m/tons of fish offal being periodically dumped upon Mother Nature, consider this, Fred:
- in 2004 the combined output of raw-sewage of the McCauley and Clover Point outfalls was averaged at 92,000 cubic/meters per day.
- multiply that by a modest 100 active farms and we arrive at 9,200,000 cubic/meters per day, dumped directly into some of our most pristine marine ecosystems.
- that equates to 6,388 cubic/meters PER MINUTE - 24/7!
And people wonder why I'm so adamant about getting these bastards out of our water.
Standing for Wild Salmon,
Terry Anderson
Wild Salmon Alliance