Morton - Its Death By 1000 Cuts ~ Salmon Are Sacred ~ October 29 2010

Friday October 28, 2010

Local News

Morton: It's Death By 1000 Cuts

Fraser River paddlers demand fish farm data

Craig Hill/Voice

Voice photos

Alexandra Morton, seated second from left, was happy to be on her way via voyageur canoe to the Cohen Commission in Vancouver where hundreds wait her arrival.

t could have been the 1808 Simon Fraser expedition two-hundred years ago but it was October 20, 2010 and their voyage to the sea was born from a different need.

It was quiet riverside as the autumn sun sank into cottonwoods next to Hope Slough on Skwah territory. A line of long white voyageur canoes came into sight as they rounded the final curve then slowly glided up to the shore.

The shore was dotted with the silhouettes of people who'd been milling around an open fire with salmon cooking while waiting for the canoes to arrive. The Williams family drummed and sang a welcome song as the canoeists spilled from the boats onto the mucky bank.

The paddlers were there to take refuge for the night, mid-point on their trek to Vancouver and to the Cohen Commission evidentiary hearings.

They were taking with them a message that they can co-exist with fish farms just as long as they're situated on land far from the wild salmon.

The Cohen inquiry covered the entire Fraser River Basin from as far north as above Fort. St. James down through Prince Rupert and ending up in the Strait of Georgia and the west coast.

It's purpose is to find out what is happening to the sockeye salmon and how sustainable is the fishery is in it's present form. Cohen will eventually make recommendations to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the government on why stocks are declining, how sustainable the fishery is now and what can be done to protect the resource in the future.

Despite what has been a banner year for fishing and described as the best salmon run in a century, Commissioner Bruce I. Cohen still needs to find out what's going on with this food fish.

Is it a cycle? Are the salmon exposed to disease and infectious water from farmed salmon? Is it pollution or global warming? Or is it a little bit of all of the above? Hopefully, the Commission will now be able to assimilate all the data it's collected and come up with some definitive answers.

In a recently released interim report, Cohen cites past reports that have made over 700 recommendations regarding sustaining the Pacific fishery. Things the hearing will be looking at are; a reduction in the fishing fleet, the role of Aboriginal fisheries, the effects of salmon farms on wild stock as well as conservation and habitat protection.

But, Cohen has reserved any recommendations until reviews of evidence from the evidentiary hearings is complete.

Initially, the provincial government's knee-jerk response to the low sockeye numbers was that faulty fish-counting techniques were to blame. Nonetheless, the fishery was shut down for the third season in a row in 2009.

The Commission will be looking at 22 issues:

• Fraser sockeye life cycle

• Conservation perspectives

• Perspectives on Aboriginal law

• DFO’s organizational structure

• The Pacific Salmon Commission

• Wild Salmon Policy (Part 1)

• Overview of DFO habitat management and conservation

• Harvest management

• Harvesting

• Enforcement (fisheries)

• Habitat enhancement and restoration

• Wild Salmon Policy (Part 2)

• Protection of sockeye biodiversity

• Watershed-based planning and marine coastal planning

• Enforcement (habitat)

• Effects on habitat in the Fraser River watershed

• Predation

• Diseases, viruses, bacteria, and parasites

• Salmon farms

• Effects on habitat in the marine environment

• Population dynamics

• Other fisheries models

Those on the river in the canoes are there because they feel that it's not fish-counting that's to blame but real problems stemming from the farmed Atlantic salmon in open net cages that spread disease and that the wild salmon that pass through that water get sick and die. The spread of sea lice are just one of their concerns.

One of the Stand Up For Wild Salmon organizers and activist is Elena Edwards who was a part of the paddle, spoke with the Voice about the trip down river.

"This really shows how powerful we really can be," she said. "They are coming from as far as the tip of the Island and saying 'How many people have wanted to see the coming together over something that matters to so many people' and I think that's what we have here is a very powerful movement to create some very positive change and hopefully at the end of it, a very secure and healthy future for wild salmon."

"They are inspired by Alexandra's walk was Sointula saying 'I'm going to do something' and at the end of that you had over 5000 people saying we want to do more, the government's still not hearing us, the fish farms are still there. What we want the Cohen Commission to know is that we're watching, we're paying attention and we want there to be a just and honest outcome."

Edwards said that a lot of people are afraid that there'll be more commissions and more inquiries with no outcome that's beneficial to both salmon and people.

"We're all saying that the salmon are sacred and part of so much more than just our dinner. So this is what we're all here to protect. It's about much more than the economy, the economic benefits. It feeds an entire eco system, it feeds the culture."

Each of the four big canoes held 10 paddlers and regular-sized canoes added to the flotilla of 50-people who were escorted by a power raft.

Inside one of the canoes was world-renowned marine biologist Alexander Morton, who embarked on a second campaign called "Stand Up for Salmon" following a successful rally on the steps of the legislature late last summer with the Paddle For Wild Salmon campaign.

"The paddle has been phenomenal. I mean to get 60 in the water, give up a week of their life to come out on this, it's a real symptom of how people feel about things," Morton told reporters.

"The salmon belong to the people. It is not just about salmon, its about democracy, our future, its our world, people are really rising to this."

Morton said she represents the aquaculture coalition and that it's their mandate to ensure that Cohen has all the correct information to be able to make a decision on the fish farm issue, in particular, the northern Vancouver Island sockeye runs but first need the farms to become transparent and release their information but so far their efforts have been stymied and she feels that they've been "stonewalled"

"There is DFO research that has not been published, saying that the Fraser Sockeye are being challenged by a new virus and all of these things make me very concerned about the disease and the salmon farms and so we've asked justice Cohen to demand from the salmon farmers 18-years of data, all farms of the Fraser sockeye go bye."

In the past, recommendations have not been followed through but Morton remains optimistic that this time things will be different and that Cohen has a the magnanimous task of putting all the information together so that a decision can be made.

She says it's been remarkable how people have been responding all over BC and feel about the fish but fish farms aren't the only suspects in the disappearance of the salmon.

"There's some death by 1000 cuts going on here. Everywhere we went we found out about dams that haven't been taken out properly, pesticides that are going into the watershed, development right on the Adams River spawning ground. Just like unbelievable, it's berserk really and the true meaning of the word berserk."

"All of those things need to be dealt with but I think those are little things because if it was those things then one or two of the runs should go down, but the pattern we have right now is all the runs that go by the salmon farms are in decline, which is the pattern around the world," she said.

"I published 10 papers on the impact of sea lice on salmon farms and so what they're saying is that there is some new variable that's come online that they can no longer predict these fish and they're embarrassed by that."

However Morton says in Alaska they are pretty well bang-on with their run predictions but in BC it's different.

"You do water temperature, food, how many of those juveniles went out and you've got a pretty good feel about what's coming back, but here in Canada, British Columbia, that doesn't work anymore and that means there's a huge factor that is impacting a lot of fish and so what's happening is that these farms release effluent and all the Fraser sockeye are going through it — its like running sheep through sheep dip and every last one of them is passing farm effluent over their gills.

Morton urges public support and to effect change they need bodies on the streets and doorstep of the Commission.

"I guarantee you that if the public is not behind this, they will not be good recommendations. The public really has to show up and that is true right across the board."

If you think that a change of government will change things, think again. Morton says it was the NDP who first brought in the fish farms and she describes what happened to her own coastal hamlet where she grew up that was once thriving.

"I'm from a little community on the central coast and (when) Salmon farms came in and we were told it's going to be good for us. There's now 9 people left in my community, the school is closed, there's 27 enormous feedlots there, they don't buy gas there, they don't hire local people. The First Nations have said 'zero tolerance', no we don't want you to just ram over all of us, and now they're sitting there operating on expired tenures... I'm really just a woman defending her home."

She calls on the strengths of other great world leaders to illustrate her point that people are power.

"I feel that Martin Luther King and Ghandi told us how to deal with these kinds of issues. If the government is not serving the people, you need to rise up and peacefully, powerfully, have your presence be seen and that's what we're doing here."

Edwards said in an e-mail yesterday that "The request made to the Cohen Commission is that they must insist that disease data from all of the fish farms be released for examination. Such information should not be kept hidden if there's even a remote possibility that there are diseases from the farms that are harming young wild salmon."

She says that more research is needed and says the attitude of fish farmers need to change.

"There has not been adequate research into this by DFO and it is not acceptable for the Fish Farmer Association reps to say that salmon feedlots are in no way affecting wild salmon stocks without proper research into what is occurring within the farms."

Edwards disagrees with DFO's stance that disease is not the real problem.

"For them to say that disease is not an issue is to disregard all that has been learned from all other industrial farming practices that place any living creature into close containment in an unnatural atmosphere. Disease spreads in such circumstances — It's a no brainer."

"Fish Farms are an insult, however you SLICE it, from unnatural numbers of sea lice to foreign disease to toxic sludge, they do not belong in our oceans and they need to get out.

Edwards says there is no compromising and doing so will continue to put sockeye in danger.

"It is non negotiable and the Norwegian shareholders need to take responsibility for the blight that they have placed on the migratory paths of our wild salmon. The Farmed Salmon Association can place all of the full page ads they want. We the people who stand, walk, paddle, swim and speak on behalf of wild salmon will accept no less than the removal of salmon feedlots from our oceans and away from our wild salmon stocks."

In closing, Edwards says that "There has been a great camaraderie throughout this paddle, with many already talking about the "next one". I really enjoy seeing people able to connect on the river for something that so essential to life and culture. With this many people taking the time to be part of protecting wild salmon, it's hard to believe that our government is such that it will ignore such a pleas and effort to protect what matters."

The 314-page interim report is available here. The final report will be available sometime in 2011.

The end of the gallery. Thanks for looking.