Fallow

Implement a Workable Fallow Plan

In order to reduce the risk of exposure to sea lice, it is necessary to remove Atlantic salmon from open-net cages (fallow the farms) on the key out-migration routes of wild juvenile salmon. 

In addition to the continued implementation of the fallowing strategy for the Broughton Archipelago, the SOS Foundation supports the call for emergency risk management measures to protect the next generation of Fraser River salmon which must migrate through a constrained passage area with a high density of open net-cage salmon farms. Immediate harvesting of adult fish in key farms as an emergency risk management measure will reduce the pressure of sea lice transfer in at least one passage through the northern Georgia Strait as this year's juvenile Fraser River salmon make their way to the open ocean. The key farms are believed to be Venture Point (Mainstream), and Cyrus Rocks and Okisollo/Sonora (Marine Harvest); however, this is subject to confirmation of the current stocking of these farms. This information is not currently publicly available and is key to this risk management strategy.

This measure is consistent with a statement from a Simon Fraser University Think Tank of scientists regarding the management of declining Fraser River Sockeye salmon productivity, who in December 2009 recommended “precautionary measures such as experimentally removing farmed salmon from sockeye migration routes in the short term, even before the federal judicial inquiry is completed”.[1] This should be accompanied by an independent sea lice monitoring program, modelled after the monitoring program implemented in the Broughton Archipelago in 2009, for migrating juvenile wild salmon as they pass through the Discovery Islands.  Results should be made publicly available.