Alexandra Morton Charges Marine Harvest with illegal possession of wild salmon

If government is not going to apply the laws of Canada to fish farms, it is up to the people to do so.

Port Hardy, September 15, 2009

Biologist Alexandra Morton laid charges under the federal Fisheries Act against fish farm giant Marine Harvest Canada Inc. for illegal possession of wild juvenile salmon from an endangered stock.

On June 16, 2009, hundreds of small salmon were seen spilling onto a dock in Port McNeill during a transfer of live Atlantic salmon brood stock from the fish farm vessel M.V. Orca Warrior into tanks on a truck. The vessel’s registered owner is Marine Harvest.

“When I received photos of the incident minutes later,” says Morton, “I was really surprised the fish lying on the road were young pink salmon, I could not understand what were they doing in Marine Harvest’s boat.”

“Marine Harvest emailed stating that the young wild salmon had come from the Potts Bay fish farm, just west of Glendale River in Knights Inlet,” says Morton. “They were apparently in the farm salmon pens and were scooped up with the Atlantic salmon. We have no idea how many pink salmon ended up going down the highway in the tanks on the truck.”

When Morton took her boat to the Potts Bay fish farm she saw large schools of pink salmon leaping inside the pens. “While millions of tax payers dollars and environmental donations have been spent to protect the Glendale River pink salmon from fish farms, last fall was the lowest return yet. These are the offspring from that generation and far from safe, they are right in the farm and in their fish packers,” said Morton.

Morton has published 15 scientific papers on juvenile pink salmon.

Morton’s lawyer, Jeffery Jones corresponded with DFO for 6 weeks about this incident but the Department still has not taken any action.

“I have received many reports over the years of herring, black cod and wild salmon in farm pens. The escaped Atlantic salmon that fishermen bring me often have wild fish in their stomachs. Are Norwegian farm salmon fattening up on wild BC fish? What happens to the wild fish when the nets are pulled? What happened to the pink salmon that may have been in the truck? DFO has often charged commercial and sport fishermen with illegal possession to protect wild fish and why wont they charge fish farms for the same violation,” said Morton.

Morton asks that anyone with information on wild fish in fish farms to contact her at www.adopt-a-fry.org <http://www.adopt-a-fry.org> . 18,000 people and counting have signed a letter on this website saying the laws of Canada must be applied to fish farms.

For more info and pictures:

http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/

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C & R since 1963

The sooner that Marine Harvest.The Largest fish farmer in the world.Part owned by the Norwegian Goverment.Is made to face up to the fact in public that it is responsible for the loss of Wild Salmon/Seatrout the world over.and quite possibly their future extinction,The better it will be for the fish.
Have the Norwegians no shame.This is ecological vandalisim on a global scale.

Jim

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The Fishermans Friend is the Flirty Fly,Fickle Food for Fleeting Fish.

do your scottish politicians have no shame after all its them who let them do it and shout for more and more of it. better get your own act cleaned up before slagging norwegians

It is marine harvest of Norway who are the corrupting main player in this ecological nightmare,making bucks whilst loosing the worlds major protein sources,and all for short term gain .
Yes the local to these "farms" goverments are in bed with them ,but its a marine harvest bed!

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Andy Wren
Winter grayling taking a year off !
Claret not just a great dubbing colour!

Nothing will happen, there is too much money involved.

Here are the figures for Scotland

Fish farming is a self necessitating industry and our politicians will let them carry on as long as they can come up with the usual half believeable excuses about fish farming not being responsible either wholly or partly for the decline in wild fish stocks. I'm just surprised the Canadians are letting them do this to their environment.

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Tight Lines. :)

thats true acw but these idiots running scotland right now are something special one minute letting mass murders home from jail early and the next shouting for more norwegian fish farms even harris tweed is pretending not to be scottish now because of them and worry about losing sales because of the bad name scotland now has so lets not blame the norwegians the problem is closer

What companies do they supply with fish and what names are they marketed
under. Is "Marine Harvest" a supermarket product. The best attack is to
educate people of the concerns surrounding this company and they may decide to leave their products on the shelf .

Hi Roy ,is it time to dust off the old picket boards and go forth once more

talk soon Hugh

On a side-note,

Don't know if this is true, but I did hear a startling fact the other day regarding farmed salmon. It takes 20lb of fish meal (basically chopped up fish) to produce 1lb of salmon.

Where's the sustainability in that?

The problems with salmon farms........
http://www.salmonfarmmonitor.org/problems.shtml


Hughie, I'm saving up, seeya soon.

Roy

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C & R since 1963

It's not quite that bad - about 6 to 1 ratio if you use whole fish. Pelleted fish diets have a lot of other material in as well - such as wheat, corn and other vegetable products. I'm pretty sure dried blood from abattoirs was one of the ingredients often used as well. When I started fish farming in 1980 the usual conversion ratios for pellet diets was over 2 to 1 (ie over 2 lbs of feed was required to produce 1 lb of trout/salmon). When I left the industry ten years ago we were getting better than 1 to 1!
The smart ones among you will say that can't be true but don't forget the fish take in a lot of water as well as the dry (ish) pellets.

Feed companies ARE working hard to make diets containing less and less fishmeal - partly because of the environmental impact but also because fishmeal is the most expensive form of protein they use!

StickMan