BIODIVERSITY: The Real Price of Farmed Salmon
Stephen Leavy
November 11, 2008
Interpress Service
Posted November 11th, 2008
Save Our Salmon Initiative Introduces Solutions Advisory Committee Members
The Save Our Salmon Initiative is pleased to announce the formation of our Solution Advisory Committee. The SAC is a group of successful business leaders, entrepreneurs and philanthropists with a proven track record of identifying opportunities and solving difficult problems to create economic benefits:
Eric Hobson PEng
Partner
Northridge Canada Inc.
Judy Gale BA, MBA
President
Blue Planet Links Foundation
F. Lee Green
President
LandC Holdings , Inc.
Willie Mitchell
Defenceman
Vancouver Canucks
Alexander Pourbaix BA, LLB
President
Transcanada Energy
Ivan Thompson MEd
Wild Salmon Ecosystem Initiative
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Andrew S. Wright
BSc, DipEng , PhD
Director, Pharos Capital
Catherine Emrick
LLB, MBA, FCGA
Executive Director
Save Our Salmon Initiative
Posted November 10th, 2008
'Nobody makes a living just doing salmon now'
Larry Pynn
November 4, 2008
Vancouver Sun
Look B.C.'s top fisheries official in the eye and ask what advice he would give his own son or daughter wanting to get into the commercial salmon fishery.
"Weigh carefully the implications," offers Paul Sprout, a fish scientist turned regional director general for Fisheries and Oceans Canada. "Go in with your eyes open."
Sprout is a bureaucrat swimming upstream, tasked with the job of managing salmon stocks that once represented the backbone of the fishing industry but today provide only a fraction of past harvests, with no change in sight.
Read the full article in The Vancouver Sun.
Posted November 6th, 2008
B.C. Salmon Farmers Association defends Broughton overproduction
November 5, 2008
Courier Islander
The BC Salmon Farmers Association says overproduction of Atlantic salmon happened in Broughton Archipelago fish farms because "no farmer likes to kill healthy livestock."
Last month the Living Oceans Society said it was "appalling" that government documents showed Mainstream Canada salmon farm sites in the Broughton Archipelago produced as much as twice the tonnage allowed in their licences. Production limits are supposed to minimize the impact that animal waste from fish farms will have on the local environment, reduce the risks of hyper-concentrations of sea lice, and minimize the health risks that overcrowded sea pens would pose to the fish themselves.
Read the full article in The Courier Islander.
Posted November 6th, 2008
Saving Wild Salmon, in Hopes of Saving the Orca
Cordelia Dean
November 3, 2008
The New York Times
ECHO BAY, British Columbia — Growing up in Connecticut, Alexandra Hubbard did not want to be Joan of Arc. She wanted to be Jane Goodall. But instead of chimpanzees, her animals would turn out to be killer whales.
In 1984, 26 years old and armed only with a bachelor’s degree and enthusiasm for her task, she moved to the Broughton Archipelago, in the Queen Charlotte Strait of British Columbia, where the whales, or orcas, were abundant. She and her husband, Robin Morton, a Canadian filmmaker, lived on a 65-foot sailboat and followed the orcas in an inflatable boat with a shelter in the back, stocked with Legos and books for their son, Jarret.
Read the full article in The New York Times.
Posted November 6th, 2008
Salmon and Whales
November 3, 2008
Globe and Mail
The killer-whale population has become a compelling example of the impact of the West Coast salmon industry. Nine killer whales recently disappeared from their pods off the south end of Vancouver Island, having probably died of starvation. Steps should be taken to make sure that fisheries allocations take into account the needs of species that cannot survive without Pacific salmon.
All along the West Coast, Pacific salmon - from pinks to Chinook - are under severe pressure.
Read the full article in the Globe and Mail.
Posted November 6th, 2008
Pink salmon in sharp decline near Broughton fish farms
Scott Simpson
October 31, 2008
Vancouver Sun
A stunning collapse of pink salmon runs on the British Columbia central coast is reopening a charged debate about the looming extinction of wild salmon that breed near fish farms.
The number of pink salmon spawning this autumn in five key indicator streams in the Broughton Archipelago area has dropped as much as 90 per cent compared to their parent runs in 2006, and constitutes only about two per cent of pink salmon abundance in the year 2000.
Read the full article in the Vancouver Sun.
Posted November 6th, 2008
Fears rise as killer whales mysteriously vanish
Jeff Nagel
October 30, 2008
Surrey North Delta Leader
Where are Blossom and Splash?
Also identified as J11 and L67, they are two breeding female killer whales that have been added to a growing list of local orcas missing and believed dead this year.
Their disappearances have fanned fears for the future of the southern resident killer whales.
No bodies have been found, but scientists with the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island have concluded there are now seven adults and calves unaccounted for, pushing the population that once numbered 200 down to 83.
Read the full article in the Surrey Leader.
Posted November 6th, 2008
On science, sea lice and sitting on the fence
Brian Harvey
October 20, 2008
Times Colonist
Six months ago I was walking down Burrard Street in Vancouver when my cell phone rang. It was Alexandra Morton, the biologist who's taking the province to court over salmon farms. There was a lot of traffic noise, and she was calling from way up the coast, but I could still tell she was disappointed in me.
A few days earlier, a report I had written for the B.C. Pacific Salmon Forum had been posted on the Internet. The report was my analysis of the hard-core scientific articles on the relationship between farmed salmon and sea lice.
Read the full article in the Times Colonist.
Posted November 6th, 2008
Fish farmer blasted for exceeding quota
Scott Simpson
October 28, 2008
Vancouver Sun
A central coast salmon farming operation has drawn the wrath of environmentalists for violating its licence by pumping out unsustainably high numbers of fish.
Living Oceans Society said it is "appalling" that government documents show Mainstream Canada salmon farm sites in the Broughton Archipelago produced as much as twice the tonnage allowed in their licences.
Posted October 17th, 2008
