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Submitter: Chelsea Keays
Community: Vancouver
Date Submitted: June 24, 2010
Summary:
Open net salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago, Discovery Islands and along the west coast of Vancouver Island are contributing to the depletion of wild salmon stocks. Sea lice, in particular, are reducing the survival chances of wild fry. The only viable long-term solution is to move towards closed containment land-based salmon farming.
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Submission:
Open net salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago, Discovery Islands and along the West coast of Vancouver Island are one factor that is contributing to the depletion of wild salmon stocks. I have been in the Broughton Archipelago on numerous occasions, have seen wild fry with lice on them and have also seen the decreased number of lice on runs where the farms were left fallow or where they applied Slice at a strategic time. Slice, however, is not a viable long-term solution and the only long-term solution is to move towards closed containment land-based farming of salmon. I think that to stall, demand more research or question the existing research at this point is ridiculous. There is no denying that lice on wild fry decrease their chances of survival and that in every country in the world where open net farms have been placed near wild salmon runs there are no longer wild salmon or their numbers are a shadow of what they once were.
Lice on wild fry is, of course, only one of the ways in which open net pens are harmful to the marine ecosystems in which they are placed; lights, noise makers, fallout of antibiotics, feed and waste all harm every level of the foodchain and the marine environment.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Chelsea Keays |
