Local Orca's Decline - Fish Farms to blame?

[GDW]

Ken Balcomb the executive director for the Center for Whale Research out of friday harbour says to the Times Colonist

"I have been concerned for a number of years that, unless we solve the fish problem, we are in trouble,”

“Sooner or later, these politicians have to bite the bullet and get rid of fish farms because they are killing wild fish. Your country and the province have to take some really bold steps.”

http://www.timescolonist.com/local-orca-numbers-lowest-in-10-years-1.327612

Wait doesn't Ken know DFO has already solved the problem by implementing a slot limit in area 19-20? Hmmm I guess that isn't the ultimate solution after all.

 

[Seafever]

We just have to convince the Killer Whales to eat farmed salmon......

If Killer Whales won't touch 'em......what does that say?.......

 

[steel_dreamin]

Now I'm fully supportive of enhancing our understanding of the fish farming impacts on our native salmon populations but claiming that fish farms are to blame for a declining Orca population - this is a BIG streeetttccchhhh. I think the advocates would be heading down the wrong path is this a tact employed.

 

[chris73]

Remember, it's all ONE ecosystem. Take one of the vital links out of the chain and the whole system will collapse. How do you think whales, bears, eagles, seals etc fared in Europe after they basically extirpated their salmon in central Europe?

 

[profisher]

Did you know that the worlds supply of krill is being commercially harvested to feed farmed salmon for the last few weeks before they are killed to colour the flesh for market. Commercial fishing of the most vital part of the food chain is the end for baleen whales, herring, then salmon, then orca, bears, eagles, seals, sealions and if I had time to list them all the last one would be man. How unjust that the idiots that cause the problem are the last to perish.

 

[JAC]

It's funny that all of us think there is a problem and were just sport fishing guys. We as taxs payers are paying people to look and research this **** and it seems like nothing ever happens. I know this is big buissness and I really I'm no expert but is fish farming such a money maker for b.c that we can't leave with out it? You would think if they stoped farming fish the value of the wild fish would go up? Then maybe it would be money well spent on to get more hatcherys going. I'm not a fish expert by any means, just my opinion

 

[hambone]

Fish farms are going to be something we look back on and feel awful about..... How could they possibly have let that happen is what future generations will think. It's amazing how stupid and greedy we humans are.

 

[Whole in the Water]

So very true Hambone, all the lice farm hacks and shills soon will have to stop eating their unhealthy food lot salmon and start eating a lot of crow - not soon enough for me!

 

[gungadin]

While I certainaly agree that fish farms are detrimental to our enviroment, there may be another reason for the decline of the resident southern orca population. Unlike northern and transient orcas the southern residents live for the most part near urban centres, Victoria, Seattle and the like-- near our industrial sights and sewage outfalls. Any toxins they ingest stay with them ,in the case of males for there lifetime, female until their first and subsequent lactations. As females do not mature untill about 12 or 13 years, their firstborn get an enormous amount of these toxins and are thus poisoned from their very birth. Most of the firstborn do not survive for long. female orcas live up to twice as long as their male counterparts, primarily because they are able to rid themslves of their toxin buildup by passing it on to their young. The southern residents are also inbreeding, thus further adding to their problems. It has been predicted that they will be extinct as a resident population within a manner of decades. And one way or another we are the cause.

 

[Seafever]

Gungadin:- I think your post carries a lot of truth about toxins and Killer Whales.

A couple of years back they came right out and blamed toxins on reproductive rate.

 

[reelfast]

apex predators are impacted by disruptions anywhere in the food chain. over harvesting herring is a great example of this in action. 3#s of fish based feed to produce 1# of harvestable atlantic salmon. now what are our wild anadramous fish dining on in the mean time? and as the anadramous fish decline, so does the orca population. its all interrelated in one fashion or another but mega business does not stop to consider any of this so long as their bottom line is not negatively impacted. now stop the government subsidies to your net pen industries and watch them collapse of their own unsustainable expense.

opening the refinery port in Anacortes had the impact of wiping out a famous and amazingly productive herring nursery area, same thing, different set of players.

 

[Whole in the Water]

apex predators are impacted by disruptions anywhere in the food chain. over harvesting herring is a great example of this in action. 3#s of fish based feed to produce 1# of harvestable atlantic salmon. now what are our wild anadramous fish dining on in the mean time? and as the anadramous fish decline, so does the orca population. its all interrelated in one fashion or another but mega business does not stop to consider any of this so long as their bottom line is not negatively impacted. now stop the government subsidies to your net pen industries and watch them collapse of their own unsustainable expense.

opening the refinery port in Anacortes had the impact of wiping out a famous and amazingly productive herring nursery area, same thing, different set of players.

So very true and so very sad!