One of the places is Scotland, where, right now, the Island of Eigg, has overwhelmingly rejected Mowi's application to start a farm in a vote. 87% of islanders voted against Mowi.
See The Herald for the news: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18127447.isle-eigg-casts-vote-arrival-fish-farm/.
Mowi said if it wasn't wanted, when they started wooing the islanders, they wouldn't start a farm. But now, after the vote, they spout the same old BS:
Quote: "MOWI says on its website that aquaculture is “transforming” the seafood industry and Mowi is playing an important role in that change - “leading the way with sustainability, innovation and responsibility.”
Answer: This is a 50 year old quote. Now every country where they set up hates them: Scotland, Norway, Canada East, Canada West, Chile, Tasmania, Australia, USA and the list goes on.
Sustainability, fish farms have decimated 19 out of 20 global forage fish stocks for fish feed, with Norway being fingered for destroying Jack Mackerel off Chile and west further into the Pacific Ocean.
Here is the graph from the Sea Around Us, work done by Tim Cashion and Daniel Pauly at UBC. It graphically shows the collapse of Jack Mackerel done by Norway off Chile:
And no crop that eats protein to create protein will ever be sustainable. Cows eat grass instead, and so on. Not farmed salmon. They eat fish.
See the Sea Around Us document: http://www.seaaroundus.org/doc/publications/books-and-reports/2016/End_Use_Reconstruction_Report.pdf.
Innovation: I don't think so: Mowi, Cermaq, and Grieg Seafood have resisted moving their operations out of the ocean onto land for the past 30 years.
Answer: My list shows more than 300 on-land fish farms around the world: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html.
Responsibility: ?
Answer: The biggest problem with fish farms is sewage. In BC, the most conservative estimate of sewage is $10.4B. Putting fish farms on land and growing aquaponic vegetables with their sewage is responsibility. How is eutrophying the world's oceans responsible?
See this post for the full story on how to calculate the sewage cost of in-ocean fish farms: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2017/02/fish-farm-sewage-huge-cost-to-bc.html.
Quote: "We grow our salmon in the remote and pristine waters of the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. We provide jobs and support fragile rural economies in some of the most remote communities in the country,” it says.
Answer: Remote and pristine waters are sought by fish farms, as they don't like being in the same place as other polluting fish farms. In a sad example of this, fish farms are moving into the Magallanes region of Chile because of the remote and pristine waters. Also sad because it is right next to Patagonia, one of the most beautiful, remote places left on Earth.
Answer: jobs and revenue. See this post on how meager the jobs and revenue are in BC, and the fake stats from fish farmers. The same analysis can be done anywhere fish farms set up. And with the automation of Norway coming to places like Scotland, 80% of jobs will likely be lost. See this cut-to-the-chase post: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/12/jobs-and-revenue-hasta-la-vista-fish.html.
And GDP is small compared with revenue, which is being taken back to Norway for shareholders.
Also, Eigg doesn't want its tourist economy, based on having a beautiful, green place, being destroyed by fish farms. This is the same around the world, most typified in BC by Clayoquot Sound a UN World Biosphere.
Quote: “Scotland’s salmon farmers have some of the strongest credentials of all the farming sectors, particularly with regards to sustainability with a lower carbon footprint than chicken, beef or pig farming. We’re also amongst the most highly regulated of all salmon farming countries in terms of both fish welfare and the environment, and invest millions year-on-year to find ever better ways of doing things.”
Answer: 'carbon footprint', fish farms completely ignore their sewage and eutrophication costs, while allowing the poop of land animals to be counted. Note that the other end of 'conservative' in my BC calculation is triple the above figure, or $31.2B. This is huge, and is more than the sewage of the entire human population in BC, and other places, like Scotland and Norway. Sewage from fish farms also exceeds the human sewage in those countries.
Answer: 'most highly regulated' of all salmon countries. As I have previously pointed out: this is a false assertion. That is because they make the same, communications spin, assertion all around the world, for example, Norway, Scotland, Chile and Canada - at the same time. The spin is false because all countries have different laws, and Canada, for example, uses the DFO wild salmon laws, and is only now considering coming up with an aquaculture law.
Answer: 'invest millions to lead to better ways of doing things.' This is false because Scotland is well known for AGD, amoebic gill disease in its fish, And loses millions of dead fish every year to all causes. See this post for the millions of fish fish farms in Scotlant lose every year: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/10/millions-of-dead-fish-nl-scotland.html?m=1.
You'll note from that post that with the additional mortalities at its egg to smolt plants, that some years the total mortality can be the hard to believe 70%. How would they stay in business unless they tried very hard to come up with better ways of doing things? Or, from the opposite point of view, they are not doing much to find better ways of doing things.
Quote: "MOWI also say there is a lot of “misleading” misinformation about the environmental impacts of salmon farming “which have the potential to jeopardize much-needed jobs, reduce business for local suppliers, and diminish the sector’s significant contribution to the economy in terms of salaries, tax and export value.”
Answer: this one made me laugh out loud. You see, if you disagree with fish farms they say you are spreading misinformation. Then they follow this up by saying the solution is to educate you to the real figures and answers. Yes, this is as Orwellian as it sounds.
The second side is that your misinformation kills needed jobs, revenue and indeed the value of the most important farming 'crop' to the entire nation they exist in. Phew. I'm scared that if I utter one more word that fish farms will collapse as well as in BC and all the countries in which fish farms exist. SCARY.
Not to mention, that all those benefits their communications spin says occur would also be able to be said occur, and much more likely, if all the farms were on land.
And remember that in a recent post, I pointed out that with the automation now in place in Norway, and soon to be in a country near to you, 80% of jobs have been lost. In BC that would mean the BC Stats figure of 1800 jobs, would drop to 360. Who wants an industry that is so low in the chief thing it continues claiming: jobs, jobs, jobs, is not now true, nor in the foreseeable future, as those Norway job losses come to Canada et al?
See: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/12/jobs-and-revenue-hasta-la-vista-fish.html.
Quote: "Eigg is also said to be the most eco-conscious isle in the country with a range of green projects and businesses."
Answer: I'd say that Clayoquot Sound is the place in BC most like Eigg in its rugged beauty, and protected status that needs protection from fish farms. Clayoquot Action is attempting this protection.
See: https://clayoquotaction.org/what-is-clayoquot/.
*****
Finally: fish farms need communications spin because they employ, wait for it, the same spin doctors, Hill and Knowlton, that the tobacco lobby employed so that their CEOs wouldn't know tobacco killed people 30 years after all the rest of us on the planet knew. Hmm.
See: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/02/big-toobacco-big-fish-farms-pretty-much.html.
Read the Sarah K. Cox paper for her work on this subject.
And even more finally, here is some more of the same drivel, that if you don't believe the spin you utter misinformation and need re-education: https://www.fishfarmingexpert.com/article/looking-back-thinking-ahead-mike-forbes/. "My hope for 2020 is that the industry can find ways to better educate consumers on the positive impact salmon farmers' have.
Wasn't it Einstein who said: if you utter the same old drivel, you'll keep on getting the same old outcome, that everyone in the world hates fish farms? Maybe fish farms need education.
And a comment on this post from Facebook:
Russ Thomas Jacobson I can’t believe we are still putting up with this 50 years later. I started gill netting 39 years ago I remember catching these farmed fish that escaped back then. I started making a great living as a 15 year old kid. I have watched and felt the decline of wild salmon as these dreaded farms grew and diseased our coast with sea lice and various other viruses. What a disgrace that we have allowed this gross misconduct to ruin our salmon industry and livelihoods
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