Howdy,
Where's Barbender & Sockeye, and the rest of SFBC's resident fish-farming shill's?
Thought they'd have chimed in by now to do their usual 'damage-control' to try and mitigate any mud-slinging against the industry.
I've been a good boy lately, keeping my WSA and fish-farming posts confined to the 'Open-forum' as I have been asked to do by the Mod's here; but I'll chime-in here since I didn't start this one.
It is my guess this latest ploy to convince us all that they have a handle on the untold mountains of waste (sewage/pollution) these farms dump into our oceans (salmon habitat) is a diversionary tactic to keep the gargantuan-pollution issue out of the public eye. Since I began to research the problems with this industry back in 99' or so, I have been appalled by the amount of sh^t these people are allowed to deposit into our waterways. You and I can be fined for taking a sh*t on our boat and then flushing it out in a harbor while these foreigners have precipitated and are continuing to expand a genuine Environmental Holocaust right under our noses with the full blessing of our Govenment!
I've done some simple math to give each you an idea of just how much raw-sewage equivalent (animal feces, antibiotics, colorant, heavy metals, Slice/emmamectin benzoate/poison, anti-foulant poison for nets, etc) this industry is collectively dumping on us and our Coastal Marine ecology.
In May 2002 I had an article published in BC Outdoors Sportfishing Magazine wherein I shared some pollution data I had uncovered; if memory serves, this information was from the N.O.A.A. and it basically stated (as I reflected in the article) that: "A typical fish-farm dumps the equivalent untreated sewage into the ocean as a city of half a million people... 12 times the raw sewage as does the entire population of BC."
To date this claim has been officially disputed by no one.</u>
So, let's do some quick math to bring this into perspective.
I'll err on the cautious side (let's cut the Norwegians some slack here) and we'll not use a figure of 500,000, instead we'll use a more reasonable sized city, like Victoria: 350,000 or so.
A 1999 CRD publication (we'll go back 10-yrs to cut them some more slack) stated that collectively the McCauly Pt/Clover Pt. outfalls were discharging 120,300/cubic meters of raw-sewage (screened) into the Juan de Fuca DAILY.
There are somewhere between 125 and 150 active fish-farms on our coast. Let's use the 125 figure (again, I'm a good boy)
125 X 120,300 = 15,037,500 cubic/meters per day
= 626,562 cubic/meters per/hour
= 10,442 cubic/meters per/minute
= 174 cubic/meters per/second
If escaping fish, disease & parasite transfer, diversion of much needed habitat & enhancement funds and management attention are not enough make your hair stand on end; maybe this will.
I hope more of you who've taken issue with me and my rants against this industry on this forum will now understand better why I'm vigorously involved in working to punt these foreigners from our waterways and send all the crooked politicians who are owned by them, along with them.
Thanks for your time and trouble.
Standing for Wild Salmon,
Terry Anderson
Wild Salmon Alliance