Commentary

October-November 2002

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: > DOWNLOAD

Why lift the fish farm moratorium now? This is an industry troubled, with low prices and major disease challenges. The BC government is foolishly putting faith in fish farming when it's only a matter of time until the industry collapses under the weight of their own diseased and dying fish.

IHN (an infectious fish disease) is causing major losses at many BC fish farms. Kudoa (soft flesh disease) is epidemic in the industry. Toxic algae blooms on the west coast of Vancouver Island have recently killed thousands of farmed fish, leading the company involved to dump the morts at sea.

The BC government rationalizes the moratorium decision based on a wildly optimistic estimate of 12,000 new jobs over the next ten years. Yet, around the world, jobs in fish farming are actually decreasing, despite increasing production. With 80% of the BC industry owned by just five multinationals (only one of which is Canadian), the economic benefits will mostly flow out of the country. What will be left for BC is a damaged environment.

The government is ignoring the evidence that sealice from fish farms can devastate populations of wild salmon, and that escaped farmed fish are colonizing our rivers, competing with endangered native Pacific species. Any new jobs in the fish farm sector will only undermine jobs in the wild fishery. And industrializing the coast will threaten jobs in tourism, BC's largest industry.

What can we do? US readers of WaveLength have the greatest potential for making a difference, and there are two ways to help. First, there's the marketplace - over 90% of BC's farmed fish is sold to the US!

If US consumers knew that the salmon they're getting is coming from disease plagued, drug-ridden industrial feedlots, and stopped buying it, the BC industry would have to adopt sustainable practices, or go under. And this would effect the worldwide industry since the same companies operate internationally.

How do you know if the fish you see in stores and restaurants is farmed? You don't. The industry prefers to call it 'Fresh BC salmon', so you have to ask - "Is it wild or farmed?" Or ask if it's Atlantic salmon, since there are no wild Atlantic fisheries left anywhere in the world.

The second way is less direct but very important: take a paddling vacation in BC and put money into local communities, thereby helping to provide resources to a sustainable, community-based alternative.

We must strengthen ecotourism as an alternative to unsustainable fish farming, so that First Nations and other coastal communities don't have to buy into polluting, unsustainable industries out of desperation.

The Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform (CAAR), a group of ten environmental and First Nations organizations, is calling for the elimination of open net cages, an end to disease transfer, environmental waste, drugs and escapes, as well as respect for local communities.

For more info, see www.farmedanddangerous.com or www.GeorgiaStrait.org.