DFO Asleep at the Switches - Take II

[[Please note, I will be correcting this and other posts. Volpe did not work for DFO. But he was heavily involved with DFO as it was to give him Atlantic salmon and use of the Little Qualicum River.  It welched out late in the game. See this post for the link to the Squzuki 40 pager on the subject of Atlantics in BC Rivers: To Come.]]


The paper,  'Spatial and temporal distribution of Atlantic salmon after experimental release from sea cage sites in NL', has not been published, only leaked to NL commentators who distributed it widely and so I have a copy. When DFO stuff has to be leaked, it is not a good thing - for us and our environment. Here is their snippet of info - not the paper: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/aquaculture/rp-pr/parr-prra/projects-projets/2014-NL-04-eng.html.

In reading the paper for the last post (sorry, while I have a PDF, I can't seem to load it onto this blog), many pieces of the paper jumped out as 'surprising'.

So I went to the DFO page to try to find a link but couldn't find one - as noted, it was leaked. What I did find is images of the various scientists, for example, Dounia Hamoutene. When you look at the scientists, they look just like everyone else, and no doubt have some intention of doing their job well. Except for one thing: we know from the various posts on Kristi Miller, and the recent one of Stan P., that DFO itself has actions that corrupt the situation. Miller is on the record on Youtube video of criticizing the department under the Harper government. She had a manager tell her she should not be looking at fish farm diseases as it was irresponsible to find anything against them because DFO supported them.

See this link to the text on Miller: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/01/key-document-dr-kristi-miller-diseases.html.

And Stan P. has been categorical about the non-transparency of the process to find that sockeye 'can't catch IHN', when DFO has refused to give the science people on the committee the 'robust' research to look at and form an informed opinion - nor put it on their site, while claiming the process is transparent on its site. Here is a piece I wrote, and there is another one several days earlier: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2018/01/sockeye-cant-catch-fish-farm-viruses_13.html.
When you uncover as much dirt on DFO as has come across the 'doorstep' of the internet to me, it is very hard not to be cynical and angered.

These kind of problems make the observer believe nothing that DFO says, because of its conflict in supporting fish farms. So, when I look at Hamoutene's image, and there are many other people on: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dounia_Hamoutene, it is hard to square the situation of her looking like every one else, and we all try to do our best, but being in a system that has prejudged the outcome.

Is the person in the wrong? I don't think so. I used to work for government and like any job, the last thing you want is to lose it. It could be a permanent blight and problem on one's record, not to mention the loss of income and pensionable service.

But the point is that DFO wants in-ocean fish farms, though everyone else doesn't. DFO can't seem to get that the rest of the world is moving on - to land - because they are fed up with the problems of in-ocean fish farms. This has been happening for many years now - in-ocean are the dying breed.

You'd think that the politicians could come clear of fish farms, but the Minister, in this case, Dominic LeBlanc, was corrupted by his Ottawa bureaucrats who think no one knows more than them, and they see jobs, and fish. They don't care about wild salmon and they don't care what the citizens who have to live with fish farms think.

As I have said before: before putting a fish farm in anyone's ocean, put one in the Rideau Canal beside the Parliament Buildings, and one in the Ottawa River below and LeBlanc would soon come to hate them as much as everyone else.

BC politicians, Horgan, Premier, and Weaver, leader of the Greens, are both against in-ocean fish farms, and plan to take them out of the water. I just went to see an MLA, and will see more. Along with several MPs, for example, Fin Donnelly. (NDP) His staff asked me to work with them about a map of on-land fish farms. That's not hard as my list is now up to, if you can believe it, 208 on-land fish farm systems, comprising 20,000 actual fish farms around the globe. When is enough enough?

But I caught one thing in the DFO Asleep at the Switches post that begs more text: 'most farmed individuals released at the post-smolt stage or later do not home, as they lack imprinting to natal rivers. Instead they move with the prevailing currents and indiscriminately move into nearby freshwaters to spawn once they reach maturity (Hansen, 2006).'

Oh, cavalierly saying they spawn in local freshwater, while that is one thing that DFO says in its on-going spin that can't happen. Hmm. While we, on the west coast, read news about them found in the Fraser, one of the most important sockeye rivers in the world, and as much as 50 miles up the Skagit in WA, with them caught by sport anglers in Tofino, and in Campbell River - as much as 250 km from the Cooke Aqua, Cypress Island site that broke up in August and Cooke blamed on an eclipse. Of 305,000 fish, 200,000 escaped with 100,000 caught by the Lummi tribe.

The point is: none of these thing happen in on-land farms. It's so simple.