Salmon scientist Alexandra Morton has brought the Department of Justice on side to prosecute Marine Harvest, the largest Norwegian fish-farm company, for unlawful possession of wild salmon.

In a post on her blog on April 20, Morton wrote:

Today, Todd Gerhart of the Department of Justice, stayed charges I laid against Marine Harvest, the largest Norwegian fish farm company in the world, for unlawful possession of wild salmon.

In a landmark initiative Gerhart advised the Court that on April 16, 2010, DOJ filed a new Information against Marine Harvest, including the original charges laid by Alexandra Morton as well as new charges for unlawful possession of herring reported in October 2009. Mr. Gerhart will be the prosecutor.

In June of 2009, young wild salmon were observed falling from a load of farm salmon being off-loaded from Marine Harvest’s vessel Orca Warrior. Some of these fish were collected and Marine Harvest admitted in the newspaper to catching the wild salmon.

“By-catch” is fish caught without a licence in the process of fishing for other species. By-catch is strictly controlled in all other fisheries and in some cases causes entire fisheries to be shut down.

...In 1993, the Pacific Fishery Regulations exempted salmon farms from virtually all fishing regulations. Unlike commercial fishermen, salmon farmers can use bright lights known to attract wild fish. The oily food pellets they use also attract fish and wildlife.

Commercial fishermen are required to pay for observers and cameras on their vessels that record by-catch, so that fishing can be halted to preserve non-targeted stocks. No such enforcement has been applied to salmon farmers, despite regular reports of black cod, rock cod, herring, lingcod, wild salmon, Pollock, capelin and other species in the pens, in stomachs of the farmed fish and destroyed at harvest time….Until now.

The announcement came as Morton was preparing The Get Out Migration, a walk from Port McNeill to Victoria to call attention to the threat posed to wild salmon by fish farms.

Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.