Trudeau Will Put Fish Farms On Land? Why, Yes, What Makes You Ask? - Updated Nov 4, 2019

You may recall Trudeau said during the election race that he would put fish farms on land by 2025. Well the fish farm companies sure noticed. They filled the airwaves and media with vituperative BS for the next week - dozens of stories. Look at Intrafish, Undercurrents, Fish Farming Expert and so on, for a good week's worth of screaming at Trudeau.

The reason that fish farms tear strips off people in the press is because they originated in Norway. That country's version of neoliberalism has it that government exists only to do good things for business. When they don't, fish farm companies like Mowi, Cermaq, Grieg and so on scream, and rake the politician/scientist/journalist over the coals and call for them to resign, etc.They do their best to get rid of people who oppose them, and destroy those people's careers.

Read this post with the information by Claudette Bethune, a scientist who was 'retired' from Norway and now is from the USA: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/03/under-surface-kjersti-sandvik.html. This is a post of Kjersti Sandvik's book on the scandalous fish farm industry.

Here is a small quote:

"It is ominous when the directors of the Institute of Marine Research and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research ( NINA), now feel compelled to defense and tell that the big salmon farming companies are employing smear campaigns against scientists, and that they are not at all interested in technical cooperation to deal with environmental problems.

Along the coast is an increasing feeling that we may be heading for a man made ecological tragedy. The level of conflict increases. But it makes little impression on the major listed companies. There is denial and trivializing no strength."

And, in March 2016 you will find three posts on Sandvik's book, an expose of fish farming.  There are six posts in total. Here is a small, potent quote from the March 3 post on her book.:

"The history of fish farming in Norway, right from the beginning has the same problems it does right now, decades later: boom bust industry, mountains of money, high stakes speculation, huge growth, huge catastrophes, diseases, workers getting laid off, bankruptcies, bureaucracy failures, government business conflict of interest, fish 'iceberg' protectionism, fraud, corruption, arguments with the EU and USA governments, tariff to 26%, the realization that there was more money in fish farm feed than the total transport of grain for human consumption in Europe. And it goes on. "

My April 8, 2016 post on the Sandvik book, covers that the fish farm industry is a boom bust one, with billions made and billions lost. The real losers are the small companies that can't absorb the disasters and catastrophes.


Here is a post on fish farm companies attacking scientists: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/11/fish-farms-attack-scientists.html.

Here is a post on fish farms companies attacking 20 scientists. It really is this bad:  https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2017/06/scientists-harassed-by-fish-farms.html.

The above shows that fish farms scream at anyone who doesn't agree with them. At least tobacco CEOs don't scream at politicians for not liking cigarettes. It is no less twisted for fish farm companies to do the opposite, with their product.

Now, back to Trudeau. Alex Morton's current post, Oct 28, 2019 is about DFO refusing to use science or the precautionary principle to get fish farms out of the water, particularly now, when wild salmon are in crisis - I say this after following fisheries policy for 40 years, and it pains me to have to say we have reached the crisis stage. Look at this post, for a single morning's catch at the Nahmint River:   https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/09/v-behaviorurldefaultvmlo.html. This post addresses the crisis, as well as how good it used to be.

Where are those fish now? They're dead.

What are the four major problems affecting wild salmon you ask? They are: freshwater habitat restoration, DFO, fish farms and climate change.

Trudeau is addressing fish farms, something that no federal govt has been willing to do so far. Freshwater habitat is being addressed by a $142m program that has major flaws as it's stipulations takes virtually all the money away from individuals and groups doing in river work, favouring tech solutions, innovations, First Nations participation and etc. as in very restricting on who can qualify, rather than being about bringing back salmon.

Here is one of my posts on these issues, which gives lots of references for you to get into the issues: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/12/wild-salmon-secretariat-make-your-case.html.

Here is another on the economic outcome of closing sport fishing rather than getting all 300,000 sport fishinermen into freshwater habitat restoration, and really making a difference: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/07/misguided-policy-is-killing-jobs-and.html.

Here are the flaws with the $142M program: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/04/salmon-restoration-and-innovation-fund.html.

And the other side of DFO, is in an Alex Morton post, Oct 28: https://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2019/10/i-can-understand-if-you-see-me-as-overly-pessimistic-a-doomsayer-however-as-a-biologist-i-have-sworn-a-private-intern.html.

This other side is worse than the fake habitat restoration program. Here is what Morton has to say: DFO is steadfastly against testing for PRV or keeping PRV Atlantics out of the ocean. Even though it has been shown to be a virulent Atlantic strain from Norway. Even though its own scientists, and others, have shown it causes HSMI, a deadly disease. Even though its own scientists have shown it causes anemia and jaundice in wild chinook - the most needed species of salmon for killer whales - and her article shows a yellow pink salmon. Yellow is the colour of jaundice - in fish and humans.

And DFO lost two cases on not testing for PRV. And its own scientists, and PSF ones published a paper showing PRV causing HSMI in farmed salmon in BC.

In her own words, Morton sums it up this way: " Seven years in court, three legal decisions against this, extensive scientific evidence, exposed cover-up, division within DFO, the collapse of BC salmon fisheries, Pacific salmon turning yellow and dying before spawning in the rivers and DFO opted for a state of lawlessness aiding millions of farm salmon in shedding a virus over every run of wild salmon that tries to migrate to sea from rivers in the southern half of BC - that is associated with rupturing their red blood cells."

Hard to believe yet true. 

If you can steel yourself to read the three pages of Rebecca Reid's letter to Morton: https://alexandramorton.typepad.com/files/final-signed---morton-letter-oct-3.pdf. She says not testing for PRV is hunky dory, and the new FARM plan for managing farmed fish is also hunky dory.

I shredded the FARM program to pieces from four different directions in this post: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/07/dfos-public-consultation-on-framework.html. This is a major post, and has more than 60 references. Go look at the post and any link that you want to follow up.

And the section in this letter on the precautionary principle will have you seething as you read it. All it does is say we used science to show we didn't have to use the PP. However, the point is that science is not the deciding factor, nor is economics. The important thing is the overall possibility for significant problems with wild salmon. And we all know that, now salmon are in a crisis. And the PP says we need to err on the side of caution. DFO is bastardizing the notion of PP.

Now we get to the ultimate point: Justin, wants to put fish farms on land: On-land fish farms are exploding around the globe with 800,000mt of salmon in the next few years, or 35% of the total global supply. Item 234: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/11/good-news-post-links-to-on-land-closed.html.

Rabobank has it:

Note the 89K mt of salmon from BC to USA. As Atlantic Sapphire, on-land in Florida, is aiming at 160K mt of salmon, the entire BC industry may be wiped out. AS is only one of four major projects coming on stream in the USA. Yes, BC is going to be wiped out.

This means that if the industry stays in the water it will be wiped out. It also means that if it wants to stay in business, it will have to come out of the water, just like Justin, and all the rest of us, want.

What is it going to be fish farms? Go out of business, or open on land? Let me guess.

And stop the screaming at everyone who doesn't agree with you. That is just your bad Norwegian genes coming out. Get with it and move with the flow of Canada.

                                                             ******

1. Norway is thinking about introducing a 40% tax on fish farms, based on profits not production. This is a sizeable change. What Justin can do in BC, is put it on in-ocean fish farms until they come out of the water, whereupon, regular taxation would take over:  https://www.intrafish.com/aquaculture/1872920/norway-proposes-40-percent-tax-on-aquaculture-operations?lantern_redirect=true%20Aquaculture%20Newsletter&utm_term=0_ec4b681694-bf0ad17878-244877629.

2. And the stats on 2019 are devastating. See how much help salmon need. There is no time left to wait on making changes:  https://watershedwatch.ca/greg-taylor-an-overview-of-2019s-salmon-returns/?utm_source=Watershed+Watch+Email+List&utm_campaign=b9ff6f89d7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_04_04_38_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_405944b1b5-b9ff6f89d7-166907249&mc_cid=b9ff6f89d7&mc_eid=5777c92bcd.

DFO, Salmon and Killer Whales - Take Two, Updated July 5, 2018

The Sport Fishing Institute sent around a note – link at bottom – this past week asking for sport fishers to send a letter to DFO on the closing of sport fishing to put more chinook in the tummies of Southern Resident Killer whales. So, I wrote a letter to Dominic LeBlanc and also put it on one of my sites: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/05/dfo-salmon-and-killer-whales.html. Please write your own.

It is a cut to the chase piece that notes the problem is long term intransigence by DFO for both salmon habitat restoration and protecting killer whales. It is below. Immediately below is my second note to LeBlanc:

Hi Dominic (Letter also sent to Justin Trudeau, Andrew Weaver, Elizabeth May, Adam Olsen, Martin Paish, Chris Bos, Rebecca Reid, Sport Fishing Institute).

I sent a letter to you this past week noting that the chinook/killer whale problem is not going to be solved by closing sport fishing in selected areas. I have written on fisheries policy for 25 years, and the answer is: significantly increasing habitat restoration funding and netpens for chinook.

In the past four days, since posting the letter to my Fish Farm News and Science site, it has had an unprecedented response: 8,500 pageviews so far, virtually all from Canada. I used to write letters for ministers in the BC government, and know lists of issues are kept, and preparing responses is a meticulous, time consuming and costly activity. 

If 8,500 complaints had been received, it would have shut down the branch preparing responses for months. That is how big a response BC has to your ill-conceived plan that will solve nothing, other than make British Columbians angry. My plan will solve the problem. Please read it again.

After buying the Kinder Morgan pipeline with BC taxpayer money, you need a significant win in BC or you will be shut out in the next election. You will recall that BC was the balance of power in the last election.

DC Reid

Here is the first letter:

Hi Dominic et al

I want to tell you that it is greatly disappointing that after 40 years of DFO managing BC salmon into extinction, here we are today, with you eliminating recreational fishing in areas of the Salish Sea/Juan de Fuca Strait for killer whale food, when the real solution is for DFO to have been doing freshwater habitat restoration and hatchery epigenetics work at a rate that would have seen salmon stocks stay at the same level as in the 1960s.

What you are doing now is with almost extinction levels of Fraser chinook, feeding almost extinct killer whales that DFO has not been doing enough for over the decades, and finally, when it won’t save the whales, eliminating a sport fishery, and they will likely become extinct, anyway. Note that from the east all we hear from DFO is how 500 right whales are on the brink. Note that 76 BC orcas are only 15.2% of your eastern right whales.

Note the attached shot of a 1960’s morning’s sport catch from the Nahmint River, a small drainage in the Alberni Inlet. Where are the Nahmint and dozens of other chinook runs today, DFO?

Two things are required immediately: far greater money spent on freshwater habitat restoration, and netpens of chinook.

Freshwater Habitat Restoration

I think $100 million needs to be invested each year for the next 10 years to catch up. If you look at what $1.5 million did to the Clay Bank on the Cowichan River, it shows that money doesn’t go very far. I suggest you give the money to the Pacific Salmon Foundation because it leverages money 4 to 7 times, and the public, particularly students and sport fishers do most projects.

I spent more than a week’s time figuring out from DFO’s patchwork of data/reports (because DFO doesn’t have a final number) that there were, before escapement, 73 million salmon in the ocean. In perspective, this is 99.8% of all the salmon in Canada. Your eastern Atlantic salmon are a measly .2-to .4-million, or .2%.

In my estimation, there are four major problems that have lead to the downward spiral of wild BC salmon: lack of freshwater habitat restoration, DFO, in-ocean fish farms and climate change. We can change every major problem except climate change. 

Netpens

I recommend an immediate establishment of a dozen netpens of 2 million chinook fry each. Use Robertson Creek and the Nitinat hatcheries for Juan de Fuca Strait, and Cowichan – a river that has had a large turnaround in the past few years – for Strait of Georgia. That means 24 million fry each year for the next ten years. The point is that it has to be done quickly to save the killer whales, and though it is 4 years to adults, if we wait, it is those years plus 4 years to adults. 

Pay attention to the issue of triploiding for netpens and epigenetics for an increased Salmon Enhancement Program in the specific rivers. And pay attention to the work done by the South Vancouver Island Anglers Coalition, Sooke netpen operation using Nitinat stock, now releasing its second crop. Funding comes from members, mostly anglers. And a seal cull would help.

Finally, after buying out Kinder Morgan, you liberals are in deep trouble in BC, on two major issues. You need to do something major quickly, and a recent poll shows that BC holds salmon as dear as Quebec does French.

Thanks

DC Reid

See: https://www.sportfishingbc.com/forum/index.php?threads/important-note-from-sfi-bc-sviac-re-fishing-regs.70431/.


Also, get your say in on the 'critical habitat' proposal by July 11:  http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/forms/sara-lep/killerwhales-epaulards/workbook-cahier-eng.aspx.