Fish Farms out of Discovery, Cohen Recommendation, Deadline September 30, 2020

I sent the following post to the ENGOs in BC to help them in their response to the rapidly approaching September 30 Cohen deadline to get fish farms out of the water. Please feel free to use the two lists in shaping your letter to the Liberal govt about it's promise to meet all of Cohen's recommendations.
Hi Everyone

I pass on two lists regarding on-land fish farms in advance of the Sept 30, 2020 Cohen deadline about getting fish farms out of Discovery Passage. Use them in addressing Trudeau and Jordan.

They should help you with two things: on-land is now mainstream and if the BC industry doesn’t come on-land it will likely be wiped out as 85% of its product goes to the USA, but the on-land movement there is aimed at quadruple the metric tonnes, Atlantic Sapphire, alone, aiming for 160,000 to begin with, and 250,000 in its plans, triple BC.

I started noticing a steady stream of articles/papers/analyses about on-land in the global seafood press about 18 months ago, and started a post to put them together in one place. In that short period, I have found an avalanche of interest, exceeding 500 items. On-land is mainstream, despite what fish farms might say.

This link lists the first 500 articles/papers I have found about on-land: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/11/good-news-post-links-to-on-land-closed.html.

This link lists the 326 on-land fish farms I have found: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html. The list starts halfway down the post, so scroll down to it.

And the third thing is low employment: fish farms always say they bring employment to ‘down on their luck, remote’ communities. This post thoroughly addresses that employment has been in decline for decades, and that Norwegian automation suggests that in Canada we could face an additonal 80% cut in jobs, when it is brought here. We don’t need to destroy our wild areas.

This post is dense, so if you are pressed for time, find the Inga Milewski article link on employment and read it. It is the best paper I have ever read on the subject: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/07/fish-farm-problems-on-global-scale-inka.html. The link to the BC Stats Report is in this post, the best stats on the BC ‘fishing sectors.’
DC (Dennis) Reid

LIce Outbreak in Clayoquot Sound - Billions of Lice

AS if there were not enough evidence that lice breakout in huge numbers in BC - and every place else in the world their are fish farms - now a new outbreak in Clayoquot Sound.
 
 
 
 The last post on this site has a link to 30 BC lice studies, 90 studies by Marine Harvest, and the latest is a list of 800 lice studies around the world: See this abstract: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24042912_The_global_economic_cost_of_sea_lice_to_the_salmonid_farming_industry.

CEO, Helge Aarskog, MH, has stated that lice are their worst problem: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2015/05/marine-harvest-lice-are-our-worst.html.

Here is a link to the 30 lice studies in BC:  http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/02/lice-numbers-dont-match-up-in-bc-and.html. The post includes just 2 from Marine Harvest. And DFO's numbers from 2015 show that Quatsino farmed salmon had 300 - to 800-% more lice over the limit of 3 lice per fish.

Now, Clayoquot Sound. Zero sockeye spawners returned in 2017.  In 2012 there were only 501 chinook in a half dozen rivers. These are extinction numbers. And the sound has 20 fish farms in a body of water that has only one exit, thus the lice, disease and fecal matter simply floats around. And you will recall that Cermaq applied, and actually got, a licence for 2 million litres of hydrogen peroxide, Paramove 50, to try and kill them all.

Here are photos of 2018 fry in Clayoquot: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ps-GumjM4j7RmsYT-kVu1GjJR2ojltqz. Note that this also has a copy of the news release.

Here is text from the Clayoquot Action Group on the number of lice: "Tofino, May 3, 2018—A massive outbreak of salmon lice in the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Reserve is threatening to wipe out this year’s salmon run. Cermaq’s documentation on salmon lice for April show that the numbers of salmon lice on seven of their fourteen Clayoquot farm sites are up to ten times higher than the threshold which requires treatment. The regulatory threshold is three motile salmon lice per farm fish."

There are 20 fish farms in Clayoquot, which, by the way is a UNESCO Biosphere - why there are fish farms in such special water is a question that has been hanging here for 20 years.

Let me give you a calculation that will make your jaw drop. If there is only one female louse per farmed salmon, and it can produce 1000 lice at a time, here is the number of lice from one farm: 1 farm X 600,000 fish/farm X 1000 lice/female = 600,000,000. Yes, that is 600 million, and Cermaq has problems with 14 farms, (yes, that means 600M X 14 = 8,400 million) and lice counts are up to ten times higher than the threshold that requires action - typically 3 lice per farmed salmon, not 10 times 3 = 30 lice per farmed fish, meaning the number is even higher. And there are 20 farms in total so the number is even higher. 

That is the reality with fish farms, and why CEO Aarskog, has those 90 studies on the go to try and solve this problem.

CAG points out that: "Cermaq recently received a controversial permit to use a new pesticide to control salmon lice in Clayoquot Sound. The treatment—Paramove 50—is known to suppress the immune system of the farm fish and trigger outbreaks of viruses such as Piscine Reovirus (PRV)"

Oh, and in case this is not obvious, Cermaq will be releasing the 2 million litres of lice chemicals into the waters of Clayoquot Sound - little wonder why people have lost faith in DFO/BC. And, as we have noted many times on this site, lice become resistant to the chemicals very quickly, that is why they constantly need new ones. The straight forward answer here is fish farms need to be on land. Why hasn't DFO/BC done this already?

Here is what CAG says about the lice treatment: “This is a band-aid solution for a serious problem that the salmon farming industry is unable to solve. Clearly a new approach is needed, which is why we’re seeing a global shift to land-based salmon farming”, said Ms. Glambeck. “Why are we sacrificing local food security, the wild salmon economy, and the iconic ecosystems of Clayoquot Sound, when the writing is clearly on the wall?”

Why, indeed. Please send a note to John Horgan: premier@gov.bc.ca, and to Dominic LeBlanc: dominic.leblanc@parl.gc.ca. Ask them to put fish farms on land. The answer is so simple, it should have happened decades ago.

You can pass on my list of 232 on-land fish farms systems that I have found: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html.

Thanks.

One more thing, here is the list of lice numbers per fish at the farms: 


Cermaq Canada’s sea lice counts from the ASC-certified and in assessment Clayoquot Sound farms:

• Ross Pass — 31.88 motile per fish / 14.9 adult female per fish (1 May 2018) HARVESTING
• Dixon Bay — 24.83 motile per fish / 13.07 adult female per fish (28 April 2018)HARVESTING
• Millar Channel — 29.13 motile per fish / 8.07 adult female per fish (29 April 2018)HARVESTING
• Saranac — 18.47 motile per fish / 5 adult female per fish (29 April 2018)
• Mussel Rock — 8.67 motile per fish / 4.53 adult female per fish (28 April 2018)
• Bawden — 18.82 motile per fish / 10.97 adult female per fish (25 April 2018)

Clayoquot and Sami Aboriginals, Norwegians, Scientists, Politicians, Public: Fish Farms Need to be On Land

Well, the Clayoquot Action Group that went to Norway to call on the Sami peoples, Norwegians, Norwegian government, scientists, environmentalists and Cermaq, in fact everyone they talked to said this about getting fish farms out of the water:

"A clear consensus has emerged over the past two weeks, through meetings with wild salmon advocates, academics, and an investigative journalist. When asked the question, “how can Canada avoid the problems Norway is experiencing with open-net pen salmon farming?”, without hesitation every single person replied: “Shifting to closed containment production is the only way forward”." 

See: http://clayoquotaction.org/2016/02/tide-change-in-norway/. Do read this entire article with the Cermaq, Marine Harvest, Grieg Seafood in-ocean fish farms being described as 'dinosaur technology'.

So, now you have heard  what the reaction is in Norway. What we need in Canada is for Justin Trudeau and Hunter Tootoo to take fish farms out of the ocean. In BC, there are 73 Million wild salmon, in Atlantic Canada there are only 170,000 wild Atlantic Salmon left in the sea. BC has 99.8% of all the salmon in Canada, and we want fish farms on land or they can take their small GDP contribution (part of only $61.9M) and their few jobs (BC Stats says  only 1700 multiplier jobs, and I have looked and found it is only 795 actual jobs) back to Norway and set up on land because the Norwegian government is so fed up with them it is handing out free licences to get out of the ocean and set up on land, a $9- to $12-Million subsidy, representing the auction price of a licence in the ocean.

So it is on land in Canada, and Norway. The movement is spreading because the public and aboriginals where there are fish farms overwhelmingly reject them in the ocean. In BC, the petition to stop expansion and get fish farms out of the water received 110,000 signatures.

Here is another quote from the Clayoquot Site:

"Signs of a tide change beginning to sweep the industry are breaking daily in major Norwegian media. Dagbladet, the country’s second biggest paper, ran a story pointing out that catches are plummeting in the Alta, “the world’s best salmon river” as the amount of farmed salmon in the nearby Altafjord increases. The production manager of Grieg Seafood’s operations in Alta was quoted saying: “The only solution is to get the fish into closed containment”.

The following day the front page of the paper in Bergen read: “CEO of Marine Harvest prepared to invest US $100M: if everything works as planned, closed containment systems will replace open-net pen salmon farms”.

The Delegation also met with MP Frank Bakke-Jensen, from the governing party, and suggested that with the clear consensus emerging in Norway finally being acknowledged by industry, the government runs the risk of no longer providing leadership, unless they get out in front of the parade."

Here is my last post on this issue: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/02/key-document-aboriginals-of-world-say.html. 

Thank you Clayoquot Action Group for taking your stand to Norway and contributing to fundamental change in the way our ocean is treated. No more fish farm climate change sewage.