Wild Salmon/Fishing Revenue is 630% Higher Than Salmon Farms - BC Salmon Farmers Association Tries a Different Claim

I sent a note to an environmental list serve in BC. BC Fish Farmers got hold of it and sent themselves the references to the stats that they like. By all means go look at them. The BC Stats are better, and someone forwarded their spin, er, note, my way.

Here is my note:

Hi Sabrina Santoro, Media Person at BCSFA:

Regarding your note to fish farms  below: I use the BC Stats report of 2013 because it has the best stats on sport fishing, fish farms, etc. It starts with DFO and Stats Can and then refines the figures, presenting a far different take from DFO and fish farms.

See BC Stats: http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/BusinessIndustry/FisheriesAquacultureHuntingTrapping.aspx. 

You will note DFO on the cover, as it is their document, though they have never used the figures - part of their conflict with fish farms. I have read the documents that you note below, but BC Stats is better.

See my post: Salmon Fishing Revenue Towers Over Fish Farm Revenue, which has had high traffic since you sent your note: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2015/05/salmonfishing-revenue-towers-over.html. 

In addition, Sabrina, I do considerable work to come up with statistics useful to the subject, for example, you like to claim that employment is 6,000 jobs, while I have derived that actual employment is only 820. That is how you get to the number that real jobs are only 13.7% of what fish farms claim, about one in ten.

And I also give in my post how to calculate the entire fishing revenue of $2.52 Billion and thus that it is 630% higher than fish farms.

This means that the main claims of fish farms that they are about jobs and revenue are, well, false. Workers lose jobs worldwide, and revenue goes to shareholders worldwide. Even Marine Harvest concedes that fish farms have few jobs, because the process is highly automated: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/09/worker-job-numbers-worldwide-marine_27.html.

One more thing Sabrina: Other hard work subjects include: the sewage cost to BC taxpayers of $10.4 Billion - we don't want to pay; and 5.76 Billion forage fish killed to bring in one harvest of an industry the size of BC’s. Fish farms don’t save fish, they kill fish, more than 100 dead fish to feed one farmed fish to harvest, and those farmed fish also kill 50% of wild salmonids, worldwide.

It makes no economic or environmental sense for fish farms to be in the ocean. They need to be on land. It makes no sense to raise a carnivore.

DC (Dennis) Reid

                                                           **************

Now, Sabrina's note:

Hi Everyone,

In response to the email below, please refer to BCSFA's Economic Impact Study, as well as the Socio-Economic Impact of Aquaculture in Canada document by DFO and the Government of Canada’s Agriculture and Seafood Industry and Sector Profiles. 

Cheers,

Sabrina

bcsalmonfarmers.ca. Sabrina Santoro Communications Manager sabrina @bcsalmonfarmers.

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BCSFA Media Contact; Sabrina Santoro; 604- 202-4417; sabrina@bcsalmonfarmers.ca. The BCSFA makes commun