Rally to Save Wild Salmon from Fish Farms
Rally to Save Wild Salmon from Fish Farms
DFO - 401 Burrard Street, Vancouver
August 23, 2017
Time: Noon - 1:30 pm
This a call to lock arms in support of Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw Nation’s plans to evict open net pen fish farms from their unceded territorial waters. For 31 years, the presence of these fish farms has been an ongoing violation of their Indigenous rights to their territory and resources.
Recently, Hereditary Chief George Quocksister Jr. stepped onto a fish farm, put a Go Pro camera in the water and started filming. The footage revealed what he already knew, namely that thousands of herring were desperately trapped in a half metre of water under the scorching sun of a heat wave, unable to dive to cooler depths. This was senseless abuse of fish essential to life on the B.C. coast. This hard evidence reconfirms that fish farms continue to have illegal by-catch and must be held to account.
Astonishingly, DFO Minister Dominic LeBlanc is aligning with Marine Harvest and Cermaq to allow them to put fish infected with a highly contagious disease into waters where this virus is threatening wild salmon – a keystone species and a climate regulator. In a court case won by Dr. Alexandra Morton, Justice Rennie’s May 6, 2015 decision ordered DFO to use the precautionary principle in this matter, and uphold section 56 of the Fisheries General Regulations, which forbids the transfer of fish infected with a disease agent into B.C. waters. Yet DFO continues to ignore Justice Rennie’s decision, and Alexandra Morton is back in court on this issue to protect wild salmon. Do salmon need to be as big as whales to get the Minister’s attention?
The same fish that swim past open net pen fish farms also swim past Indigenous communities all along the river. The salmon are a resource to river First Nations and they have never consented to the siting of fish farms on the salmon’s migration routes. Wild salmon are essential to the physical, spiritual and cultural wellbeing of both coastal and river Indigenous people. Wild salmon are also the backbone of B.C.’s coastal tourism industry. Yet, wild salmon populations of the Pacific coast are potentially at risk of irreversible harm due to the impact of diseases and parasites caught from farmed salmon that share the same waterways.
Let’s send a strong message to DFO Minister LeBlanc that he must comply with Justice Rennie’s decision, stop supporting and promoting the aggressive expansion of fish farms that pose a grave threat to wild salmon, herring and clams, and that he must work with the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw to evict fish farms from their unceded territory. In this manner, Prime Minister Trudeau will be able to uphold his commitment to comply with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people, as well as fulfill DFO’s principal mandate to protect wild salmon and its ocean habitat.
