For those of you who didn't see the article and who don't know the back ground, here is a little summary as I remember it.
There is a marine biologist based in the Broughton Archipelago and she and her team have been recording lice loading on juvenile pinks, measuring body weight in those fish, looking at other species in that environment for parasites, and generally trying to determine the impact of fish farms have on wild salmon. Gary Cooper's show, Nice Fish, dedicated a full half hour episode to interviewing and following her and her team around - it really was a shocking thing to see these 2 inch pinks covered in lice (15+). The infected pinks also had a variety of stages or broods of sea lice. One sample showed a fish covered in lice and it was easy to see 3 if not 4 different sized lice...meaning to me that the environment the pinks are in are loaded with these lice and the lice population is breeding and proliferating...hence the 3 or 4 different sizes (different broods essentially).
Anyhow this biologist basically brought charges against the fish farms in the BA saying they contravened the Fisheries Act, specifically it is illegal to release a foreign species into a marine environment. Now this case was assigned a federal prosecutor and part of his job is to decide if charges should be laid. He had little experience with the said topic so he hired someone who did to review this lady's work. The expert's finding was that the research was good, the scientific standards used were proper, the findings have been exposed to peer review and were published in scientific journals and they stood strong...BUT the prosecutor decided to throw the case out?!?
It seems that there was a consensus that the farms are at the route of the spike in lice densities but under the charge, the prosecutor would need to show that the farms released lice into the sea and he concluded that they do not have control of lice - either upon entry or exit from the farm. Now while the fish farms see this as a victory and they wont face charges via this route, my main question is: If its been proven they are behind the infestation of lice on wild salmon in their vicinity and they can not control their environment well enough to protect wild stocks (by minimizing lice infestations) then should the government be licensing these farms?!?!
Unfortunately that’s were the article pointed back too. The courts will not be the ones ensuring our wild salmon's stocks long term health...the government will (I hope).
I think its time once again to start the lobbying...CG, do you know who we need to write to in order to be heard?
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Topic: Sea Lice article in the Sun yesterday (Read 1370 times)