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Dec 14, 2018
Please, all my followers, go and listen. Also, see video link to Global News coverage below.
Chief Bob Chamberlin speaking now: 10:17
Jonathan Wilkinson speaking as of 10:21. He says 17 farms will move out of the Broughton A. He is also talking about the precautionary principle, which is the method I said was the important one, along with freshwater habitat restoration.
David Kimmel from Cermaq: 10:29 He says a bunch of stuff that could be good: habitat, climate change. Still saying fish farms have lowest carbon footprint, ignoring the $10.4B in sewage they put in the BC ocean. Talks about feeding people.
Diane Morrison, Marine Harvest (Mowei) saying good things about speaking with one another, reconciliation. Business must evolve and that means us. 600 employees (it is only about 500), wild salmon/environment and blah blah, transition in BA to... indigenous monitoring in their territories. We care about wild salmon....And this consensus based approach (Hmm)
Lana Popham: we came in with wanting to do reconciliation. Still she is not talking specifics. Strengthening wild salmon while strengthening aquaculture.
HMM.
Horgan speaking, 10:40, we are moving forward. Cohen Commission, starting point. 10 removed to create channel for smolt migration from Fraser (also Broughton pinks, as well).
Bob; 10:45. Let's get it done (he has a cold). It's a one way street, meaning government, but we now come as equal partners (reconciliation). To improve wild salmon, this is one, then forestry, water licences, etc. global warming, WA state, Bolt Decision 50% of salmon to Indigenous. Salmon need help and this does help. Let's move forward, no more what we have done in the past, integration is good and we want Indigenous partners in Cascadia, all of it, management, WRT survival of fish.
Horgan, 10:48,
54% of biomass eliminated by 2022. Indigenous will now work with business to move forward. Create more wild salmon at the same time.
Wilkinson: 10:51, area based management. Need aqua, and Wild stocks. 'Absolute comfort with this.'
Horgan: 10:53, all options are on the table. But thinks Marine Harvest/Cermaq will move to transition. Cooperation moving forward. Template can be moved to other BC industries. DFO has a new announced budget ($100M but it doesn't have details.)
Nelson Bennett: job losses? Why are companies okay?
Horgan: 10:55, 7 remaining will remain. Skepticism? We are all here
Bob: to Nelson, 10;56, 2022 must have agreement, or out. That is the longterm. We wind down farms and have indigenous monitoring at all times. Sea lice treatments, for example, we are skeptical of health on fish farms, we define that, the testing, drugs, lice, we will train and do it on sites, so we can tell our own leadership out there. FN/BC/Fed. Window of opportunity for new technologies. (Sure, the Egg?)
11: it's a wrap. Legislative Conference Call.
Here is a link to the video conference: https://www.facebook.com/kwakwabalas.
And, specifically: https://www.facebook.com/GlobalBC/videos/291081291540806/UzpfSTY0ODAyMTg5ODoxMDE1NTg1MTQwNTQzNjg5OQ/
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Now, what do I think? Well this sounds good, but there are those almost 4,000 problems I have found in the industry over the last three years:
https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/08/bad-news-bites-aug-20-2018.html.
It sounds good to talk of wild salmon, with fish farms working around them, however, the problems still remain, of disease, lice, chemicals, the Second Silent Spring, sewage, relatively small GDP input by fish farms with the straight forward way forward is to put fish farms on land, move feed to insect based, use sewage for hydroponics...
But there is Wilkinson seeming clued in, Lana seeming clued in, JH, and BC seeming clued in. Hard not to feel a warm fuzzy after so many decades of deception and fish dying.
As mentioned previously, the stats show: fish farms (all of aqua) only a $61.9M GDP contribution, meaning the bulk of the $469M (all of aqua) going back to Norway, only 1700 multiplier jobs in fish farms, with only 850 actual jobs, sport revenue of $2.52B, the most conservative sewage cost to us of $10.4B.
And the four major problems remain: freshwater habitat restoration (DFO number of $100M is short on detains), DFO, fish farms and climate change.
The proof will be in the pudding.
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And now, watching the video for the first time, rather than just audio,
I am struck by how ill informed people are on the employment in fish farms. It is only 1700 multiplier jobs, and actual employment is only 850 jobs (I determined this myself). That means the Indigenous jobs, at 20% are only 170 jobs. Are we going to continue with fish farms in the water, when only 170 aboriginals are employed, and only 1,700 economic effect? Sport is 8,400 jobs. Why do we talk so much about fish farm jobs rather than the vastly more jobs in other parts of the salmon world?
And
Jon W goes on to say they will do a study of on-land and closed containment, to determine 'industry readiness'. Well what about the 218,000 MT coming on stream on land in the USA? Atlantic Sapphire, Whole Oceans, Nordic Aquafarms, and Aquabanq? What about the additional 260, 000 that PE Fund is going to put around the entire world? And what about the 260 on-land fish farms that I have found? What planet are you guys on? You need to do your homework.
Jon W goes on to trumpet his new aquaculture act, which is simply words, like transparency, best practices and so on. The issue is where the rubber hits the road, and I am not hearing: we are putting you on land for free! A $32- t0 $40-million huge subsidy, as in the same as Norway!
And
Jimmy Kibble for Cermaq says that he is sure wild salmon will be better with fish farms in the water. Sorry, I fell off my chair at that one, after all of his first five minutes of puff stuff.
And when he went on to straight face claim that fish farms have the lowest carbon footprint of all farming methods, I fell off my chair again. It is a conservative $10.4B that we pay, for your sewage. And other farming methods at least keep all the crap on land, where it can be used, rather than sprayed all over the ocean where it can only cause eutrophication and algal blooms, and change in pH.
And then he went on to claim the same Blue Revolution BS that the Norwegians have been claiming since the 1970s, 'farming the ocean will be essential' ... and when he claimed sustainability, I decided I had better not write anything more and just grit my teeth until he was finished.
Then
Ms Morrison from Marine Harvest, soon to be Mowei: says
Jon's work will be critical, even though Jon is talking science. Then she says there are 600 MH employees. There are not, they may reach 500, and I have several references for that figure. She then says the agreement will not lead to any staff changes in the Broughton. Hmm. Could that be because, on many farms there are no employees and they are visited by employees who see many farms? After all it only takes 2 people to run a farm.
I like the Indigenous oversight part of her talk, though the devil is in the details, as Alex Morton's work showed how DFO and the CFIA essentially fraudulently tried to find a lab that would give a no-disease response to them. They will do the same thing again.
Then
Lana goes on to say we want lots of wild salmon and a sustainable fish farm industry. Hmm. I don't think they really get the point of on-land.
John seems to get that we need more wild salmon as he answers Keith Baldry, about BC and WA working together on salmon/SRKW.
Not to mention that there are 300,000 sport fishers who aren't keen on DFO, meaning we don't believe them anymore.
He does mention that the Cohen Commission was used to take the 10 fish farms out of the Broughton, and goes on to mention Discovery, just south of there, at Campbell River.
Bob is quite eloquent about the one-way street of the past, being government/court/government, and now that may be changing. Roughly minute 46 if you want to go directly there. He goes on to say that on this one topic the door to Indigenous inclusion has been opened. I hope he's right.
He has a good comment on management based on survival versus management based on the economy (minute 50), when referring to cross border Indigenous inclusion in the process.
Jon comes back to talk about area-based management. But then he destroys it by using the old shibboleth of fish farms talking about a growing world population needing protein and we need to use the ocean, and fish numbers are going down, and the same old fish farm spin stuff that they have been using for 50 years. It is sad to hear the same words from the DFO minister, for example, the ocean fish decline of 20 global fish stocks is directly caused by the fish farm industry killing for feed.
And then
John has to ruin what he has to say by saying that Cermaq and Marine Harvest are leaders in technology, when that just isn't true. I refer you to the USA, PE Fund, and my list of 260 on-land farms. Marine Harvest has the Egg, which allows it to release its sewage from the tank, and Cermaq has iFarm that looks at every fish, and releases its sewage. We need them just to put the farms on land. That is all this is about.
Bob also spoke at the end, saying it is a time to test new technologies. Sad, as Trump would say. As I have mentioned, the industry 'advances' don't look anything like on-land for solving all the problems of being in the water, and letting the sewage, etc. float away.
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Finally, the Times Colonist article, Dec 15, 2018, by Les Leyne on fish farms being taken out of the Broughton:
https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/les-leyne-fish-farm-foes-score-major-victory-1.23538930.
Here is another article, by Nelson Bennett:
https://biv.com/article/2018/12/salmon-farms-broughton-archipelago-be-shut-down.
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And, from Alex Morton, Jan 7 2019, a video on the closing of the Glacier Falls fish farm site:
https://www.facebook.com/alexandra.morton.1671/posts/2374198266142054.
