# Help save BC wild salmon



## stratos (Apr 21, 2010)

Courtesy of David Susuzki:



> The Cohen Commission report is out, and Justice Cohen agrees with us: we need to step up and protect the future of our wild salmon. Cohen has made 75 strong recommendations, including putting a freeze on fish farm expansion and removing fish farming from Fisheries and Oceans Canada's mandate.
> 
> We aim to ensure the government acts on these recommendations. Join us in asking the Prime Minister and your MP to start rebuilding salmon stocks.
> 
> Send a letter today.


You can send an easy email/letter to the Prime Minister on this issue by clicking on the link here:

Send a letter

Any of you guys who enjoy going fishing for salmon (and I know a number of you do), really owe it to the fish and yourselves to make your voice heard.


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic (Apr 22, 2010)

So what you're saying is that we'll all just catch and eat wild salmon right? Same with wild chickens? Cattle? Hogs? Guess what, pretty much every gram of meat protein, eggs, milk, cheese etc. comes from farmed, domesticated animals.

If you actually looked into the total issue, its the wild fish that originally give fish lice and diseases to the farmed stocks. Its the environmentalists who convinced the NDP Premier to NOT allow farmers to move their farm sites so now, even if they find that the farms are along migration lanes, they can't do much about it because of those new rules that are all about emotion and not about facts. Before the environmentalists got involved, farm sites would be able to haul up their anchors and tow the farms away from the migration lanes and problem solved. Now, that option has been taken away from them.

People are NOT going to stop eating salmon even if you stop fish farming. They'll just increase their catch of wild stocks because as wild stocks get depleted, prices will rise, causing greater pressure to catch and sell as much as possible. This, in economic theory, is one of the drawbacks of the Tragedy of the Commons. Since salmon swim all over the ocean, even if they place catch limits on Canadian fishermen, which they already do, offshore fisheries don't have to abide by those rules and will wipe out our stocks to make some quick $$.

If you looked into who funds the Suzuki foundation and its anti-salmon farming initiatives, you'll find its mostly US foundations and donors, many of whom have a vested interest in killing off BC's salmon farming industry to sell more Alaskan salmon (and whose operations are called "ocean ranching"). These salmon ranching operations fly under the radar cause everyone is mad at BC salmon farmers. Here's some comparative statistics:

"On average, over the past 10 years BC salmon farmers introduced to their farms 20 million smolts per year, which consumed about 155,000 tonnes of fish from the South Pacific to produce about 75,000 tonnes of marketable product.

• In that same time period, on average, salmon ranching introduced to the ocean 5 billion smolts per year, which consumed as much as 11 million tones of feed from the North Pacific to produce about 700,000 tonnes of product.

Ranching introduces 250 times as many smolts, consumes 70 times as much feed to produce less than 10 times the volume of marketable salmon!" 

So why don't you go protest the Alaskan salmon ranchers who are helping to pay for the anti-BC salmon farmers campaign if you really are all that concerned about conservation.


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## niteshift (Mar 10, 2011)

I have question, are the fish in question not the ATLANTIC Salmon? and are they not being farmed in Pacific open water? Don't salmon swim all over the ocean? maybe right past an open water Atlantic salmon farm. is it not possible then for the fish in question to jump the fence? remember wild critters will always find a way. And when you setup an African tank for example you wouldn't mix fish from lake Victoria with fish from lakes Malawi or Tanganyika in the tank would you? Forgive me I may not be very well educated, but I do read, and ask allot of questions. I just don't think any good can come from it there is no way. I think we need to concentrate on hatcheries for our own Pacific Salmon. My Two Cents anywat


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## stratos (Apr 21, 2010)

Seahorse Fanatic, if I understand you right, you do not accept the findings of the Cohen Commission? That commision's report was funded by the Canadian government and your tax dollars. It is unbiased in its conclusions. It sounds like you don't like what those conclusions are.


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## neven (May 15, 2010)

While I have no qualms about responsible aquaculture, open pens are detrimental to wild stocks. Its just the one form I have an issue with since there have been massive improvements in closed pen systems from European counterparts who already went through all this. Which government did what doesnt matter to me, its what needs to be done now with this commissions findings released. As for off shore and American aquaculture there is much they do over there I don't agree with and its just wrong to play the they do it so we can card.

Sent from my SGH-I897 using Xparent Green Tapatalk 2


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## DBam (Aug 9, 2010)

Anthony if what you're saying about lobbyists trying to dissolve our wild salmon stocks and handing moneys to the Suzuki foundation is true, Mr Suzuki has a lot to lose. Having done some academic research on fish farms, I can definitely say they have led to Atlantic salmon escapes, reproduction, and they've found feral Atlantics that have been born and grown up in BC streams. They're a direct competitor to native species and grow and develop faster. 

While I understand your points about maintaining supply that meets the demand, many people won't eat Atlantic salmon for various reasons, and their intense monoculture of Atlantics leads to pressure on wild species and likely increases disease. If having farmed salmon available means risking wild species and biodiversity, that's pretty sad. I don't think a single one of us BCA members agrees with the Belo Monte project that threatens to wipe out amazonian endemics, but in our own backyard we can put a political spin on it that makes it more acceptable.


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## Immus21 (Jun 14, 2010)

I only eat wildcaught salmon that me and my family catch on the West coast during the season. Would never touch that farmed crap, would rather go without. I never have liked the idea of farming salmon in our coastal waters. I will send a note to our PM and MP saying so and I'll pass this along to my family and friends as well.


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## stratos (Apr 21, 2010)

Intersting article about a poposed Alaskan gold mine and a 30 million strong sockeye run in Alaska:

Alaska's Clash Over Salmon and Gold Goes National

And another interesting article in today's Vancouver Sun about land-based salmon farming:

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Sa...ore+land+based+aquaculture/7562924/story.html

I think land-based salmon farming is the way to go.


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic (Apr 22, 2010)

Yes, I think landbased is a better solution, but the farm in the article probably only works because its being done by First Nations so they have tax-breaks, funding, etc. not available to a typical non-aboriginal Canadian company. These systems are much more capital intensive, high maintenance, and burn up a lot of fuel to run the giant pumps 24/7. These higher operating costs have been the main reason why they've never been economically viable. I would love to see more farms switched to land-based operations except operating giant generators and pumps 24/7 creates a lot of extra air pollution and noise pollution. 

So people will have to decide which drawback to live with.


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## IceBlue (Mar 17, 2011)

What about open sea pens? The current salmon farms are too close to wild salmon migration routes. Yes the disease and lice came from the wilds, but living in close cramped conditions in fish pens bring these problems to unnatural levels. Also the sea floor below these pens is killed by the fishpoop, multiple feet thick. ...not on my menu thanks.


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## neven (May 15, 2010)

the waste from a closed pen could also be another form of cheap farm fertilizer, i doubt they would restrict it from use when they allow byproduct from sewage treatment and johhny on the spot waste to treat canadian farm fields.


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic (Apr 22, 2010)

IceBlue, 

before the environmentalists lobbied the government to change the rules governing farm movement, farms on migration routes could pull up anchor and move the farm to a better, more isolated location. Now they are not allowed to make use of such a simple, common sense solution. While doing my thesis work, we actually developed kelp farms that could be set up down current from existing fish farms to act as natural nutrient exporters and the kelp could be harvested as well for use as food for abalone farmers, wakame, and other uses like as a source of alginates and other kelp extracts.

Neven,

Unless its a fw system, there is too much salt content in the fish waste to recycle as fertilizer for land plants. Perhaps for kelp and other marine vegetation, but it would take a fair bit of fw to rinse off the fish poop to make it ok to use in our gardens, for instance. The mortalities on farms are being recycled by mixing it with saw dust or other products to compost for garden and landscape usage. The fw operation I worked at used to truck all the morts to the manager's property where they buried them in giant sawdust piles to compost. Grew the biggest tomatoes you've ever seen. I use a similar product called SeaSoil which is composted forest waste with fish waste (probably from seafood processing plants I imagine).

Anthony


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## stratos (Apr 21, 2010)

SeaHorse_Fanatic said:


> IceBlue,
> 
> before the environmentalists lobbied the government to change the rules governing farm movement, farms on migration routes could pull up anchor and move the farm to a better, more isolated location. Now they are not allowed to make use of such a simple, common sense solution. While doing my thesis work, we actually developed kelp farms that could be set up down current from existing fish farms to act as natural nutrient exporters and the kelp could be harvested as well for use as food for abalone farmers, wakame, and other uses like as a source of alginates and other kelp extracts
> 
> Anthony


I recall an oceanography course I took in which I learned about "dead zones" that net-pens create on the ocean floor; much of the salmon fish waste drops down and accumulates on the sea floor below the pens, leading to anaerobic bacteria and toxins. The result is a dead zone, sometimes very large in size. I believe that back in the 1980's when salmon farming got going here, salmon farmers were allowed a lot of freedom to move their nets as needed. I recall that some farms took to moving their nets during different parts of the salmon's growth cycle, meaning still waters when the smolts are small and faster waters when the fish get larger. This all led to more and larger "dead zone" than if pens were fixed to one place for the whole life cycle of the fish. I recall that the controls on movement were in part an attempt to limit the spread of the dead zones. I think it was DFO scientists along with environmentalists who argued on behalf of rules about not moving the pens.

You seem not to have much sympathy for the "environmentalists"


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic (Apr 22, 2010)

Well, when I was in the industry, most of the farms had open invitations to any of the environmentalists to come visit the farms they were protesting. The only condition was that give at least half an hour notice so the farm could send out a boat to pick them up. Guess what? None of the environmentalists ever came out to the farms. A couple even sent back replies that [paraphrasing here] "We don't need to come to the farm, we already know what happens on the farms". I read their letters so this is NOT second hand info. So NOT a big fan of these "environmentalists" who couldn't be bothered to leave the comforts of the city to go check out the fish farms they were so vocal in complaining about.

Have you been on a fish farm in your life? I've been on at least 8 ocean farms, one lake smolt production system, 4 hatcheries and several fw fish farms (both trout & salmon). Most of these operations are among the cleanest animal production sites you will find. The farmers care deeply about the fish they are raising and they are not the ones who overfished the wild stocks almost into extinction. Yet they are the ones getting blamed for most of the troubles involving declining wild salmon stocks.

If you bother to check the facts, most wild salmon stocks are in trouble even those nowhere near a fish farm. People want to eat salmon and until fish farming came along, the only salmon you could get was caught by fishermen. The more fish they caught, the more money they made. Again, a prime example of the "tragedy of the commons". The same thing happened on the East Coast with the collapse of the cod fisheries. It used to be cod were so plentiful they would slow down ships having to push through the schools. Then the fisheries collapsed and commercial fishermen were still going out all day even if they only caught one fish. (this was shown on a CBC news documentary - the film crew were shocked that only 1 cod was caught all day). If the salmon stocks were not in trouble already, the market for farmed salmon would not have been big enough to create a new industry in BC. Overfishing, habitat destruction, and logging around salmon spawning streams helped collapse several once thriving fisheries and that opened up the market for farms to come in and supply the demand. The Alaskan salmon fisheries also caught and kept a lot of BC salmon even though the US-Canada Salmon Treaty specifies that the country where the salmon are born owns that fish. The situation is a lot better now with fewer licensed fishermen, greater controls over the fishing season, more environmental protection for spawning grounds, etc.

Back in the 80s was when the industry first started in BC, the farms made a mistake having the feed companies make up the feeding regimen for the farms, which is like asking a loan shark for financial advice. Or asking a fox how to build a hen house. Of course the feed companies gave a far higher than optimum feeding rates, so there was a lot of feed wastage.

Guess what Stratos? My Master's Thesis work was to develop underwater camera systems for fish farmers to use. We used the two cameras in stereo to non-invasively size the fish but we also used them singly to check for feed loss. Our equipment was patented by UBC and sold off to a couple of BC underwater technologies companies who then supplied feed cameras to most of the farms along our coast. BC now has some of the best feed conversion ratios in the world with some farms who have the cameras in every netpen and train their employees to use them properly.

On the last farm I worked at, we achieved an average feed conversion of close to 1 to 1, which means we used 1 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of fish mass. With this new technology, feed losses like those in the early days of fish farming are avoided. Of course not all farms are using this technology, but its a far cry from the bad old days of the 80s when you took your course.

BTW, if you actually read the Cohen Report, the biggest concern is the warming of the oceans. A few more degrees warmer and there will be NO wild salmon to fight for.

Also, for all the recreational fishermen, the commercial fishermen hate all of you almost as much as they hate fish farmers. Don't kid yourself that they don't. If they could, they would shut down all recreational fisheries, all fish farms, and maintain a monopoly on the remaining salmon stocks. Their point of view is that every fish set aside for recreational fishermen is one less that they can catch and sell. For them, its their livelihoods and they see no logic in taking away their part of their livelihood so people can have a hobby (recreational fishing). I used to live and work in Powell River and around the Island during the 90s till 2001. I talked to a lot of commercial fishermen in bars and around the docks and they spoke freely because they never suspected I worked on a fish farm. In a way, I sympathize with them because most come from a long family history of fishing and grew up with their grandfathers and fathers' stories about huge catches during BC's salmon heydays.

So if salmon farms are wiping out the wild salmon stocks, how do you, Stratos, explain the 35 million sockeye that came back to the Fraser River in 2010? Those baby salmon followed the same migration routes with the same fish farms along the way? All the things you're pointing fingers at the fish farms for doing that kill off the sockeye were the same pretty much for both year classes. Same number of farms, same locations, same type of fish, same types of problems.

A more likely explanation is that several stresses/factors out in the open ocean, such as hitting particularly warm water masses in the Pacific, decimated the 2009 year class. The 2010 year class were more fortunate and were hit by fewer stresses, and probably helped by a more abundant food supply along the way, so more survived.

If the problems you're accusing the fish farms of causing for the sockeye are as bad as you would like everyone to believe, the 2010 year class would have been as decimated as the 2009. Instead, it was the biggest run since 1913!


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## DBam (Aug 9, 2010)

Anthony you're a wealth of information. I just sat in on a talk Daniel Schindler gave on his research on Alaskan sockeye runs. Those runs had highly variable returns, but they always recovered, even runs that lost entire spawns to changing river structure. He found that systems with a significant loss in heterogeneity, like urban rivers in California, had no ability to recover. There's a huge list of reasons, but basically habitat destruction, loss of genetic diversity and climate change are what drive the pressures on wild salmon runs in his research. There was no mention of fish farming. Anyways, check out his work, I learnt a heck of a lot.


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## stratos (Apr 21, 2010)

I had a friend who worked at a salmon farm back in the late 1980's. He quit in disgust and shared a lot of bad stories with me about the way the farm was run. Really bad and disgusting stories, first hand information. Since that time I have tried not to eat farmed salmon. To my knowledge the BC industry is now in the hands of a few Norwegian companies with less than stellar histories (i.e their Chilean farms and Infectious Salmon Amemia (ISA) ).

The Cohen report can be accessed here: Final Report | Cohen Commission , makes for an exhaustive read. I skimmed the sections that deal with salmon farms.

I agree that the water temp changes are likely most responsible for salmon declines. Cohen notes, however, that salmon farms can not be ruled out as contributors to the decline in numbers and that more study is needed. The fact that 30+ years into this industry we do not have the needed data just high lights the "get rich quick" attitude of the industry. From skimming over the Cohen report it sounds like the salmon farming industry has made big improvements over the years. If not for the pressure of the environmentalists I wonder whether any improvements would have been made? I personally do not trust industry to self-regulate. Furthermore, the fact that the DFO has had as its mandate the promotion of the salmon farming industry strikes me as a conflict of interest.

God help us if we ever get a serious outbreak of Infectious Salmon Amemia (ISA).


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic (Apr 22, 2010)

[Disclaimier: Taking off mod-hat, posting purely as a member - the opinions and experiences posted in this thread are not reflective of BCA's admin or mod team]

Again, you're basing your negative opinions on the whole industry on stuff you heard/learned in the 80s, when the industry was in its infancy. I was in the industry until 2001, and have been to a couple of farms since then.

So, you haven't changed in 30 years? Still the same guy you were back in the 80s? I know I have, and so has the fish farming industry. You must still be wearing your Miami Vice-inspired suit & t-shirt wardrobe and listening to Duran Duran I guess.

Farmers and breeders, in general, whether for salmon, guppies, horses, pigs or chickens, actually do care a lot about the health and welfare of their animals. If for no other reason, if they don't take good care of their animals, they go out of business.

Again, if you actually read the report, the fish farming industry turned over 10 years worth of health data to Cohen for his report. Why would he need info further back than 10 years ago? Will an outbreak in the 80s or early 90s have had ANY effect on what happened to the salmon run in 2009??? That's several GENERATIONS prior to the 2009 run, so how is that relevant? Twist the misinformation all you like. And salmon farming is NOT a "Get rich quick" industry. Have you ever studied economics or business or the life cycle of salmonids? There is no legal agricultural/farming sector in Canada that is "get rich quick", unless you grow medical marijuana. Raising a salmon from egg to market size (4.5 to 6kg) takes years, so how is that "quick?" Quick is taking a fishing boat out for a few days or a week and coming back with a hold full of wild salmon or halibut or king crab that you can then sell for tens of thousands. It cost millions and years of diligent, pain-staking effort to set up hatcheries to hatch the eggs, rear the fry, and then transfer the fry into growout tanks or fw netpens to raise to smolt size. Then you have to wait till the smolts are all ready to make the switch to sw and transfer them out to ocean pens or on-land growout tanks. Then you have to feed, grade, and rear them for another 18+ months till they reach market size. Then you have to harvest them, send them to the processor and hope the wholesaler gives you a decent return. All the while, your feed bill alone rings in at over a million dollars a year and you pray your farm isn't hit by huge storms, disease or any other disaster that could wipe you out in an afternoon. You're out there in the middle of a winter storm, feeding the fish, making sure everything is safely tied down, while your critics are safe at home in their comfortable city homes, typing up vitriolic "opinions" about you and your industry from the depths of their vast experience of *driving to the supermarket in their fossil-fuel burning minivan* to buy a nice salmon filet from Granville Island. While you're doing all this for x number of years to grow your fish out to harvest size, you have critics who base all their opinions on stuff they heard 30 years ago saying you're in it to "get rich quick". And you provide 10 YEARS worth of health data to help the Cohen Commission to do its job and those same naysayers point self-righteous fingers at you and say, "see, they're trying to hide something because "we don't have the needed data" and we made up our minds 30 years ago!" Hahahahahahahahahaha. Would 15 years of data be enough? 20 years?

Hate to tell you this but most of the seafood you've eaten in the last 10 years have probably been farmed, if not in BC waters, then somewhere in the world. Fish, prawns, scallops, oysters, clams - a lot of this is farmed! Crabs and lobsters are wild mainly because they're too cannibalistic to farm economically. Farmed because without farming, your seafood would be a luxury item that only the rich could afford since overfishing has decimated wild stocks all over the world.

So what's your opinion on chickens? Are wild chicken populations endangered because we're farming chickens by the countless millions? Inquiring minds want to know.

Let's take your position to its natural conclusion and we ban all salmon farms and shut down the industry completely in BC.

a) Will that bring back the wild stocks decimated by decades of overfishing, habitat destruction, polluting of their spawning grounds from human runoff, climate change???

b) How about all those people who are now unemployed, especially in coastal communities where steady, decent jobs are soooooo abundant?

c) How do you propose replacing the economic benefits to BC from exporting almost all the farmed salmon to the US?

BTW, if you shut down the salmon farming industry, there goes your recreational salmon fishing industry because every wild salmon will now be that much more precious economically and you'll get a lot more people heading out to sea to "get rich quick" trying to net up and reel in as many salmon as possible when prices double and triple. That pesky "tragedy of the commons" just keeps popping up its head and ruining things, eh.


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## Lamplighter (Aug 3, 2012)

My neighbor and also a guy that I attended high school with was a fourth generation Japanese fisherman. He told me many stories about fishing in the BC waters. There was a time when there was an abundance of wild salmon in our waters. But man is greedy and he harvests the ocean for fish like there was no end. The cod fishery back east is heading the same way as the dodo. There will be a last wild cod as well as a last wild salmon. 

Someone might pen a book named "The Last Salmon." My buddy quit fishing some 20 years ago. Money became less and less. What attracted him to fishing was that as a teenager he'd head out fishing and make $6K in no time. Those days are gone!

By the way he doesn't like the texture of farmed salmon meat.

The world needs environmentalists and activists but they aren't always right.

The world also needs a steady supply of affordable protein to feed the masses. Fish is one source!! Right now we have farmed and wild salmon in our supermarkets. The consumers have a choice. Fish farms secure a steady supply of fish and that is good.

I don't like the taste of fish!! 

By the way 8.9 billion chickens were farmed in the US in 2007. Males are only good for meat so percentage wise they are the first ones to go. A percentage of females are kept for egg laying but they get it when they can no longer lay enough eggs.

Anyways I support fishing and fish farms. I think the latter will save the day.


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## stratos (Apr 21, 2010)

Suffice to say my family and I are vegetarians who eat a hell of a lot of organic blueberries from Maple Ridge, wild caught sockeye from Steveston, Canadian steel cut oats from Costco, and organic veggies from Spud.ca. We also get the odd free range chicken from Beefway meats on Kingsway. Eggs are a tricky one; we get those omega-3 ones from Costco too, but I bet they are factory farmed. You can't win them all lol

As for shrimp and prawns, I stopped eating them years ago. I have seen aquaculture operations in Thailand up close. They dump more chemicals on those prawns than you can imagine. Not unlike the dosing of farmed salmon with various drugs I would imagine?

I am not naieve enough to think the environemntal clock can be turned back; however, I think if more people really thought about where their food comes from, and if more information was available, we would all be better off.

As for taking my arguements against salmon farms to their "logical conclusion", you adopt an extreme position for me in saying that all the salmon farms should be closed down. How about just closing the ones in the Broughton Archipelago and others that are right in the way of wild fingerlings and smolts en route to the sea? How about encouraging others to move to land based sites where we can subsidize them with cheap energy produced from Hydro and natural gas? Instead we choose to subsidize the old Alcan/Cominco mine, the fracking industry, and sell "surplus" electricity to the USA. Our societal priorties IMO are out of whack and are not going to lead us to a better environment for our children.

I think deep down you are just as annoyed as I am about the state of affairs Anthony and in all likelihood just as hypocritical lol

Which brings us back to the need for progressive government policy to "guide" us all into making decisions that benefit us all in the long run - bike lanes, more transit, higher taxes on cars and gasoline, and higher progressive income tax. 



> And you provide 10 YEARS worth of health data to help the Cohen Commission to do its job and those same naysayers point self-righteous fingers at you....


 If you read the report closely you would see that Cohen is the one saying more data is needed! Call him a naysayer if you want, but you paid for him with your tax dollars and he is not a rabid environmentalist


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic (Apr 22, 2010)

Unlike you, Cohen doesn't single out fish farming to say more data is needed. Most of his conclusions are inconclusive and he states the need for more data from almost every possible factor he investigated, not just fish farming. Since your title is "Help save BC wild salmon" and your only idea is to attack BC salmon farmers, there's a world of difference between his "need more data" comments throughout his report and yours in this thread. 

Anyways, I'm done with this thread. 

When your reply is "Suffice to say my family and I are vegetarians..." its time for me to move on cause I don't see how being a vegetarian who drives all the way out to Maple Ridge in a greenhouse gas emitting minivan to buy organic blueberries has an environmental leg to stand on. 

BTW, I grow 30+ varieties of fruit at home, including 28 blueberry bushes in my backyard, all organically fertilized with koi waste water. Years of organic homegrown blueberries in cedar planter boxes with minimal carbon footprint. Imagine that?

Also, from the number of times you mention it, you must believe that just because my "tax dollars" paid for something must mean I have to blindly support it or the skewed interpretations some people make from Cohen's report's inconclusive findings. For instance, I don't support the political ads the Liberals are paying for using my tax dollars. My tax dollars paid for the "fast ferries" which I didn't support either. So again, another irrelevant point that has nothing to do with the issue.


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## Lamplighter (Aug 3, 2012)

I have seen David Susuzki drop off plastic bags for recycling at the Safeway on 4th Avenue, years ago. He was a passenger but I always wondered just exactly how that helped the planet.
No matter what the vehicle it still left a carbon footprint. 

Stratos I don't think that you can be a vegetarian and eat fish. Can you?


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## IceBlue (Mar 17, 2011)

I'd like to see the data regarding medications used on the farmed salmon. Also we can talk all we want about improvements made in the industry, but (and I'm stating my opinion only) these improvements where only made after constant recording of poor work procedures, sea lion kills then recklessly dumped out of sight, large escapement, large scale kills due to disease and infections. Also remember when the word was that these salmon couldn't spawn in our waters? 

All these issues were a mirror of what happened elsewhere in the world but it took alot of press before the companies addressed it.

Industry in general do not clean up it's act for altruistic reasons, they do it to improve image to improve sales. I doubt this industry is any different. Although there may be evidence that there are lots of contributing factors to the declines of our stocks we have to ensure that the returning wild fish are given as safe a route as possible through our coastal waters, this requires our scientists to review the evidence and come to scientific solutions to protecting the wild stock. Unfortunately our DFO has acted as little more than a proponent of these farms, even to the point that there own scientists are muzzled when they try to give evidence to the very inquiry we are talking about. This is unacceptable.

Wild salmon stock are not just a food stock in this province. They are an integral part of the identity of large regions of this province. The Frazer, Skeena, Nass, Adams, Kitwanga, Coppermine, Babine, Morice/Bulckley,etc etc are large watersheds whose entire eco system, plants and animals, and historic way of life pivots on the wild salmon.....so we better get it right, and if these farms are an issue, then they need to be moved away from our shoreline salmon routes.


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## stratos (Apr 21, 2010)

Guess what? The blueberries are delivered by the growers during their regularly scheduled trips to Vancouver stores. 

I highly recommend these guys: Formosa Nursery organic blueberry farm

We usually buy 1000 pounds of berries a year as a group with friends and family, too much to grow in a backyard bush 

It is too bad I fell for the bolded minivan comment in post #17; it is a distraction from the point of the thread and only serves to open me up to apparent ad hominem. (Seriously, what bearing do my eating habits have on this debate? Maybe Robert's rule of order for debate are called for!  ) While I respect your experience in the aquaculture field Anthony, I am afraid I respect David Suzuki's knowledge base and the recommendations of the Cohen commission more. It is ultimately their knowledge I defer to, not my experiences of 30 years ago. Again, I failed in the debate by including any references to my personal experience.

In conclusion, I continue to support David Suzuki and the Cohen Commission's recommendations.


> Cohen has made 75 strong recommendations, including putting a freeze on fish farm expansion and removing fish farming from Fisheries and Oceans Canada's mandate.


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## Foxtail (Mar 14, 2012)

Unfortunately I feel that David Suzuki has gone from more educational to more activist recently. I find him using more of his opinion than using data. The cohen report did not say that the fishfarms were the cause of the salmon decline. It said that they could be part of it and to give the salmon the best chance, the fams should be moved out of migrating salmon routes. And removed from DFOs mandate....(conflict of interest?)

Sent via the Shining.


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## Lamplighter (Aug 3, 2012)

There's a Suzuki foundation.

David Suzuki Foundation | Solutions are in our nature

I believe that the bottom line is all about raising money. You can go to his site and donate if you wish, I won't.

Last time that I checked this was one world. Whatever fuel is spent changes our environment a little bit.

Link to the foundations mission:

About us | David Suzuki Foundation

snip:

Our mission and vision
Our mission is to protect the diversity of nature and our quality of life, now and for the future.
Our vision is that within a generation, Canadians act on the understanding that we are all interconnected and interdependent with nature.
Our top goals
Protecting our climate - ensure that Canada is doing its fair share to avoid dangerous climate change and is on track to achieve a safe level of greenhouse gas emissions.
Transforming the economy - make certain that Canadians can maintain a high quality of life within the finite limits of nature through efficient resource use.
Protecting nature - work to protect the diversity and health of Canada's marine, freshwater, and terrestrial creatures and ecosystems.
Reconnecting with nature - ensure that Canadians, especially youth, learn about their dependence on a healthy environment through outdoor education.
Building community - engage Canadians to live healthier, more fulfilled and just lives with tips on building Earth-friendly infrastructure, making smart energy choices, using efficient transportation, and being mindful of the products, food and water we use.

END:

Their mission is impossible to achieve. Canada ships 27.3 million tons of coal to Asia every year (2011 figure). Does anyone realize how much of that goes into the atmosphere contributing to climate change. Climate change has an impact on the fish population. We have to be environmentally conscious whereas Asian countries do not. Is our governments being lobbied by the Suzuki Foundation to stop exports of coal?

We're currently in a position (at a cost) to recycle and have tough laws to protect our environment (depending how you look at it). Leading economists ( Go to ted.com ) say that Asian economies will surpass ours by 2023. Evidently caring little for OUR planets environment pays off in dollars and cents.

The oceans will be devoid of fish one day. Species will be found in aquariums and fish farms. Cohen and Suzuki can't do a thing about that. If you think that the Suzuki Foundation can save the oceans why isn't everything hunky dory? His foundation has been around for a long time.

There's talk in the US about their economy reaching a fiscal cliff well the oceans are facing a cliff. I don't care what Canada implements it's not their world and the salmon are not staying within its territorial waters.


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## funkycat (Nov 3, 2010)

Just wanted to say i have thoroughly enjoyed this thread and the information it has provided. Definitely reminds me of when i was in school talking about sustainable farming @ UBC. It always seems to me that when environmentalists talk about suitable farming practices they always go back to eating practices and how if everyone ate local and cut way down on their meat consumption, sustainable practices would be so much easier to follow. While i agree this sadly isnt the case. The majority of the population especially in north america has a rather "meat heavy" diet. Thus farming practices must cater to those needs. While fish farming obviously isn't the ideal way to provide food for a population it seems to me (by my feeble knowledge) the best way to keep up with demand without completely draining wild stocks.


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## stratos (Apr 21, 2010)

lexingtonsteel said:


> Just wanted to say i have thoroughly enjoyed this thread and the information it has provided. Definitely reminds me of when i was in school talking about sustainable farming @ UBC. It always seems to me that when environmentalists talk about suitable farming practices they always go back to eating practices and how if everyone ate local and cut way down on their meat consumption, sustainable practices would be so much easier to follow. While i agree this sadly isnt the case. The majority of the population especially in north america has a rather "meat heavy" diet. Thus farming practices must cater to those needs. While fish farming obviously isn't the ideal way to provide food for a population it seems to me (by my feeble knowledge) the best way to keep up with demand without completely draining wild stocks.


People are often too short sighted at the individual level to do what is in their own personal and communal best interests for the long term. That is why we need government legislation and regulation, ideally based on independent, non-partisan, and third party assessment. That is why we need to lobby the current national government to implement the recommendations of the Cohen commission (which is independent, non-partisan and third party).

Send a letter

There will always be "nay sayers" and defeatists who say things can't be fixed or improved. Don't give into such negativity.


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