Mark Hume
June 24, 2008
The Globe and Mail

VANCOUVER — First nations in British Columbia have added their voice to a call for the Auditor-General of Canada to investigate the actions of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on the West Coast.

But Grand Chief Doug Kelly, interim chair of the B.C. First Nations Fisheries Council, says he wants Auditor-General Sheila Fraser to go farther than she was asked to in a petition filed by several conservation groups.

Read the full article in The Globe and Mail.

Taras Grescoe
June 9, 2008
New York Times

THE first chinook salmon from Alaska’s Copper River arrived in Seattle last month, for shipment to fish counters throughout the country. With the commercial chinook season in California and most of Oregon canceled for the first time in 160 years, Alaska chinook were going for record prices: $40 a pound for fillet.

There was a time that the thought of a good salmon meal would leave me feeling faint with desire. Just imagining a toasted bagel papered with near-translucent slices of lox, a roll of vinegared rice stuffed with crispy salmon skin or a thick steak of lightly grilled chinook would have me searching for the nearest deli, sushi bar or bistro.

Read the full article in the New York Times.

Jack Knox
June 15, 2008
Victoria Times Colonist

You can't talk about the future of Echo Bay, or the coast, without talking about salmon.

"We're very much wild-salmon based," says Alexandra Morton. The fish are the traditional lifeblood of the coast and its economy. Even tourism depends on wildlife -- eagles, bears, whales -- that are themselves dependent on salmon.

Read the full article in the Victoria Times Colonist.

June 6, 2008
Canadian Press

OSLO, NORWAY - A First Nations leader is in Norway as part of continuing effort to convince Norwegian-owned fish farms to use closed containment pens in B.C.'s coastal waters.

Chief Bob Chamberlin of the Kwicksutaineuk-ah-kwa-mish First Nation, on the Broughton Archipelago, travelled to Oslo to attend the annual shareholders meeting of Oslo-based aquaculture company Marine Harvest.

Read the full article in the Canadian Press.

Omar El Akad and Anna Mehler Paperny
The Globe and Mail
June 10, 2008

OTTAWA, VANCOUVER -- A request for an emergency debate in the House of Commons on the dwindling number of Pacific salmon was shot down yesterday, hindering the federal New Democratic Party's efforts to bring the issue to Ottawa's attention.

Catherine Bell, NDP MP for Vancouver Island North, asked the Speaker of the House yesterday to allow an emergency debate on the salmon stocks, saying she had spoken to stakeholders and "they are all saying the same thing: Help."

Read the full article in the Globe and Mail.

Vancouver Sun
May 16, 2008

Ecojustice has filed another submission in a bid to get the provincial government to release information about the extent of sea lice infestations in salmon farms.

The submission, issued on behalf of the T. Buck Suzuki Foundation, is the latest in a four-year freedom of information battle, which started in August 2004 when it asked the provincial government for records of sea lice infestations.

Read the full article in the Vancouver Sun.

Stephen Hume
May 7, 2008
Vancouer Sun

Debate over the future of fish farming on British Columbia's coast moved from skirmishing in scientific journals to a full-blown court battle Tuesday.

This time it's a challenge to the constitutional legality of the B.C. government regulating the same salmon farms whose rapid expansion it enthusiastically promoted.

For some time controversy has fulminated over threats to wild salmon posed by the industry, particularly in the Broughton archipelago at the north end of Vancouver Island where research links sea lice infestations in domestic pens to declines in wild stocks that must migrate through adjacent, parasite-laden waters.

Read the full article in the Vancouver Sun.

Mark Hume
May 7, 2008
Globe and Mail

VANCOUVER -- The legal authority of the provincial government to regulate fish farms on the West Coast is being challenged in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

Alexandra Morton, an independent scientist who has spent most of the past decade researching the impact of fish farms on wild salmon, has joined forces with four groups in filing a petition that seeks to strike down all the aquaculture regulations B.C. has put in place over the past 20 years.

Read the full article in the Globe and Mail.

TARAS GRESCOE
April 26, 2008
Globe and Mail

ECHO BAY, B.C. -- Ye ugly, creepan, blastit

wonner,/ Detested, shunn'd,

by saunt an' sinner,/

How daur ye set your fit upon her,/ Sae fine a Lady!

- From the Robert Burns poem, To A Louse, On Seeing One On A Lady's Bonnet, At Church

For anybody who relishes the unctuous feel of lox on bagel, the crunch of crispy salmon skin in a B.C. roll, or the odour of a Chinook tail on the barbecue, these can be confusing times.

Wild salmon are virtually extinct in the Atlantic Ocean, yet tens of millions of Atlantic salmon are being raised in farms in the Pacific; the U.S.-based Safeway supermarket chain has announced that it is curtailing purchases of disease-ridden farmed salmon from Chile; and returns of wild salmon on the British Columbia coast seem to be declining from year to year.

Read the full article in the Globe and Mail.

Stephen Hume
April 7, 2008
The Vancouver Sun

It's been a bruising fortnight for fish farmers. First, a blockbuster story March 27 in the New York Times outlined the difficulties plaguing Chile's salmon farms.

Then provincial Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Pat Bell announced a moratorium on expansion of fish farms to the north coast "until we figure out how to move forward with a long-term vision for aquaculture."

Read the full article in the Vancouver Sun.

Mark Hume
April 7, 2008
Globe and Mail

VANCOUVER -- It may well be that there isn't any individual who has a more complete view of the scope of the salmon farming debate in British Columbia that Brian Harvey.

And even he admits it's a murky picture.

Recently Mr. Harvey, a consultant and past president of the World Fisheries Trust, a Victoria-based organization that promotes the sustainable use of fisheries resources, was asked by the Pacific Salmon Forum to review the conflicting state of science concerning sea lice and fish farms.

Read the full article in the Globe and Mail (requires a Globe and Mail subscription).

David Suzuki
April 21, 2008
Moncton Times and Transcript

Most of our food, whether plant or animal, comes from farms. A notable exception is fish and seafood, much of which is caught from wild ocean stocks. That's starting to change, though, as aquaculture plays an increasingly important role in the global food supply.

In many respects, that's good news, especially when wild fisheries are being harvested at or beyond a sustainable limit, and pollution and global warming, among other threats, are decimating wild fish stocks.

When the aquaculture practices themselves start harming the wild fish, though, we must question whether or not the costs of the way we are farming outweigh the benefits.

Read the full article in the Moncton Times and Transcript.

Christopher Pollon
April 6, 2008
The Tyee

The federal government rejected an application Friday by biologist Alexandra Morton to evacuate wild salmon out of the path of Broughton Archipelago fish farms, putting the outspoken researcher in a precarious position: risk a $100,000 fine, or let migrating juvenile pink and chum salmon run a gauntlet of farms she says will ensure their destruction.

Morton had applied to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) for a licence to transport salmon as part of her widely publicized plan to ferry young Ahta River pink and chum salmon past two fish farms operating in their migration path.

Read the full article in The Tyee.

Mark Anderson
April 2, 2008
The Ottawa Citizen

Grim news on the environment continues apace. As reported in Monday's National Post, the German town of Staufen is sinking, after a well-meaning environmental initiative went awry. Attempting to tap into carbon-neutral geo-thermal heat sources, the town instead tapped into an underground water reservoir. The resulting loss of pressure caused the city centre to sink eight millimetres, damaging 68 historic buildings. Ach du lieber, as they say in the old country, but at least they're trying to do something.

Read the full article in the Ottawa Citizen.

Rob Edwards
Sunday Herald
March 29, 2008

 SCOTLAND'S WILD fish are increasingly being killed by lice leaking from salmon farms, new government research has revealed. But keeping them a safe distance apart has been deemed too costly and "logistically difficult" a solution.

Reports from the Scottish government's Fisheries Research Services (FRS) in Aberdeen and Pitlochry have found strong evidence that sea lice from caged salmon contaminate wild fish - and the problem seems to be getting worse.

Read the full article in the Sunday Herald.