Giving Narwhal Some Correct Information

The Narwhal has a long, well written post on the in-ocean/on-land fish farm industry in BC: https://thenarwhal.ca/bc-salmon-farming-transition/. However there are some errors here and there:

Here are some comments:

1. Atlantic salmon could compromise Pacifc Salmon genetics. False. Atlantics cannot interbreed with any strain of Pacific Salmon. In fact, no Pacific species can interbreed with another Pacific species. We wouldn't have five species if this could have nappened over 10,000 years of Pacific evolution.

On the other hand, the 'leakage' number is 153,000 per year, and John Volpe did river swims, showing the outrageous number of 97% of Van Isle Rivers with multiple Pacific salmonids have Atlantics, and multiple generations of Atlantics, meaning they have spawned in BC: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2021/06/escaped-atlantic-salmon-invade-bc.html.

2. The Precautionary Principle should be used. This is true, and the person to talk to on this one is Tony Allard, a lawyer who has written on the Principle in BC. The link to his take is in this post: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2020/11/dfo-is-biggest-threat-to-wild-bc-salmon.html.

3. There are not 75 on-land fish farms in process or completed. My list has 372 on-land fish farms around the world. On-land is common: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html.

4. Atlantic Sapphire in Florida is aimning at 220,000MT. False, they are aiming at 260,000MT which is triple the size of BC's in-ocean fish farms, in only one on land. If BC fish farms won't come out of the water, they will be put out of business by all the plants coming on sream in the States, including many in both Maine and California. The reality is that consumers will choose on-land for environmental reasons and BC loses 85% of its market which is the US. Look at my post on the avalanche of news on the on-land industry around the world. I'm up to about 1200, yes 1200, articles/papers from the fish farm/seafood indusry press, good news about on-land: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2021/05/good-news-post-now-more-than-thousand.html.

5. Contrary to what the fish farms industry and DFO says, employment is low in in-ocean fish farms. They say 7,000, while the BC government's own BC Stats Report on the 'fishing sectors', says only 1800, making the indstry claim 390% too high. In other words, they can't 'lead the recovery' as they are much too small.

The BC Stats Report is analyzed here: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/03/mar-21-2019-bc-stats-report-2016.html.

6. Terry Beech is working on a fish farm paper for government. My take on what they should do is:

1. Start a program to retrain the workers from in-ocean to on-land.

2. Charge $1M for an in-ocean licence, with on-land at zero. Then the in-ocean should be systematically raised to what these same companies pay in Norway, $32- to $40-million.

3. Give on-land farms $1Million to set up on-land.

4. Alternatively, give them use of Crown Land for free for, say, ten years.

7. Fish farms say there is no sewage, while Karen Wristen, of Living Oceans, says there is lots. I did the calculations to derive a conservative sewage cost to BC residents of in-ocean. The conservative end of the conservative numbers is a massive $10.4Billion: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2017/02/fish-farm-sewage-huge-cost-to-bc.html. Note that this post shows the amount of work I put in to calculate a number on a fish farm issue.
8. Terry Beech says the industry is a multibillion dollar industry. False. The revenue goes back to Norway, for distribution to shareholders, and fund global in-ocean.

Next time, Narwhal, you might do just a bit more homework to cover all the bases. Meaning, your writer might like to do a bit more. They can contact me if they want to. I cover all the bases. Or you can just have me do the article.