Fishing with Rod Discussion Forum
Fishing in British Columbia => Fishing-related Issues & News => Topic started by: chris gadsden on March 21, 2010, 08:02:19 PM
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I plan to take part. What about you?
CAG
>>> Weekly Update March 22
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>>> Every week is bringing much needed progress on the issue of fish farm impact on our oceans. The courts are behind us every step of the way. Now if we can just communicate to our politicians that wild salmon must be given top legislated priority over farm fish, because wild salmon are essential to our economics and ecology, supporting towns and 200 species, including us.
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>>> This week Simon Fraser University announced they are awarding me an honorary Doctoral Degree in Science! I am so happy about this. I am so hoping this helps people understand that the science I have done with my colleagues on the impact of salmon farms has the support of my peers, that it is real and valid and managers must separate farm and wild salmon.
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>>> http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media_releases/media_releases_archives/six-to-receive-honorary-sfu-degrees.html <http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media_releases/media_releases_archives/six-to-receive-honorary-sfu-degrees.html>
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>>> Chile has suffered enormously from the over-stocking of closely sited salmon farms and the appearance of the Norwegian strain of infectious salmon anemia virus. This week Chile moved to tighten regulations on the salmon farming industry. British Columbia should do the same.
>>> http://na.oceana.org/en/blog/2010/03/chile-passes-major-legislation-on-salmon-escapes-antibiotics?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social+media&utm_term=mar-12-10-4&utm_campaign=beacon <http://na.oceana.org/en/blog/2010/03/chile-passes-major-legislation-on-salmon-escapes-antibiotics?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social+media&utm_term=mar-12-10-4&utm_campaign=beacon> <http://na.oceana.org/en/blog/2010/03/chile-passes-major-legislation-on-salmon-escapes-antibiotics?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social+media&utm_term=mar-12-10-4&utm_campaign=beacon>
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>>> This week, under threat of a lawsuit by the Living Oceans Society, DFO reversed its decision to allow a salmon farm off Port Hardy to expand without a proper Environmental Assessment! It is shameful we have to threaten government to follow its own laws, but the courts repeatedly show enormous clarity on the improper relationship between government and Norwegian fish farms. http://www.livingoceans.org/media/news03161001.aspx <http://www.livingoceans.org/media/news03161001.aspx>
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>>> This same protective relationship is not extended to the Canadian fish farmers who are trying to build an industry in tanks on land and the provincial government will not even met with them.
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>>> Here in British Columbia, the province of BC still cannot explain how they can state there is no evidence of drug resistant sea lice in the Grieg Seafood salmon farms, when their own graphs suggest exactly the opposite. I have posted this conversation on my blog because drug resistance is appearing in sea lice in fish farms worldwide and is a very serious issue. It means we will have to pour increasingly toxic chemicals into our oceans to support salmon farming or lose the ability to protect wild salmon from fish farms. The Provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Lands must explain themselves. http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/
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>>> Jody Eriksson and Twyla Roscovich dove down 90’ again to check the effluent pipe where the Grieg salmon are being processed and found blood and fish guts are still pouring into the Fraser River migration route. We all know blood carries disease. It is negligent of government to allow this to continue. This week’s sample contained sea lice and a live salmon intestinal worm. Is this a factor in the collapse of our Fraser sockeye? The provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Lands is not bringing the science of epidemiology to this issue to protect wild salmon. See my blog for the new images of the effluent pipe. http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/
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>>> I will be walking from the village of Sointula to Victoria, (the length of Vancouver Island ≈ 500km) leaving on April 23 and arriving May 8. I am doing this to let people around the world know that we must make ourselves visible to politicians if we want to protect our wild fish from the Norwegian salmon farming industry. It is my observation that governments give top priority to this industry wherever it comes into conflict with our salmon. Wild salmon will not survive this and are in steep decline wherever there are salmon farms and thriving in areas where there are no salmon farms. After 20 years of research and negotiation and the distinct impression that government and industry are just toying with us this is the Get Out Migration.
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>>> http://www.timescolonist.com/business/Fish+farm+walk+talk/2700592/story.html
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>>> Please check the facebook events page on our migration. People are arranging to walk roads from the west coast of Vancouver and the interior of BC via ferry to join us. People are setting up events in the towns along the way. This is a grassroots effort and depends entirely on you.
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>>> http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=366116092851&ref=ts <http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=366116092851&amp;ref=ts>
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>>> Our website www.salmonaresacred.org <http://www.salmonaresacred.org> <http://www.salmonaresacred.org> is still under construction, but here's the tentative itinerary for 'The Get Out Migration' - please let us know if you can help us or would like us to visit you along the way. I am writing to you from my treadmill!
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>>> 22nd April - Broughton Archipelago/Alert Bay/Sointula
>>> 23rd April - Port Hardy/Port McNeill
>>> 24th April - Nimpkish Lake
>>> 25th April - Zeballos Junction
>>> 26th April - Woss
>>> 27th April - Sayward
>>> 28th April - Quadra Island
>>> 29th April - Campbell River/Courtenay/Comox
>>> 30th April - Big Qualicum River/Parksville
>>> 1st May - Port Alberni
>>> 2nd May - Nanaimo
>>> 3rd May - Ladysmith/Saltspring Island
>>> 4th May - Saltspring Island
>>> 5th May - Duncan
>>> 6th May - Bamberton
>>> 7th May - Sidney/Saanich
>>> 8th May - Victoria
>>> 9th May - Victoria
>>>
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>
> <migrationwhite.pdf>
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I 'm in. :)
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I 'm in. :)
Very good, will post more details as we get them. I will go by Ferry as I imagine will others (Rodney ;D) from the Mainland and meet up with the group in Sidney.
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Weekly update March 28
Our migration down the length of Vancouver Island from April 23 – May 9 to give people the opportunity to tell Ottawa wild salmon are essential is building. People have contacted me to plan events in communities far beyond those that we are passing through. Hundreds have said they will walk portion of the trip with us and have signed the new petition at www.salmonaresacred.org <http://www.salmonaresacred.org> Unless every person who cares about wild salmon stands up and becomes visible to Ottawa this will not succeed in bringing reason to this situation. You can download posters on the website. This is not about getting rid of aquaculture, this is about bringing three runaway Norwegian companies into compliance with the laws every other fishery in Canada respects.
Salmon farms were exempted from the fishing regulations of Canada in 1993 and these Norwegian companies are lobbying our Members of Parliament to continue these exemptions when they become federally regulated in December. If they succeed we can give up, they will once again be outside the law.
We cannot possibly manage Canada’s wild fish sustainably, if one group is allowed unlimited by-catch of wild herring, wild salmon, rock cod, black cod and other species in their nets. We cannot have one set of rules that says no fishing with bright lights and then allow fish farms on every major migration route to use these lights, attracting millions of wild fish to their farms. Scientists studying sockeye don’t know what is causing our Fraser sockeye to inexplicably crash, even when cutting back fishing to near zero has not helped. Only the south coast sockeye that migrate past 60 salmon farm sites vanished. These Norwegian fish farmers cannot be allowed to keep their disease outbreaks on the Fraser migration route secret any longer. Highly mechanized fish farms will never replace the wild salmon jobs in fishing and tourism, nor can they feed us as wild salmon do.
The tide is turning because of all of you. We will support the small communities we live in to build land-based aquaculture. Small independent businesses are much more stable than large foreign operators that come and go based on world markets. – please read the good news below and thank you. http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/
The Strathcona Regional District has defeated the zoning bylaw for the huge proposed Grieg Seafood fish farm at Gunner Pt.
http://www.georgiastrait.org/?q=node/958
"Controversial fish farm site rezoning defeated" (The Courier-Islander, 24th March
http://www2.canada.com/courierislander/news/story.html?id=f143b9f8-b499-4158-ba3d-b28708d66283 <http://www2.canada.com/courierislander/news/story.html?id=f143b9f8-b499-4158-ba3d-b28708d66283>
Below is a very significant show of solidarity between First Nations on removing fish farms from the incredibly valuable Fraser sockeye migration route. Scientists who specialize on Fraser sockeye and gathered by Simon Fraser University also made this recommendation.
Date: March 11, 2010
During the March 9-10, 2010 inaugural AGA of the Intertribal Treaty Organization (ITO) held in Prince George, attending Chiefs voted unanimously to support Indigenous Nations of the Broughton Archipelago and Georgia Straits for the immediate removal of fish farms from their territories to support in the survival of Fraser River bound fish stocks.
The member Chiefs of the ITO expressed their concern and support to urge the open net cage practices of the aquaculture industry to move toward closed containment. As the coming season and runs of Chums and Pinks draws near the Chiefs call for alternative aquaculture procedures recognizing the economic gains ventured by some coastal Nations. The concern is for the smolts that will arrive soon; Sockeye, Coho and Chinook. There is an increased mortality rate as they pass through the fish farm congested and bio-chemically hazardous inside passage which was cited as the primary cause of reduced returning stocks.
Lawrence Williams of the Splatsin, Secwepemc Nation, recognized the need for all to work together on this issue, “In our watershed, we are in support of that. If there could be a legal petition I could take it to the non-Native communities in our area, as well we could send that letter in to parliament supporting this, and if there could be a legal writing then I could send this through our watershed table area to the neighboring communities who could support us as well. Even though they are not First Nations they also share this responsibility for their future generations.“
Contact: Grand Chief Saul Terry, Intertribal Treaty Chair
Other Media
"Norwegian Farms Poison the Wild Run - BC's salmon stocks plunge; sea lice, salmon farms to blame" (The Dominion, 24th March): http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/3273
"Critics challenge health of Canadian salmon industry" (Food Manufacturing, 24th March): http://www.foodmanufacturing.com/scripts/ShowPR~RID~14925.asp
"Groups hope for co-operation" (The Telegraph Journal, 20th March): http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/city/article/990661
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For those that would like to travel on the same ferry from Tsawwassen on Friday May the 7th to the rally in Sidney at 7:30 I am suggesting we board the 4 o'clock sailing.
I believe it would be okay to have a few signs promoting The Get Out Migration for those that wish to bring them on board. By this time most people will have heard of the walk Alexandra is doing. Go to www.marywinspear.ca for the location of the 7:30 rally.
If you wish please post here if you decide you will be travelling on this sailing.
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Hey Chris,
I think I'd like to come. Is it just a rally or is there a lecture or a slideshow?
Also, Do you think we'll have to spend the night on the island or are you planning on coming back that night?
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Hey Chris,
I think I'd like to come. Is it just a rally or is there a lecture or a slideshow?
Also, Do you think we'll have to spend the night on the island or are you planning on coming back that night?
I am not sure what is planned at this stage yet in Sidney. Check out the Facebook migration web page for more information and at http://salmonaresacred.org/ I will send you some information I received today as well.
I am planning to stay two nights and do some walking as well from Sidney to Victoria.
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http://www.discoveryislander.ca/
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Damien Gillis talkes on the radio to Alexandra Morton about the march to Victoria.
http://www.thecanadian.org/k2/item/68-alexandra-morton-8
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/activists-long-journey-to-save-wild-salmon/article1539181/
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The Get Out Migration starts tomorrow.
http://thecanadian.org/k2/item/90-rafe-walk-wild-salmon
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Hello
We have completed the first leg of the journey from Sointula to Sayward! The send off from Sointula was very warm, hundreds of people walked with us the 10km from Port McNeill across the Nimpkish River. There was beautiful and powerful send off celebration by the Namgis with children dancing in regalia. We were given salmon to sustain us and they sang and performed a ceremony in the river.
After a nourishing lunch we walked on into the mountains. About 15 of us walked through the mountains, friends and neighbours affected by the industry. Hundreds of people honked and waved, people stopped and walked with us for a few hours. People from Hope Town stopped in and joined us at our campfire in Eve River. People have given us food, foot rubs, donations and sang as we walked. As we walked into Sayward local people joined us and walked with us into the campground. We spent last night there in a raging storm, I so thankful for the people with me on this. A hot fire roared and there was good food and laughter.
It has been an amazing start. This has become a people's movement. If enough people walk with us through their towns and again in Victoria we will change this industry and save our communities. I feel very strongly that government must take good care of the people who are now dependent on the Norwegian salmon farm industry for an income. There are not that many of them and they do not need to suffer due to government’s mistake in letting this Norwegian industry into BC’s most valuable wild salmon migration corridors. We need to take the salmon farm leases and place covenants on them as the salmon farmers have control now of the locations of greatest natural fish productivity, they are lodged in the vital organs of this coast. In Broughton they are sited where government promised there would be none in the Coastal Interest Resource Study. I don’t want to venture a guess how this was allowed, but it is wrong and must be corrected as soon as possible if we expect wild salmon to continue to feed us. This places must be allowed to do what they do best – produce wild fish.
Today, some of us will go by boat to support the people of the Discovery Islands who want Grieg, Cermaq and Marine Harvest to close their farms on the Fraser River sockeye migration route. Only the Fraser sockeye that passed through the Discovery Islands vanished, the other run did very well last year. Others in our dedicated team of volunteers, people of this coast, will continue walking towards Campbell River
Thank you for all your support! You can see us as we progress at www.salmonaresacred.org in short video blogs being posted there.
We can do this, we can peacefully regain control of our wild salmon and the prosperity of our towns, but it will take every single person who wants wild salmon and thriving towns to stand up and make themselves visible to Ottawa
Thank you,
Alexandra
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Day 2 to day 4 video of the walk.
http://www.salmonaresacred.org/blog/nimpkish-sayward-day-2-day-4-wild-salmon-migration
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Today's Chillliwack Progress
http://www.bclocalnews.com/fraser_valley/theprogress/news/92234279.html
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Unfortunately I have a wedding to attend or I would be participating in this important event. :(
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why will the fishing lodges in B.C not back the Walking for Wild Salmon
NO FISH NO FISHING LODGES
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3 days until the final leg of the Get Out Migration. Now is the time to take a day to join in on the march and rally in Victoria on Saturday to show our support for the work of Alexandra and others. Every person that shows up will help make a difference.
I plan to head over on Friday for three days and I hope some others will be able to make the time to do so as well.
Now is the time to stand up for our Wild Salmon stocks.
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Walking to Victoria song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbE_tJ2hRus
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Global TV coverage of The Get Out Migration as it ends in Victoria.
http://www.globaltvbc.com/video/index.html?releasePID=tVSow1MygokzZOHDBa99s317z8BmiyTn
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good to see such support!
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good to see such support!
Brennan Clarke
Victoria — From Monday's Globe and Mail
Published on Saturday, May. 08, 2010 11:43PM EDT
Last updated on Monday, May. 10, 2010 12:06AM EDT
.As Alexandra Morton watched her supporters pour on to the legislature lawn Saturday, she couldn't help noticing that the final leg of her fish-farming protest walk looked an awful lot like the kind of healthy, wild-salmon run she has spent the past 20 years trying to save.
“I was really, in the true sense of the word, overwhelmed to stand on the legislature steps and see the surge of people coming down Government Street,” Ms. Morton said. “The lawn was full, the streets were pouring. … I felt like I was watching the sockeye go up the Adams River.”
In one of the largest environmental demonstrations the city has ever seen, close to 4,000 people turned out for the culmination of Ms. Morton's 500-kilometre “Get Out Migration” walk that began April 23 in Campbell River.
For Ms. Morton, the event was a turning point in her ongoing battle against open-net salmon farming on B.C.'s coast, much of which she waged in relative anonymity from her home in the Broughton Archipelago, where as much as one-third of the province's farmed salmon is produced.
“I've lobbied government and done the studies and gone through all these steps and nobody would listen. About two months ago, I realized what we need here is the people,” she said.
“I think we're past the point where people are going to sit there and let them take this resource away.”
Research by Ms. Morton and others indicates that farmed salmon pens in the Broughton Archipelago, home to some of B.C.s most important salmon runs, are breeding grounds for pathogens and parasites such as sea lice that infect wild salmon.
Salmon farming companies say they're equally concerned about the region's disappearing salmon stocks, but reject the idea that salmon farming is to blame.
“Something is happening out there in the ocean but to point the finger at the aquaculture industry is irresponsible,” said Nick DiCarlo, sales manager for Mainstream Canada, a division of the Norwegian seafood farming giant Cermeq.
“When you hear someone get up there and make these kind of accusations against your industry, it's tough to swallow.”
But to her supporters, Ms. Morton is an icon of B.C.'s environmental movement, living proof that one determined individual can make a difference.
“We pay millions of dollars for [the Department of Fisheries and Oceans] to do this job and it gets done by somebody who does this for nothing,” Gabriola Island resident Gunther Rudicher said during the protest's mid-afternoon stop in Victoria's Centennial Square.
Francine Trevelle, also from Gabriola Island, said she took part in the walk out of concern that the fate of West Coast salmon stocks is in the hands of foreign-owned corporations.
“There's a time when you have to stand up and say, ‘Wait a minute this is wrong,'” said Ms. Trevelle, who last attended an environmental rally “in the 80s.”
Ms. Morton urged the crowd at Centennial Square to demand that all B.C. salmon farms be moved from open water to closed containment systems on land.
“We can have our salmon farms on land and we can have our wild salmon back,” she said. “We can have both.”
Ms. Morton and her supporters set out from Sidney around 8 a.m. Saturday morning and made the 26-kilometre trek to City Hall in less than seven hours, blocking major roads along the way and drawing the occasional honk of support from passing motorists.
The crowd of about 500 protest walkers swelled to well over 1,000 at Centennial Square before continuing to the legislature where an even larger crowd was waiting.
Saturday's rally was notable as well for the broad cross-section of people it attracted – young and old, male and female, first nations from across the province and a mosaic of other ethnic groups.
Ms. Morton said the walk gave Vancouver Island aboriginal groups an opportunity to set aside their political differences and unite with non-natives in common cause of saving B.C.'s wild salmon.
“We are, all of us, being asked to accept the loss of what was ours,” she said. “The native folks are [saying], ‘Now you know how it feels.' ”
Special to The Globe and Mail
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A message from Rafe Mair
May 9, 2010 by Megan Adams
Below are some important thoughts from Rafe Mair on the coverage that the Migration received yesterday, and the details of just how many people care about wild salmon.
Over 5000 people showed up, but some members of the press are only reporting 1000. We just want you to know that we saw you, we all saw each other, and our voices will be heard! Over to you Rafe...
"RAFE HERE
Yesterday, May 8th, was a glorious day for all supporting Alexandra Morton and her walk from Sointula to Victoria demanding that fish farms be self contained or banned from our waters.
The rally started at Centennial Square in Victoria from which the enormous crowd marched to the Legislature where the it probably doubled. It was far and away the biggest protest crowd I’ve seen.
The estimates of the size of the crowd ranged from what I would say was 4000+ to, in two cases, 10,000. I believe the latter estimate is too high but the lawn was jam packed as were the stairs leading up to the door of the Legislature. It was certainly in the thousands. I compared it to the rally over the Pitt River issue two years ago where the high school gym held over 1000 and can say yesterday’s crowd was at least 4 or 5 times larger!
It was an excited, happy noisy throng who listened to a number of speeches with great enthusiasm and who all came away with a vow to see this fight through to what must certainly be a successful conclusion.
The Vancouver Province reported on this in two short paragraphs on A28 saying that there were nearly 1000 people!
I really no longer know how to describe this rag except to say that it’s little wonder that they’re bankrupt. It’s sad to see this kind of coverage which so badly distorted the truth for so many who couldn’t make this trek themselves...
Calling numbers in a crowd any time is difficult so perhaps it should be left to Vicky Husband, a veteran environmentalist and activist, who holds an Order of Canada, who said it was the biggest environmental gathering that she had ever seen and very likely the biggest in BC history.
It was a simply grand day for Alex who has taken an enormous amount of crap since she started this fight over 8 years ago and to see her so honoured by so many brought tears to many eyes, including mine.
To see her, once again, insulted by the mainstream media saddens all of us fighting this battle but makes us all realize that in some cases, this certainly being one, it’s high praise indeed to be ill judged by your enemies."
Once again, you can balance off coverage by a media that seems little more than a PR advocate for government by forwarding this to your address book
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As Rafe stated it was very bad press in saying only a thousand people were at the Leg, hell there was at least 1,000 walking during the end of the Migration.
Therefore I sent Barry Penner, Campbell, Shea and others this note below with some picture to show the crowd.
Good morning Barry,
I attach 4 photo's from The Get Out Migration at the Leg on Saturday so
you can get the idea of the number of people there. I made the trip
myself and it was amazing the number people that attended. Hopefully
you will see thousands of people that took part not only in Victoria on
the weekend but during Alexandra Morton's walk down Vancouver Island are
very concerned about these fish farms along the British Columbia coast.
I am sure you will do everything you can by working with the Federal
Government's Fishery Minister Gail Shea, Fisheries and Oceans Canada to
get all Atlantic fish farms out of the ocean and onto land based
containment before it is too late. I am sure as Environment Minister you
too must be very concerned about the damage caused by fish farms that
you see happening as the years slip by and our wild salmon stocks
continue to dwindle. First Nations, commercial fishers, recreational
anglers, the general public and animals along with the whole ecosystem
that depend on our wild salmon returning to our rivers each year want
action now. We all want to "Believe" British Columbia is The Best Place
on Earth.
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Do you know which press reported the low numbers? A few letters to the editors might be in order....
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Do you know which press reported the low numbers? A few letters to the editors might be in order....
The Vancouver Province and Sun. On The Get Migration web page they are on it and lots have been going in but more would not hurt.
I just sent you some pictures.
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http://www.bclocalnews.com/fraser_valley/theprogress/news/93208359.html
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"One of four VicPD officers assigned to the event put the crowd at between 4,000 and 5,000 people."
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"One of four VicPD officers assigned to the event put the crowd at between 4,000 and 5,000 people."
From all the video and pictures I took I would say this is a realistic number.
Here is an update from Alexandra that she just sent out.
Hello
Once again it is up to us.
The Get Out Migration was a powerful and wildly successful effort. People in every town we passed through and on the road volunteered their time and expertise and the result is emergence of the people of the salmon, people who are strong, independent and understand the contribution of salmon in our lives, our future and our economy. The First Nation voice set the tone and eloquence - uniting, legendary and welcoming. People of all ages walked side-by-side to ensure a future where our children can thrive. We shut down one lane of highway 17 and the police kindly let us walk without traffic lights along Quadra and Government Streets. The Parliament lawns reportedly hold 20,000 people and looking out over the sea of people less than 1/3 of the lawn was visible.
And yet BC's two biggest newspapers mention there were only ---- "nearly 1000 people". This is so wrong in so many ways.
("Sea of people marches to fight fish farms" (The Times Colonist, 9th May): http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/people+marches+fight+fish+farms/3006060/story.html)
There is no mention of our First Nation families and friends and the number of people was five to ten times lower than reality. You can see video blogs of the Get Out Migration at salmonaresacred.org
Those of us who were at the Parliament Buildings in Victoria on May 8 saw who we are and that we exist, a powerful, peaceful, huge community of people! As we walked down the highway thousands more honked, waved, gave us a thumbs up, leaned out the windows cheering! Musicians played for us from the mountains to the sea. I believe we are a majority, but with the stroke of a pen thousands of us were deleted, so that the rest of Canada and the world do not know we exist.
The power of one is all we have BUT WE ALL HAVE IT! If we use it, we will get to keep our fish, our communities and our way of life. The great walk for wild salmon was peaceful, powerful, fun and it is clearly not over. Each us must do what we can to impress on government that they work for us and that we simply demand the opportunity to thrive, that we want our generous fish, the salmon. There are no losers here if you remove the European shareholders in the salmon farm companies from this equation. Land-based aquaculture exists, is feasible and is being done by British Columbia, there could be jobs in it if government supported it. There is no reason we need to beg for low paying jobs, raising fish we cannot touch, when we could have millions of salmon returning to us!
Here are some ideas:
Please reply and tell me if your First Nation, town, society, business, etc. supports the removal of fish farms from the ocean. I and others will do what we can to make you visible!
Write to the Times Colonist editor and tell them how many people you saw: letters@tc.canwest.com
Write your MP to Get salmon farms out of our oceans: http://webinfo.parl.gc.ca/MembersOfParliament/MainMPsCompleteList.aspx?TimePeriod=Current&Language=E
Write your MLA to support BC land-based aquaculture and to buy back the salmon farm ocean leases: http://www.leg.bc.ca/mla/3-1-7.htm
Write to MP Fin Donnelly to say you support his bill to remove salmon farms from the ocean: http://www.findonnelly.ca/
Write to Stephen Harper and tell him its time for a BC Fisheries Minister FYI John Duncan supports salmon farming, personally I have found John Cummins the best informed about our fish: pm@pm.gc.ca
Other notices:
We have some Get Out Migration and Salmon are Sacred T shirts left if you want one go to the donations button 1/2 way down the home page at salmonaresacred.org. Make a $25 donation and in the "message space" give your size and whether you want the Black or White shirts. Make sure you fill in your address. For the Back Bone of the Coast shirts go to http://www.oceanaura.com/magento/index.php/clothing
In answer to all the folks wanting to purchase my books go to alexadramorton.ca
If you do not want to be part of this community of voices write UNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject Line
Salmon Are Sacred and we do exist!
Alexandra Morton
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Just got this from Don
Chris
Here's a new video from Mark Worthing and Salmon Are Sacred - great quote from Rafe Mair and song from Chief Bob Chamberlin: http://www.vimeo.com/11694901
Please spread around your contacts.
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http://www.canada.com/Salmon%20protest%20regarded%20largest%20legislature/3023308/story.html
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Rafe's comment on the Get Out Migration at the Leg.
http://thecanadian.org/k2/item/120-rafe-rally-wild-salmon
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My letter to the editor in the Times Colonist today.
http://www.timescolonist.com/Police+thanks+protest+work/3026906/story.html
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With the kind of coverage the main stream media gives events such as this it is no wonder conspiracy theorists have so much to work with.They have no one to blame but themselves that so much of their audience has gone to the internet to try and get both sides of a given story.
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Hello
Please see this video on the Get Out Migration. Watch it with pride...this one is about you!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf1M-WGvfCg
The biggest environmental rally in the history of BC and government has not reacted. We may need to do this again. We may need to run for political office to protect our salmon, natural resources and our communities to survive. Below is my letter to Gordon Campbell. Please build our community, let your contacts know they can join us in keeping this part of earth alive...salmonaresacred.org "What you can do" The Petition.
Thanks to all of you, you are awesome in the true sense of the word, look at all the signs, faces, towns, peaceful and powerful.... Life on earth is up to us.
alex
May 17, 2010
Dear Gordon Campbell
On the afternoon of May 8, 2010 thousands of British Columbians from all walks of life, from the far reaches of Kingcome Inlet, Hope Town and Gwyasdums, from Port McNeill to across the Strait of Georgia and from the bays and watersheds of Vancouver Island traveled to your office to tell you that we want salmon farms out of our ocean, because we want our wild salmon. Everywhere in the Pacific Ocean where salmon farms do not exist (Alaska and the western Pacific) wild salmon remain abundant, even the Fraser sockeye that do not pass salmon farms are thriving. The people of BC want their salmon back.
Someday we are going to learn how Canada’s governments were sold on corporate salmon raised in public waters in cages that prevent public access when the Constitution states no one has the right to privatize ocean spaces, nor own a fish in the sovereign waters of Canada. In 1989, fish farms were handed to the province to simply side-step the inconvenience of the Constitution, but this era is over and the industry remains fundamentally unconstitutional. Farm salmon enable dams on the Fraser River, oil wells, clear-cuts, open pit mines and I think this is why the bureaucracy has blindly pushed it no matter which government is in power or what scientists, lawyers, First Nations and everyone else has to say. I think Ministry of Agriculture and Land’s handling of salmon farms needs thorough scrutiny.
Mr. Campbell, you did not cause this problem, but you have inherited it. The era of cheap oil is over with the people on the Gulf of Mexico being the first hit with what will be a cascading degradation of planet earth that all our children will inherit. You cannot morally chose a salmon that robs one ocean, to pollute a second one while consuming fuel because it feeds Atlantic salmon in BC on fish from Chile. You must choose the salmon that comes home to us without oil consumption feeding us, our forests and creating oxygen.
Norwegian salmon farming corporations are holding this coast ransom using the excuse “jobs”, when at the same time they are mechanizing to reduce their payroll. Nothing about this industry appears legitimate to me. It does not make food. It depletes global supply. It is not sustainable as it is running out of cheap fish to grind into pellets. It is not benign as it intensifies disease and pollutes.
I do not believe the assurances from the Provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MAL), nor the Federal Pacific Biological Station that salmon farms are not damaging Canada’s public fishery resources. I believe their research has been skewed and suppressed. I eagerly accept any invitation to argue these points in a court of law.
The Norwegian salmon farming industry is consuming massive quantities of Canada’s wild fish with no accounting, or licenses. If you think I am wrong, let’s have a look. Put cameras and observers on every fish pen as it is pulled to the surface, on every packer pumping out the pens and on the assembly line as these fish are gutted. Commercial fishermen have accepted and borne the costs of this scrutiny to protect wild fish and the Norwegians can too. Why did it require an order from the Department of Justice to make DFO lay a charge against Marine Harvest for unlawful possession of wild salmon? Something is very wrong here.
Why won’t MAL test Atlantic salmon facilities for the Norwegian ISA virus? How can MAL say sea lice in Nootka Sound are not drug resistant without producing a single test result?
My colleagues from the First Nations, scientific, legal, environmental and political communities have all tried to bring reason to the Norwegian salmon farming industry, but the government sponsored level of secrecy surrounding it simply grows. The only reason for secrecy is activity the public does not like.
If we remove corporate farmers and the European shareholders from this equation the solution is simple:
1- Rescind the leases under all salmon farms in British Columbia and place covenants on these sites in trust for future generations, as they are BC’s most productive coastal wild fishery grounds.
2- Invite Norway to graciously bow-out and go face the calamities they are experiencing in Chile and in their own shores.
3- Protect aquaculture jobs by WISELY developing a sustainable, community-based land-based industry
4- Use the best knowledge we have and actually restore the resilient wild fish, not enhanced fish, which are very unlikely to survive climate change.
If the people of British Columbia are your primary concern, there is no rational obstacle to embracing these solutions please start rescinding leases immediately.
There is something very wrong with this situation and it is only a matter of time before we figure it out. Lets move forward. Given their track record in Chile these Norwegian companies are not sustainable anyway. The state of the planet is a very serious concern and it is immoral to further degrade public resources that we will need on in the coming decades. This is about food-security and to pretend it is anything less is deceptive. In a world depleted of easy oil no one is going to be moving fish from the south Pacific to make less fish in the North Pacific, but we will most definitely be thankful to have millions of wild salmon returning to us for free!
Thousands of people showed up in person to deliver a message to you. Get salmon farms Out of BC waters. We await your response.
Sincerely,
Alexandra Morton
Salmonaresacred.org
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Interesting item re fish farms from a story that appeared in today's Victoria Times Colonist from Basi and Virk trial. Link to complete story below.
McCullough also asked if he was aware one of the premier's political staff, Mike McDonald, organized a "counter protest" in 2003 outside a Safeway store in Victoria, where a group of anti fish-farm protesters planned to demonstrate. Brown said he was not aware of it.
The lawyer asked the witness if he was aware of or surprised to know that Dave Basi paid people $100 each to attend the counter fish farm protest at the Safeway on Nov. 9, 2003.
"It would not only surprise me, it's shocking," Brown said.
"I would not sanction that kind of behaviour... It's not something I would sanction in any way, shape or form."
McCullough suggested such a tactic would be an "awful political dirty trick."
"I can't imagine paying people to go to an event," Brown said. "It's not something I would do."
He later added: "That's not who I am and it's not who the government is."
Brown said he takes pride in being honest and ethical.
He added he always told political staff that they were expected to engage in ethical behaviour.
Brown also denied McDonald worked in the premier's office. He said McDonald was director of communications who never worked in the premier's office.
McCullough then showed Brown a document which listed McDonald as being in the premier's office in 2003 and was in charge of "outreach and special projects." Brown conceded he was wrong and McDonald appeared to have worked in the premier's office at that time.
The defence lawyer asked Brown if he thought it was appropriate that the premier's office would organize a "counter protest" to those who opposed fish farms. Brown said he felt it would be appropriate to contact people who worked in the fish farm industry to tell them that their livelihood might be at stake and this would be an opportunity "to get their side of the story out."
Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/sports/Premier+chief+staff+denies+knowledge+Gordon+Campbell+telling+aide+keep+quiet/3053940/story.html#ixzz0oZQS3Huq