British Columbia's Coastal Scourge - Ottawa and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans

 


The fish farms that proliferate along the BC coast under the auspices of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans are devastating our marine environment.

Salmon farming is wreaking ruin on marine ecosystems, through pollution, parasites and high fish mortality rates which are causing billions of pounds a year in damage, a new assessment of the global salmon farming industry has found.

The sheer quantity of wild fish used in salmon farms is also a growing concern. About a fifth of the world’s annual wild fish catch, amounting to about 18m tonnes of wild fish a year, is used to make fishmeal and fish oil, of which about 70% goes to fish farms. This is causing problems for fishers in developing countries, who are seeing their stocks depleted in order to feed western consumption of farmed fish, according to the report.

The report also examined the salmon farming industry in Canada, Norway and Chile, the other biggest global producers. It found that of the costs associated with fish farming, about 60% were borne by the producers, especially in the form of fish mortality and the cost of treating sea lice, but about 40% of the costs were borne by wider society, for instance in pollution, loss of fish populations and the impacts on the climate crisis.

Just what we need, another example of Ottawa subsidizing the environmental havoc of its pet industries.

Comments

  1. Much of the cost of any resource extraction is passed on in one way or another.
    Although we don't 'extract' as many taxes and royalties from oil and gas, we take nothing from fish farms .
    The life sucking lice that are the big problem with the fishing industry do not just exist on fish!

    TB



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    Replies
    1. Before DFO failed to prevent the devastation of Newfoundland's cod stocks I imagined that Fisheries worked to protect our marine habitat and fish stocks. It's increasingly clear they've moved on from conservation to commercial management or, rather, mismanagement. On the federal totem poll I suspect DFO is at the bottom eclipsed by both energy and trade portfolios and in the pocket of the commercial fishery. I do wish Ottawa would get the hell out of British Columbia affairs.

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