Salmon Farming

VICTORIA -  Seventy-five independent business operators and business associations are jointly calling on the B.C. government to protect the province’s wild salmon economy. Concerned by the severe decline of many B.C. salmon stocks, the operators point to growing evidence of the impacts of disease originating on salmon farms.

Vancouver: Living Oceans issued a statement today calling on the Aquaculture Stewardship Council to ensure that surveillance audits are conducted on all of the B.C. salmon farms that have been certified under their varied or ‘relaxed’ criterion for sea lice levels; and to suspend any farms that have failed to keep lice levels under control.

Vancouver – Today, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Julie Gelfand, made it clear that Fisheries and Oceans Canada is not doing enough to monitor and manage the salmon farming industry to protect wild fish and their ecosystems.

Vancouver: Conservation groups urge the Provincial government to take action on the report of the Minister of Agriculture's Advisory Council on Finfish Aquaculture, by refusing to renew salmon farm tenures in the Broughton Archipelago when they expire in June.The report recommends that salmon farms be sited only where there are agreements with First Nations.

VANCOUVER:  BC groups hailed the move by Washington State today to phase out salmon farming in State waters at the conclusion of current leases. The Bill, passed by both houses of government, was signed into law by Governor Inslee this morning.

“It was a victory for the precautionary principle,” said Stan Proboszcz of Watershed Watch Salmon Society. “There are just too many indicators that wild salmon are exposed to negative impacts from these farms for governments to continue to turn a blind eye.”

Halifax and Vancouver:  The Canadian government is receiving 10% royalties from sales of the world’s first genetically modified (GM or genetically engineered) animal, a GM Atlantic salmon.

Vancouver:  Environmental groups are applauding the B.C. government’s recent decision to conduct a review of fish processing plants, following revealing video of virus-laden bloodwater being discharged into the ocean. 

After the video and initial lab results were released publicly, the fish farming industry said that discharge from fish processing plants was disinfected prior to release to the environment.

In a new study published today in the online journal Plos One, Alex Morton and co-authors Drs. Rick Routledge and Molly and Fred Kibenge trace the Norwegian variant of piscine reovirus (PRV) in samples of wild salmon. Sampling from regions where salmon have little chance of passing a salmon farm disclosed very low levels of the pathogen (5%); while Fraser River stocks were as much as 45% infected.  Significantly, the rate of infection was highest in the lower reaches of the Fraser River, as compared with the Upper Fraser where infection rates dropped 50%.