CKNW Editorial
for March 9, 2000

Yesterday we had two fish experts on the show, one a Canadian now working in Norway, and the other an Icelander. And the topic was fish farms.

Let me tell you what I think the problem is – the fish farming industry relies, for each expansion, on a line that starts "there is no evidence that …" And because no one can prove that harm will come, a new licence is granted. Not in the last few years, mind you, because the provincial government has a moratorium in place.

This reversing of the onus has permitted fish farms to wreak havoc in Europe. In Norway, the largest fish farming nation in the world, farmed fish have caused extensive disease and have escaped into and taken hold in Norwegian Rivers. In Scotland and Ireland lice from the farmed salmon have virtually wiped out the sea trout which are a Brown trout which like our steelhead, spends much of its life in the ocean and returns to the river to spawn. These aren’t wild unsubstantiated rumours – they are facts.

How do these farmed fish cause difficulty? Well, where they are diseased that’s obvious. And the sea lice come from the fact that when the salmon are harvested millions of sea lice are looking for new hosts. I’ve caught sea run cutthroat on the Sunshine Coast near a fish farm and they have been covered in lice.

Of perhaps even greater concern is the escapement of salmon from their nets, be they Atlantic Salmon as are the majority of farm fish or a Pacific species. Not long ago, the experts were telling us that escaped Atlantic salmon would never take hold in local rivers. They said the same thing in Norway. Well, if our scientists had, before they spoke, asked their colleagues in Norway they would have learned that’s bunkum. And now we know for a fact that escaped Atlantics have taken hold in BC rivers.

So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is many fold. There is the risk of contamination of course but there is also an array of risks to our native salmon. There is every reason to believe that Atlantics will use the same egg laying redds our Pacific Salmon use and thus displace whole runs of our own scarce sticks. When Pacific salmon escape – and Dr Fleming mentioned this yesterday, the danger may be even greater if, as is likely, they interbreed with native Pacific Coast salmon.

This potential mixing of the gene pool is of huge concern. We are only now beginning to understand just how our salmon know how to return to their own rivers. Moreover, each salmon run has it’s own anciently developed skill for resisting disease – take away that priceless heritage and the adverse effects could be drastic.

We sometimes take all this too lightly. It isn’t just a matter of dollars and cents though it’s that too. It’s a matter of our moral obligation to those who follow to leave the environment intact. Are we really prepared to risk our legacy on the ability of fish farmers to make money?

The onus must be shifted. It shouldn’t be enough for the potential fish farmer to say to the government, "no harm has been proved." The fact is that harm has been demonstrated elsewhere – about that there can be no argument.

This government is under terrific pressure to get economic activity going again. Portrayed as they are as the authors of BC’s economic ills they are salivating at the prospect of encouraging business. But they must cool it. Let’s look more closely at dry land pens as they do in Iceland. More expensive to set up to be sure but far more effective than ocean pens. Let’s also hold the fish farming industry’s feet to the fire and make them demonstrate that they’ll do no harm before adding a single licence.

If we don’t do it right now when we have a chance, it will be too late. Then we will have to answer to future generations for our neglect of what was once a God given gift of huge proportions.