Gordo, free our salmon!

Gordo:

Everywhere in the Pacific Ocean where salmon farms do not exist (Alaska and the western Pacific) wild salmon remain abundant. 

The people of BC want their salmon back.

Why do we have corporate salmon raised in public waters in cages that prevent public access when the Constitution states that no one has the right to privatize ocean spaces, nor own a fish in the sovereign waters of Canada?  

Farm salmon enable dams on the Fraser River, oil wells, clear-cuts, open pit mines, and our government bureaucracy has blindly pushed it.  I suggest a thorough scrutiny of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land’s handling of salmon farms.

Gordo, the era of cheap oil is over (i.e. the BP folly in the Gulf of Mexico), and we are now entering an era of cascading degradation of planet earth that my daughter and your children will inherit. 

It makes no sense to morally chose a salmon that robs one ocean, to pollute a second one while consuming fuel because it feeds Atlantic salmon in BC on fish from Chile. 

You must choose the salmon that comes home to us without oil consumption, feeding us, our forests and creating oxygen.

Norwegian salmon farming corporations are holding this coast ransom using the excuse “jobs”, when at the same time they are mechanizing to reduce their payroll.  Nothing about this industry appears legitimate to me. 

It does not make food.

It depletes global supply. 

It is not sustainable as it is running out of cheap fish to grind into pellets. 

It is not benign as it intensifies disease and pollutes. 

Remove corporate farmers and the European shareholders from this equation and the solution becomes simple:

1-    Rescind the leases under all salmon farms in British Columbia and place covenants on these sites in trust for future generations, as they are BC’s most productive coastal wild fishery grounds.

2-    Invite Norway to graciously bow-out and go face the calamities they are experiencing in Chile and in their own shores.

3-    Protect aquaculture jobs by WISELY developing a sustainable, community-based land-based industry

4-    Use the best knowledge we have and actually restore the resilient wild fish, not enhanced fish, which are very unlikely to survive climate change.

If the people of British Columbia are your primary concern, there is no rational obstacle to embracing these solutions please start rescinding leases immediately.

Lets move forward. The state of the planet is of immense concern and it is immoral to further degrade public resources that we will need on in the coming decades.

This is about food-security.

In a world depleted of easy oil no one is going to be moving fish from the south Pacific to make less fish in the North Pacific, but we will most definitely be thankful to have millions of wild salmon returning to us for free!

Get salmon farms Out of BC waters.

Barry HealeyFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail