Fishing with Rod Discussion Forum
Fishing in British Columbia => Fishing-related Issues & News => Topic started by: Morty on March 09, 2009, 11:58:23 PM
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As salmon returns decline in the lower mainland, increasing numbers of Lower Mainland rec fishers will turn to the BC Interior for a "fix" to their fishing addiction.
The farmed salmon issue will ultimately affect the quality and tranquility of lake and stream fishing in the rest of our province. This is not just a concern for fishers on the coast, every fisher in the province needs to get behind Alex's petition, and AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Please read the note from Alex included here and join the petition.
Please also taking a few minutes to email everyone else you know you either enjoys fishing, or even eating salmon, that they should consider supporting this as well. Now is the time. If you could be here in the coastal rivers and see how low the stocks are already you would realize that NEXT YEAR MAY BE TOO LATE. I personally know about 50 recreational fishers here in the Lower Mainland and I ONLY KNOW ONE who caught a Coho or Steelhead in a river this past season. ONLY ONE!
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Hello All:
As it stands salmon "farms" are now a public fishery as per the BC Supreme Court decision. I feel certain this door is being pushed shut as fast as possible and so feel a sense of urgency that if we are going to accomplish anything real in the water at this moment of enormous opportunity that it will take all of us to get this done.
I am hoping that everyone with a fishing license be it commercial, personal, sport or First Nation will consider signing this.
If people want to sign please send me, (Alexandra Morton, wildorca@island.net), your first and last name, your fishery and your town and I will put you on the letter,
Please forward this far and wide as fast as you can.
Standing by,
Alex
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Hmmm might IMHO reconsider a bit of what you are saying here...
I fish the interior as well as local rivers etc. as do many on this and other sites...I think the assumption that the stillwater guys don't care as much because they have their lakes is not as warranted as some would like you to believe...I know many on this and other sites who fish both and are ardently involved in saving our resources...
Not to cause an argument as I agree with allot of what you are saying..but I know ten guys, including myself (hell 20 or 30 even) who caught both last year, might not be in record numbers but was consistent... I would hate to see a good cause get turned in the wrong direction over something like this which would defeat the whole purpose of your post..but that is what jumped out at me immediately...
If you read fishing reports on here and other's I think you'll see that guys/gals ARE catching fish so making a statement that 50 of your friends didn't kind of rings hollow...No offense..just my .02
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Hey XGolf - I absolutely do believe they care. Just encouraging them to participate.
I seem to learn at least one major life lesson every year. A couple of years ago it was "I sholdn't assume that other people can understand what is obvious to me". That comment is not directed to you or anyone else, but an explanation of why I did what I did. There may be some readers who don't know they can particiate this way. Or some who might think their single name won't make any difference. I want them to know that wherever they are in BC (or Canada) thay they can help.
I have personally sent the content of Alexandra's email to 40+ people already today, and asked each of those to do the same. We ALL have to do whatever we can on this.
I believe that if we each get creative and INVEST 20 minutes we can actually get a million+ names on that petition.
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Took me 3 minutes or so to sign onto the petition. Relitively painless.
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I think that people should be very careful about jumping on board with these enviro groups. It is hard to tell what there agenda is. Getting rid of salmon farms may or may not solve the current salmon population situation.
I have heard another fella on these forums say that $$$ is the bottom line and I believe it is. Jobs and revenue. Better to move towards sustainable open net salmon farming and using the tax revenue towards wild salmon protection and enhancement programs, hospitals, schools, etc.
I imagine that if all the salmon farms were gone and the salmon had still not made a comeback that some kind of group/association would be saying "ok...no more sport fishing then".
Then what?? Do not think that they have already thought it, they have. They just need your vote right now.
I believe that it is important to look at how each enviro group it funded to better understand there intentions. Some of these groups feel that funding is nobody business.
This is a sector of a food war.
I do care deeply for wild stock and I want to keep fishing.
I just think that some groups are misleading the public for there bottom line is to have salmon farms gone first, not protect wild stocks. Truly if they wanted this they would be trying to stop all fishing now.
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I don't know what ulterior motive could be found in this case. Fish are not coming back to streams in the numbers they should and open net farming in the broughton by a foreign company is at least contributing to the destruction of our fish stocks. I know who I am on board with without a doubt in my mind.
To your point of funding, funding does not dictate purpose. It's the other way around. Of course an investor that has something to gain from fish farming being gone will fund an environmental group seeking to remove fish farms. The group won't care where the money is coming from as long as it advances their cause. It is most definitely NOT a food sector war but a war in which the food sector IS heavily invested.
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I have not indicated that we need to get rid of the farms. I sense there may be a workable solution for both - that may be Closed Pen technology with a sewage/water processing system included. That seems like a FAR BETTER option for what we know today.
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I have not indicated that we need to get rid of the farms. I sense there may be a workable solution for both - that may be Closed Pen technology with a sewage/water processing system included. That seems like a FAR BETTER option for what we know today.
Well put, the cost of which is what the farms are fighting...
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The motive is $$$ no doubt. Palms are being greased at the expense of our wild stocks.
From what I understand, the Marine Harvest groups methods are BANNED and ILLEGAL in Scandinavia and The UK due to the total collapse of their former stocks. All signs point to our stocks suffering the same fate. Geez the President of MH has acknowledged that the current system does not work and not sustainable. Why the BC and Canadian Gov don't step in before its too late is directly tied to $$$.
Stop buying Farmed slop !
Tell your friends and family. A salmon dinner or two is not worth the future of of our fish and livelihood.
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The closed pen option is far better of course but it is also far more expensive...and the only reason the norweigans are farming salmon here at all is because they can do it cheap with open pens. Mandate a closed pen ($$$) farm fishery and watch them line up to leave. The province knows this and that is why they are not fighting to change things.
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Here's a better link
http://www.adopt-a-fry.org
Select "the petition" from the top option bar
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Mandate a closed pen ($$$) farm fishery and watch them line up to leave. The province knows this and that is why they are not fighting to change things.
This supports my point, this group misinforms the public that closed containment is possible so to have the appearance of having a reasonable justified compromising solution and it is just not true.
To your point of funding, funding does not dictate purpose. It's the other way around. Of course an investor that has something to gain from fish farming being gone will fund an environmental group seeking to remove fish farms. The group won't care where the money is coming from as long as it advances their cause. It is most definitely NOT a food sector war but a war in which the food sector IS heavily invested.
I think funding can dictate purpose and purpose can dictate funding. What if the funders are guilty of(potentially) diminishing wild stock and misleading the public as well? My case example would be the "wild"(NOT!!!) alsakan salmon fishery. This is where they spawn salmon( cant even tell if they are wild or hatchery) bring the to fry state in hatcheries but them in open cage net pens and grow them to smolt and larger while feeding them the same chillean feed/medication as here in BC and then let them go in the ocean to compete with wild stocks for feed. When they return to the river they seine them for market and do it all over again. Then they sell them on the market as wild salmon. Wild? Kinda....geneticaly....I guess on the scale of 1 to 10 they would be a.....6 or a 7. What do you think? Is "kinda" wild an reasonable title for these alasken salmon? The alaskan salmon fishery truly believes they are squeaky clean. I disagree especially when they fund groups to appose open net cage salmon farming.
A mandate to closed containment would certainly end the farming and the the alakan (wild??) salmon fishery would prosper with their wild salmon and their "wild" label.
I totally disagree with some of the salmon farming practices that have taken place in the past. Salmon farming practices have improved substantially over the last 10 years and continue to do so. To be rid of them now is not a realy good idea. Again, I believe that it is better to continue improving open net salmon farming and benefit from the tax revenue and jpbs etc. than to just banish them on a hunch. Sure there are situations that have to change but they are individual cased which is how I think these should be treated.
Anyways, my point remains the same and it is that I believe there is allot of smoke and mirrors when it comes to selling ideas on closed containment and funding, please be careful. It is to easy to follow a basic formula of ONE PROBLEM ONE SULUTION. That is just not the case here.
The topic of this thread really got my attention. To suggest that sea lice has impacted sportfishing to a degree where interior lakes are overfished or crowded is just really odd. Sounds like another miss leading sales pitch to me. ???
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Bottom line (to me) is this: The alternative to removing fish farms is waiting to see if they are in fact the biggest culprit behind the extinction of our salmon. That's not a bet that many people are willing to make. Actually I take it back, it seems TOO many people are willing to make it. A simple cost benefit analysis is enough to figure that out. It's time to get rid of the parasites.
I doubt it affects interior lakes pressure though....I agree that is a stretch.
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WAY TO GO guys & gals.
As of today there are now 3,006 signatures on the petition. That's double what it was earlier this week. Let's double it again over the weekend.
Please keep telling everyone you know about this. (use the adopt a fry link above)
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“I am hoping that everyone with a fishing license be it commercial, personal, sport or First Nation will consider signing this.” ???????????????
I enjoy sport fishing. I put a line in the water hoping to catch a salmon. I have many pictures of my friends and I holding nice size Springs that we “caught, killed, gutted and cleaned.”
This forum has raised my eyebrows to the fact that that there may be some radical activist groups with their marry band of cheer leaders out there that are promoting Alaska cultured salmon.
My point is. How can Alex point a finger at “one” industry, which she thinks is the cause of a speculated decline in salmon runs. An industry that does not make money from wild stocks. Yet she is asking all of us who “KILL” salmon to jump on her band wagon.
“As salmon returns decline in the lower mainland, increasing numbers of Lower Mainland rec fishers will turn to the BC Interior for a "fix" to their fishing addiction.” This comment is just a new scare tatic to me. Would it at all harm the BC Interior to benefit from the tourist trade that the BC coast has enjoyed for many years?
Don’t get me wrong. I care about the enviroment and believe all industies have to do their part in conservation. I enjoy fishing, I know many commercial fishermen and sport guides. It appears I now know a Hypocrite or two.
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To me it's all about DOING THE MATH .... adding & subtracting..... salmon get taken by seals- whales -salmon sharks-eagles- other fish- then by nets--- fishing poles---[did I miss some?--maybe pollution---climates--- etc... BUT if MAJOR subtractions are caused by SEA LICE killing the the smolts -fry-juvenile salmon ......... possibly 50%[less or more] kill off of the salmon is done by these SEA LICE ........ the evidence seems to strongly indicate the facts. --------- Have ya seen the net samples [ on YOU TUBE] .... the salmon are LOADED with lice...how can any of them survive??? -------- I do not know what the answer is??? So much going on in this world......... where do we start???
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You are absolutely correct Arimaboater. We know from studies in the early 1960’s that up to 70% of smolts did NOT make it past 40 days in the marine environment. “Pre salmon farming”. Smolts under 10 grams are the most susceptible while smolts over 10 grams seem to not be affected from sea lice.
So as I DO THE MATH, I see over 20 million $’s funded to anti-farming groups in B.C for a so called Alaska wild salmon advertisement from the Moore foundation in the U.S.
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Hey Folkboat,
I'm having difficulty understanding your last sentence. Could you expand on that for me please?
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Hello Morty.
I will be more than happy to expand on my last sentence, and thank you for asking me to do so.
If you are looking for funding, you may have come across a $190 million dollar “Wild Salmon Ecosystems” Initiative by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in the U.S. Sea Web in Washington D.C. was granted $560,000 for "identification of antifarming audience and issues, integration of aquaculture science messages into antifarming campaign, standardization of antifarming messaging tool-kit, creation of an earned media campaign and co-ordination of media for antifarming ENGOs." According to page 76 of their 2004 tax filing to the Internal Revenue Service, the $560,000 grant to SeaWeb was to provide "a high quality tool-kit and coordination infrastructure for use by ENGOs (environmental organizations) in their campaigns to shift consumer and retailer demand away from farmed salmon." Around the same time, "we do not expect to focus significant resources on salmon restoration in southern British Columbia or the lower 48 states of the U.S.," was on the Moore Foundation’s web site. To date the Moore Foundation has granted over $20 million to organizations in B.C.. All of which are opposed to salmon farming.
Alexandra Morton was profiled as a photographer by Sea Web when Sea Web publicized sea lice research by the David Suzuki Foundation. At the same time, Sea Web was funded to "shift consumer and retailer demand away from farmed salmon."
As for the sea lice study that ENGOs are standing behind in B.C. I would like to give a quote.
“ Lack of quality assurance in the collection of field data. Pink and chum salmon
fry were collected using beach seines and subsampled using dip nets. Sea lice on the fry were generally enumerated without regard to species (Lepeophtheirus salmonis or Caligus clemensi) and then returned to the sea offering no opportunity for independent (blind) verification of the results. No quality assurance procedures are described to insure the accuracy of the counts. A credible quality assurance program would require, at a minimum, blind counts and the recounting of lice on a subset of the fry by independent observers and comparison of the results to insure consistency. Assistance in the field work was offered to Mr. Krkosek for the 2006 field season during a conference call between Mr. Clare Backman (Marine Harvest), Mr. Krkosek and Dr. Brooks. The offer was declined with Mr. Krkosek’s statement that he neither needed nor wanted assistance in conducting the field work. No claim of intentional bias should be inferred from this. However, unintentional bias in scientific work, particularly in field-work, is something that all experienced scientists aggressively guard against.
The Standards, Protocols and Guidelines (SPG-2) developed by the British Columbia
Pacific Salmon Forum for Field Sampling Methods for Juvenile and Adult Pacific Salmon, and Caligid Zooplankton discusses the inherent biases associated with beach seining and dip netting, but fails to recommend quality assurance procedures to insure that collections represent random samples and that counts and identifications of lice are accurate.
That is where my math come’s from Morty. Thank you once again for asking and sunny days to you.
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Folkboat your quote is obviously from somebody representing the pro-farming community who was unhappy with the way in which the studies were carried out. Rightly so that they would be unhappy about it but right to dismiss the findings altogether? I don't think so. It's sort of like when a criminal gets off in court on a technicality, at least thats what it feels like to me. Again with the funding, so what if the money is coming from a source with another motive. The ENGO's themselves do not share this motive, so what is the problem? Funding is ALWAYS diverse....non profit organizations rarely get funding from "anonymous kind hearted souls"....at least not enough to make a difference. To think that Alexandra Morton et. al. should refuse funding from sources that have other motives in mind is absurd and unrealistic. We live in the real world where money and power come into play on a daily basis, the ENGO's are playing the game like everyone else and I for one hope they win.
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Thank you Folkboat - I appreciate your willingness to add to the discussion.
I sense though that you may have misunderstood where I'm "coming from". I am a Mortgage Broker by profession and am not connected with or involved in any of the farming, or non-farming organizations. (actually I am not against farming, I do not favor the open net pens)
My position is from a one of the sport, the rivers, and the fish. As far back as I can remember I loved water and fish. When I was in grade 7 I started saving pennies toward buying my own aquarium and have had one running pretty much continually since then. Even had a pond in the back yard for a while. I grew up in New Westminster and would fish the Fraser from Annacis Island with my Dad and Uncle after dinner each evening when salmon fishing was open. Sometimes travelled with my grandfather up to Silverdale Bar, or Derby Reach for bar fishing. Same uncle occasionally took me to the Vedder Canal to fish Chum in the Fall. Back in those days there was no trees or brush along the sides of the canal - mostly rock and a few grasses. Have taken my children fishing on the river many times, and 2 daughters in their 20's still love to go out with me. Now I'm showing 4 grandson's what it's all about.
That's 5 generations! I'd like it to be 6 and 7 and 8...
So, it's for for family and love of the water and these magnificent animals that drive my passion for this. Not anti-farming.
Can you suppport me in this?
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Morty.
Thank you for your pleasant reply. You must have me by a couple of years, but not by many. My family is 4 generations but could easily be 5. All of my family also have a love for fishing and the water since I can remember. In fact I was to young to remember the first time I was on my parents sailboat.
My passion for the water and salmon has driven me to donate my time on a few salmon enhancement and stream restoration projects. About 8 years ago for 2 years in a row, I was going up to the mouth of a river on the west coast to feed smolts in an open pen each day for about 5 weeks. They were then released into the wild in hopes of enhancing the population in the river. Since that time, the annual salmon count has sustained itself and there has been no need to enhance the river. The kicker to this although, is that the smolts from this river have to migrate past at least 6 salmon farms on their way out to sea. All I can see from this, is that salmon farms were not the cause of the need for enhancement in the first place.
I fully support you on saving the salmon and waters of the west coast Morty. But I truly believe the sea lice issue is not the problem. As I have said before, we knew from studies in the 1960s that up to 70% of the smolts did not make it past 40 days in the marine environment. (pre salmon farming era). Just my thought, but after seeing the lower U.S west coast salmon comercial and sport fisheries close down, was this caused by salmon farm sea lice, human activity on land, or possible over fishing? I am sure there are many factors that led up to the closure.
Have a great day Morty and all.