Canadian Government Calls for Judicial Inquiry into “lost” Fraser River Sockeye Salmon

“Lost” salmon, eh? (Sorry, that’s a little Canadian humor – or is it ‘humour’?).

I think we were supposed to turn left...

The Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, today announced that there will be a judicial inquiry into the disappearance of about 10 million sockeye salmon that were supposed to show up this summer to the Fraser River. The Fraser River runs right threw the little town known as Vancouver, British Columbia – hey, Mr. Harper, you might want to start your inquiry there.

But many people have many fingers to point. Some suggest native fishermen illegally fishing, others suggest warming river temperatures. The list continues; over-fishing, pollution, habitat destruction, lack of food sources, flooding, urbanization, new predators (squid), salmon farms, fertilizer run-off, salmon ranching…yes, salmon ranching.

Dr. Craig Orr, biologist at Watershed Watch, today suggested that hatchery fish may have eaten the ocean dry – someones been reading this blog, huh Mr. Orr? Well, you may be on to something Craig, because 5 billion hatchery salmon are released from Alaska, Russia and Asia to compete for food with wild salmon. These hatchery fished were happily feeding in the Bering Sea before those Canadian sockeye had even shown their fishy passports at customs.

But before all the finger pointing gets put under oath, you may want to answer the most important question – Lost? Were they ever there in the first place?

 

Alaska salmon processor charged for illegal act

Discharging fish waste from a fish processing plant without a permit: we’re pretty sure that’s not a good thing, but good to see regulators taking action.

An Alaska processing plant may be fined $177,500 by the U.S.

Illegal dumping

 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for violations of the federal Clean Water Act.  Announced November 3rd, 2009, the Chilkoot Fish & Caviar plant has allegedly repeatedly violated its permit over the past four years and could face a penalty of $177,550, the maximum civil penalty allowed under the Clean Water Act. 

“Fish processing waste, especially from shore-based facilities, can cause serious harm to the marine environment in the surrounding area,” said Edward Kowalski, EPA’s Director of Compliance and Enforcement in Seattle.

Fish wastes are the unused portions of the processed fish. Fish processing waste from the Chilkoot plant runs into Lutak Inlet. Lutak Inlet is a tributary of Lynn Canal.

Read the full release here.

Tom Fletcher, “U.S. interests pull our strings”

Well, well, well. We won’t take any credit here (well, maybe a bit), but it does seem that the information provided on this blog is catching on, quicker than we thought. Today, Canadian journalist Tom Fletcher has released an article in over 70 newspapers which describes the clever (and quite possibly illegal) marketing of U.S. salmon.  This is good and echoes many statements made in this blog. You can view the entire article here, but in the meantime, here are some highlights;

If you go to the grocery store and buy a can of sockeye salmon right now, chances are it will say “product of U.S.A.” on the label.The can I’m holding was sold as a house brand at a large B.C. supermarket chain. The label states the ingredients – sockeye salmon and salt – along with Canada’s mandatory nutrition facts chart. It doesn’t specify that it’s from Alaska, which it likely is, but it does have a logo that says “wild Pacific salmon,” which is, to say the least, debatable.

With some B.C. sockeye runs in an apparent state of collapse, our commercial and even aboriginal food fisheries banned this year, Alaska and Washington state fisheries are relatively strong. The reason for this is the U.S. practice of salmon ‘ranching,’ where billions of salmon fry are raised in tanks, fed pellets until they’re big enough and then released to sea.

Ranched Pacific salmon don’t just flood the whole West Coast habitat, they interbreed freely with wild stocks. The Americans ranch chum, pink and Chinook as well as sockeye. As a result, Koenings testified in a Seattle court Oct. 23, all but four of Puget Sound’s watersheds are now dominated by hatchery fish. He warned that if the state focuses strictly on access work now, they will soon dominate the rest and the state’s wild salmon will be gone.

As I described last week, none of this is discussed in B.C. political circles. Here it’s all about the alleged evils of fish farms. Why? According to research brought to my attention last week, one reason is a staggeringly big negative marketing campaign financed by U.S. private foundations to discredit farmed salmon as a food source.

Former Kitimat resident Vivian Krause has assembled a heavily documented critique of the campaign, which has flooded North American media with exaggerated warnings, first about PCBs in farmed salmon, and now about the hazards of sea lice.

In the past two years, Krause has pestered two of B.C.’s environmental demigods, David Suzuki and Alexandra Morton, to detail the extent of the funding their foundations have accepted to take part in a “demarketing” campaign that demonizes fish farms and coincidentally benefits Alaska and Washington interests.

She documents that the David Suzuki Foundation has received more than $10 million from these U.S. sources.

 Tom Fletcher is legislative reporter and columnist for Black Press and BCLocalnews.com

http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_central/nanaimonewsbulletin/opinion/68866257.html