{"id":56085,"date":"2021-08-12T09:42:39","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T13:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/?p=56085"},"modified":"2021-08-11T19:43:46","modified_gmt":"2021-08-11T23:43:46","slug":"last-fish-farm-leaves-the-southern-discovery-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/last-fish-farm-leaves-the-southern-discovery-islands\/","title":{"rendered":"Last fish farm leaves the southern Discovery Islands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Independent biologist Alexandra Morton posted a picture of the Raza Island fish farm leaving the Discovery Islands to her Facebook page on Aug. 5.<\/p>\n

She later told CKTZ News that it was the last salmon farm to leave the southern Discovery Islands.<\/p>\n

\u201cWild salmon are not surviving salmon farms anywhere in the world. I\u2019m just shocked that this is even debated, but we have a Minister of Fisheries who took this seriously and has removed the salmon farms from the Discovery Islands,\u201d said Morton.<\/p>\n

She described migrating wild smolts being infected by sea lice as they passed Raza and other farms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could see the print of that farm on the juvenile wild salmon, in the form of juvenile sea lice,\u201d said Morton. \u201cSea lice are really easy to study on young wild fish because they change their body shape every few days for the first 30 days\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result of Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan\u2019s decision, there will be no salmon farms along the route of next year\u2019s migration.<\/p>\n

John Paul Fraser, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association, said industry has \u201cdone all the science\u201d necessary to justify its continued presence in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fallout continues from the government\u2019s decision, back in December 2020, to not extend the licenses of those farms in the Discovery Islands area. Soon after, we did issue a report<\/span><\/a> that did detail the potential economic damage, both in terms of lost jobs, direct and indirect business activity and also lost animals. Well over 4 million smolts, that would otherwise have grown out and found themselves in sushi restaurants and dinner plates across Canada and elsewhere, have been euthanized,\u201d said Fraser.<\/p>\n

He stated the layoffs of fish farm personal started three to four months ago.<\/p>\n

\"Looking

Phillips Arm Fish Farm during a 2016 visit. There were five people working from sunup to sundown on a cycle of eight days on, six days off. Photo by Roy L Hales.<\/p><\/div>\n

Fraser described the government\u2019s decision as an attempt to attract Vancouver votes in the next federal election.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe intend by the time we have a new minister, or a new government - which is in the weeks or months ahead because there is very likely to be a federal election - we will be in a position to show the new minister the damage his predecessor has caused,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Morton described the \u201chandful of low paying corporate jobs\u201d this industry provides as insignificant compared to the damage it causes to wild fishery stocks, communities dependent of fishing, and wilderness tourism.<\/p>\n

She also stressed the role that spawning wild fish play in fertilizing forests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey transport millions of tons of nitrogen from the ocean. You can actually see the growth rings of the trees are wider when wild salmon come in and feed those trees,\u201d said Morton. \u201cFarmed salmon do nothing to that dynamic. They in no way help us combat climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Independent biologist Alexandra Morton posted a picture of the Raza Island fish farm leaving the Discovery Islands to her Facebook page on Aug. 5. She later told CKTZ News that it was the last salmon farm to leave the southern Discovery Islands. \u201cWild salmon are not surviving salmon farms anywhere in the world. I\u2019m just…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":56089,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[222],"tags":[1749,7671,5280,5045,8705],"radio":[],"origine":[280,266,231],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56085"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56085"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=56085"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=56085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}