Last month the Supreme Court of B.C. ruled that salmon aquaculture operations were not farms at all but public fisheries, and should fall under the jurisdiction of the feds, not the province. Justice Christopher Hinkson gave the two governments one year to make the switch.
But in the meantime, these fisheries formerly known as fish farms are operating in a regulatory void that allows them to continue to threaten wild salmon stocks, said biologist Alexandra Morton.
"They've got themselves nicely positioned to be nothing, really," said Morton. "There are no more fish farms on the coast. They legally don't exist. They are public fisheries now and when you start looking at it under that lens, the fisheries act has to apply."
And right now, it's not being applied, said Morton. She said the amount of by-catch associated with salmon aquaculture is one problem that the DFO should address immediately.
In other fisheries, by-catch is monitored with video cameras or by a real person. Morton said there is anecdotal evidence of herring or black cod being caught inside farmed salmon pens and harvested, but there is no official monitoring or recording of by-catch.
"In preparation for February, 2010 when the federal government will assume regulation of this newly designated fishery, I propose that observers be placed immediately on the feedlot fisheries and at the processing plants to better understand the scope of the by-catch issue," Morton stated.
Morton circulated a letter addressing this and other concerns and said she received 500 signatures from "virtually every fishery on this coast" within a matter of days.
The letter, which is addressed to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Gail Shea and the DFO's pacific regional director Paul Sprout, reads in part:
We, the fishermen of British Columbia, work under increasing regulation, restrictions and closures set by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to protect our industry and Canada's ocean resources. As it stands today, the salmon aquaculture industry is now a public fishery. Fisheries and Oceans Canada has always had the power to regulate the aquaculture industry to comply with the Fisheries Act, but has chosen not to...the dire state of many fish stocks in BC moves us to demand that DFO take steps immediately to meet it's current constitutional obligations to conserve and protect the fisheries resources of Canada.
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SharingIsGood
2 years ago
atlantic and pacific
It's bad enough the DFO and the various provincial (Maritime) governments have allowed the killing off of the Atlantic fishery, now we have just about lost the Pacific. When will these government weasels (both elected and appointed) do what they are paid to do - protect the bloody fishery? And I'm not talking about payola.
puppyg
2 years ago
Deadly business - manufacturing fish feed
Expanding aquaculture will mean that all living creatures in the sea will become targets in the business of manufacturing fish feed. Catch it, dry it and grind it into pulp to make pellets. Nothing will be spared.
This final assault on ocean life will complete the collapse of natural systems, a process already underway as wild commercial fisheries, having devastated the larger fish species, now work their way down the food chain.
Plans to harvest krill, for example, are analogous to hosting a big porridge party using the last of the world's seed grain... stupidity on a monumental scale.
There must be a way to wrest control of 'fish farming' from the corporate culture that spawned the likes of Gordon Campbell and to get the decision-making back into the hands of ecologists and the like. The alternative, I fear, is doom.