From Alexandra Morton:
I feel it is important to share what is happening to the Pacific Wild Salmon of the Broughton Archipelago.
First, thank you to all of you who can see the terrible things afoot and are stepping into the void to do something. Wild salmon will not easily survive our generation. While the situation feels hopeless it is important to remember Margaret Mead’ s words:
“Never doubt that a small, committed group of individuals can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has”.
I am writing you because I am watching a collection of unsubstantiated remarks from the DFO build an illusion that Pacific Wild Salmon stocks are unaffected by the marine feedlots trying to rear synthetic, “salmon”. Once a highly respected scientific agency, I find the DFO no longer makes sense.
The DFO blame sticklebacks for spreading sea lice, though no one has shown this is even possible. They claim Broughton Wild Pink Salmon have no migration route, making them unique among all stocks of salmon. They suggest the young Broughton Pink Salmon starved, while at the same time reporting those same fish were fat and healthy. They suggest high salinity caused the lice epidemics, while at the same time suggesting low salinity prevented Broughton Salmon from thriving.
Two years ago DFO recognized a migration route, and the farmed Atlantic fish were removed from that route in the “Pink Salmon Action Plan”. Lice numbers plummeted and Wild Broughton Pink Salmon increased. You might think this would have been recognized as a solution, but no. Today, DFO denies both the existence of the migration route and that the fallow ever happened.
“Alternative hosts” (wild over-wintering salmon) have been reported to the public as the source of lice, even though DFO cannot actually find them.
Meanwhile, I listen at scientific meetings where DFO presents its million dollar sea lice study in the Broughton, and refuses to even mention “salmon farms,” that were the very reason so much money was spent. Despite this, DFO is on those very farms counting lice, though we never get to see that data. One government scientist even reported there is no lice problem, while using a net-type well known to scrape lice off before the fish reach the surface. DFO reports that tadpole-size pink and chum fry, with no protective scales, ragged and raw from sea lice eating them… are fine. And, really pushing the reality barrier, the Minister recently signed a letter in a Prince Rupert newspaper proclaiming the 2004 Broughton Pink Salmon returns were a 50-year-high. I felt he was suggesting the industry would therefore not harm the Skeena River Wild Salmon. In fact, this does not match what we saw here. The Glendale River (in the Broughton area), for example, had 1.3 million pinks in 2000 and only 400,000 in 2004.
These lice-capades have become ludicrous. Europeans ask can’ t you people even read, wondering why we ignore the lessons they suffered. On the one hand we have peer-reviewed papers from around the world, saying sea lice from salmon farms damage wild salmon stocks. And on the other hand we have DFO blazing off alone in the opposite direction, without a single page of published science on this and they are the ones supposed to protect our Wild Pacific Salmon from industry.
Hindsight is extremely alarming. As the vast Canadian cod stocks were plundered, DFO decision-makers refused to listen to their own scientists, rolled out plausible, but fatally unscientific flawed theories and the world lost a major food source
Foreign corporations were given generous access to our precious coastal habitat . Despite that, 20 years later they have failed to make a profit and the public is increasingly rejecting their product. Liberal MLAs in the fish feedlot regions lost their seats in the last election. Creating a synthetic fish reared on chicken meal and dyed pink is an idea that has simply failed on this coast because the real thing, Pacific Wild Salmon, still exists.
I don’t blame most scientists in DFO, they are as trampled by this as the rest of us. But bureaucrats safe from the rigors of the business world and the pressures of reelection need encouragement to notice this venture has failed.
It is absolutely time to winnow the gifts of this failed and dangerous behemoth and let the chaff fall away in the manner of every successful business venture.
The synthetic fish industry has educated people that could be essential to restoring the wild salmon to glorious, enviable and profitable abundance. As well, this industry has given BC state-of-the-art seafood processing plants, and fresh fish delivery infrastructure that could be used to profit from the diverse wild seafood products of BC. It even stimulated the science that revealed that BC Wild Pink Salmon are one of the cleanest proteins left on earth. Just wait till the consumers learn that.
Don’ t be fooled. Wild Pink Salmon in the Broughton are in serious jeopardy and these marine feedlots are affecting other BC stocks as well. The tough part for me is telling you that I am failing to protect the Wild Broughton Salmon. Despite the science, collapsing salmon runs, election indicators, the efforts of our top environmentalists, this insatiable industry is demanding expansion in the Broughton and access to the waters off the Skeena River. Every last man, woman and child who thinks they might someday want Wild Pacific Salmon must peacefully, but resolutely make it known in anyway that comes to you that it is not OK with you that we loose the Pacific Wild Salmon.
Please reproduce this letter freely and make yourself heard in every way you can.
Alexandra Morton
Broughton Archipelago, BC
Author
Topic: The 2005 Broughton LICE-CAPADES (Read 1397 times)