Although some salmon farming companies may try to portray themselves as a marine version of American Gothic, let’s get real. B.C. salmon farming is a huge, mechanized and mostly foreign-owned industry. On the surface, a fish farm may look rustic and innocuous, with floating buildings and docks. But underwater the true scale and controversy of this industry becomes apparent: disease and parasite outbreaks, dead whales and sea lions, and all that poo.
How much poo? To get an idea, a typical farm can hold 2,400 tonnes of salmon. That’s equivalent to the mass of 480 adult elephants! And B.C. has more than 120 licensed marine farm sites. So yeah, a lot of poo. Now think about all of the plumes of parasites, viruses and diseases this industry spews right on the migratory paths of our native wild salmon stocks.
Sound like hyperbole? You be the judge. Reams of science published in some of the world’s top journals highlight the industry’s threat to wild stocks from sea liceparasites. On the disease front, a $37 million taxpayer-funded federal investigation — the Cohen Inquiry — concluded: “Potential harm posed to Fraser River sockeye from salmon farms is serious or irreversible.” Diseases from salmon farms can spread to wild salmon.
Conflict of Interest?
Stan Proboszcz – Dogwood – March 9, 2017.
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