DFO/SRKWs/Chinook/Fish Farms - Do Something - Updated Mar 19, 2019

Hi Jonathan

DFO has been managing salmon and killer whales into extinction for the past 50 years.  Now you want to do more of the same that got them into this state: curtailing fishing.

In short order there will be no more salmon or SRKWs in BC. The alternative would be to try something different and get a different outcome.

I have sent you an in-depth treatment of this subject with more than 60 references: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/07/dfos-public-consultation-on-framework.html.

I also sent you a post on how to feed SRKWs right now: net returning Nitinat and Cowichan 4 year chinook; have a plane spot SRKWS, and use a helicopter to airlift live-tanks of the netted fish and drop them in front of a pod. We should be able to move a thousand fish a day. Do this for a few weeks and this is a solution for SRKWs for 2019.

Moving on, you need to remember the next two points:

BC residents love salmon as much as Quebec does French: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/11/hasta-la-vista-liberals-salmon-as.html.

75% of BC citizens want fish farms banned and put on land. There is zero social licence for fish farms in BC: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/06/vast-majority-against-in-ocean-fish.html.

Overall: you would help rather than destroy the situation by: concentrating on freshwater habitat restoration (your funding plan places too many restrictions on applications to be useful); a dozen netpens of 2-million, sterilized, fin-clipped chinook each, every year for the next decade at minimum (Nitinat and Cowichan stocks); epigenetic hatchery work; and new measures based on solutions to climate change.

I am working on a paper on solutions to climate change.

Having said all this, there are several fish farm issues transpiring at the same time, but with DFO not listening to BC residents saying we want fish farms on land:

1. Fish farm sea lice have been out of control for the past several years in Clayoquot and Nootka sounds. This is Nootka:  https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/08/lice-out-of-control-clayoquotnootka.html. This is Clayoquot: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/08/dfo-likes-lice-more-than-wild-salmon.html.

2. DFO has been and still is trying to weasel around the PRV/HSMI issue: https://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2019/09/special-meeting-of-dfo-fish-committee.html?fbclid=IwAR3IfTM2a3UnVglUQmBB-WwKvKUJLu0DlCa9cZfewLsJoIfR1ZtlVI-p8S0.

       3. DFO is trying to consider this crisis situation as just business as usual (ignoring the Big Bar Slide, where it is successfully live lifting fish above the problem, like my SRKW suggestion), and is talking about its fish FARM system, as though we were not in a crisis with salmon, SRKWS and fish farms. Here is how bad FARM is: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/07/dfos-public-consultation-on-framework.html. 

4. Three new viruses have been found in BC farmed/wild salmon:  https://www.intrafish.com/aquaculture/1847190/discovery-of-new-viruses-pose-risk-to-bc-salmon-farming?utm_source=IntraFish+Salmon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=f68674bea9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_09_09_11_00&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5c825a4a64-f68674bea9-245113141. And here: https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2019/09/05/three-new-viruses-encountered-in-canadian-chinook-sockeye/.

Jonathan, you need to get fish farms out of the water, and do realistic wild salmon restoration.

Finally, Jonathan, where are those Nahmint chinook salmon, abundant 50 years ago before DFO managed them into extinction?

This is how good it was and should be:

Where are the chinook now, Jonathan?

Do something.

DC Reid

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1. Worst sockeye return ever - 2019:  https://www.citynews1130.com/2019/09/09/worst-year-for-salmon/?utm_source=Watershed+Watch+Email+List&utm_campaign=e796540934-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_09_11_08_58&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_405944b1b5-e796540934-166907249&mc_cid=e796540934&mc_eid=5777c92bcd.

2. National Fish Conservancy files suit to force NOAA to saveSRKWs and chinook:  http://wildfishconservancy.org/20200318NOAAsuitPR.pdf.