Salmon Confidential film by Alexandra Morton Now Online!

[ClayoquotKid]

Here is Chum just for a reference of what a natural cycle looks like with very little fishing pressure.
There is still a fair number taken by First Nation food fisheries, but the general abundance is still fairly high.
View attachment 6339

 

[ClayoquotKid]

Damn.
They are JPEG's.
Should work.
I will try to see if I can get them hosted somewhere so they can be linked maybe.

 

[Birdsnest]

I will try to see if I can get them hosted somewhere so they can be linked maybe.

You have my attention.

Another thing morton is doing which I believe is misleading is blaming salmon farms for the introduction of foreign viruses. IF these record are correct It suggests to me that there is a good possibility that these viruses have been here for a very long time. It certainly time to better understand them. I agree.

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j...g4DQDA&usg=AFQjCNHM5RHUgQEo_ETlumi3Y7skL1i2Cw

 

[Englishman]

You have my attention.

Another thing morton is doing which I believe is misleading is blaming salmon farms for the introduction of foreign viruses. IF these record are correct It suggests to me that there is a good possibility that these viruses have been here for a very long time. It certainly time to better understand them. I agree.

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.salmonfarmers.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fresearch-resources%2Ftimeline_atlantics.pdf&ei=qH_GULOjD8mXigK5g4DQDA&usg=AFQjCNHM5RHUgQEo_ETlumi3Y7skL1i2Cw

No on the contrary Birdsnest, it is you who are being misleading. We have NO actual scientific evidence for what, if any, viruses these fish were carrying at the time of the various introductions.

On the other hand, we DO have scientific genomic profiles of some of the viruses that are currently affecting our fish that point straight back to Norway. They are in several cases the same virus strains that devastated Chile.

But I forgot, you either cannot understand science or sweep it all away as a "conspiracy" with an "agenda" and instead clutch at straws like this to throw doubt and confusion.

 

[Mourning Wood]

Seems to me she is more laying blame to the farms presence which can allow viruses fester and condense in one spot than saying it's their fault the viruses are there. I believe that's one of the big problems. It wouldn't surprise me one bit, if we were able to look hard enough into the past that we could find these or other viruses that had been present in salmon centuries ago. Through natural selection those weaker fish are picked off and the stronger ones get to breed. Even if the wild salmon were the guilty party in making the farms sick the potential for a salmon epidemic that got amplified through a bunch of net penned fish is enough to turn me against it.

 

[JAC]

I thought the video was well done and I hope they continue there fight. It may or may not be the farms but I'm willing to bet that the farms are doing more harm then good. If you get rid of the farms that will only make our wild salmon worth more?

 

[Dave]

If you get rid of the farms that will only make our wild salmon worth more?

For sure. And ensure their extirpation is considerably faster.

 

[Stoisy]

We are messing with a natural system...there isn't much else to say. Changing an environment will affect the species within it. Throw a thousand humans together in one small pen and let them eat unnatural food and excrete that into that same pen...you go ahead and walk through it! Personally I would go no where near it, but salmon don't have a choice...

 

[GLG]

First off - the Bedwell IS an enhanced system.
Tofino Hatchery has been working on it for years, with varying levels of success.
This year actually showed a much better return (80-90) of Chinook with many being marked fish.
If you look at the numbers back to 1947 you will see that in the decades before salmon farming started there were actually LESS fish coming back.
You can clearly see in the Chinook graph that when the road went in in 1959 or so, and the 400 boats started fishing out of the new harbour and breakwater in '62 or so that there was a pronounced impact on populations.
The argument that salmon farms have far more impact than fishing seems to fail when you actually look at the numbers.
View attachment 6335

Thank you for posting up those Chinook Escapment numbers for the Clayoquot Sound.
Those 2011 numbers look like maybe 1750 Chinook? How may are female? perhaps half so we could say 875 breading pairs for the whole area..... I'm not even going to minus off the jacks as that would drop those breeding pairs down a few more hundred....... You say that many were marked so they would be hatchery fish and without those numbers it's hard to tell how many breading wild pairs there is left in Clayoquot Sound. Is this the new normal and what you call a healthy system? Correct me if I'm wrong but does this area include Pacific Rim National Park Reserve and was also designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve? Seems like the last place we would think of putting fish farms into doesn't it.... But hey your just trying to make a buck aren't you... Bean counters... they know the price of everything but the value of nothing....
GLG

 

[JAC]

We are messing with a natural system...there isn't much else to say. Changing an environment will affect the species within it. Throw a thousand humans together in one small pen and let them eat unnatural food and excrete that into that same pen...you go ahead and walk through it! Personally I would go no where near it, but salmon don't have a choice...

I guess the closes thing to a 1000. Humans in one pen with ****** food would be a hospital.

 

[NautiGirl]

or a prison, or a concentration camp...........holmes*

good analogy holmes. all feedlots kinda make me a little sick. you can smell that feedlot in Brooks Alberta from about 100km down the highway if your car windows are open while driving. Watch this video, them consider whether you would drink the water nearby or let your kids swim in any water downstream. Would you let your kids play beside a feedlot in an area infested with Ecoli bacteria? Would the government drag their heels and let Ecoli infested meat continue to be sold from an infected meat packer in Brooks? Follow these links. The song stays the same.
The feedlot flyover- looks familiar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03tQOEX3iiA
The disease and response.
http://www.globalnews.ca/timeline+o...utbreak+and+meat+recall/6442724244/story.html
I wonder if Harper lived in fish country instead of beef country, would the scientists be muzzled? Think on that.

I think we need to invite some more US government inspectors to look at our fish. Do they have any politicians who claim to be from fish country, bring them along to raise hell.

 

[Englishman]

For sure. And ensure their extirpation is considerably faster.

That is a non sequitur Dave. Salmon feed lots do not "save" wild salmon so their removal from the industrial landscape would do nothing but good.

Salmon extirpation from other commercial causes would only happen IF we privatised all salmon runs to distant commercial corporations (kind of like salmon feed lots!!) who were only interested in a quick buck and who fished out and got out.

And the people of BC will not allow that to happen, any more than we will continue to tolerate fish feed lots indefinitely.

 

[ClayoquotKid]

I don't think I ever called Clayoquot a "healthy system" - if you look at the numbers you will see that impacts from fishing and logging started 30 or 40 years before salmon farms showed up, with numbers for Chinook, Coho and Sockeye dropping significantly.
It's kind of interesting when you look at Chum for the same period - very little fishing pressure - good abundance.
All I'm pointing out is that when you look at 2011 numbers you have to also recognize that from 1963 to 1992 there were less.
If farms were impacting wild runs (in any significant way) you would expect to see a downward trend after the farms were put in.
The fact is the numbers just don't show it.
You can argue about the presence or absence of disease, or the presumed impacts of sea lice till you are blue in the face - but if there is solid evidence showing that an area with a high abundance of farms (which Clayoquot has) shows no downward trend in numbers correlating to the introduction of aquaculture, you might have to reconsider your position.
On another note - The Pacific Rim National Park Reserve has no farms in or on it, and the UNESCO designation happened with the farms already being present.
You can disregard my ideas (Google "Confirmation Bias), but those numbers aren't mine - they came from DFO, and when DFO stopped enumerating a number of Clayoquot systems they came from local enhancement workers and volunteers funded by public and industry money.
I've been involved in enhancement, sportfishing and aquaculture in the sound and I see no evidence of harm being done by farms.

 

[GDW]

Clayoquotkid post the same diagram for Fraser river sockeye it shows something quite different. I'm sure you'll only post the evidence supporting farms and ignore the evidence showing the incredible harm, right? How about sockeye numbers in Clayoquot sound?

 

[ClayoquotKid]

Here's the Fraser:

Incredible harm?
Sorry, I don't see it.
You can't just cherry pick species and places to make your argument - if salmon farms are harming wild runs through disease it would either be widespread and consitent, or localised to fish health events directly related to farms.
It is also interesting how the species with the most fishing pressure or commercial value - Sockeye, Chinook and Coho are constantly referenced to as the ones being impacted and the other two abundant and seemingly vulnerable species - Pink and Chum - seem to be doing quite well.
My whole point is - It is very easy to show fishing and habitat impacts historically, there is nothing that actually points to farms having a negative impact on wild runs.
If you can't measure it against backgound variations - is it even happening, or if it is, is it at a level which even remotely compares to people killing and eating wild fish?

 

[ClayoquotKid]

Here's Sockeye in Clayoquot:
Note the steep decline from about 1963 onward, and the rise in the '90s (partially due to enumeration techniques changing from walks to swims...)
The numbers were bad far before farms showed up - and they are still bad.
I just don' see how you can argue that farms caused something that happened 3 decades before they even existed.
Might they be keeping the numbers low you ask?
That's a tough one when you consider many other systems with low numbers that have not "bounced back" despite reduction in fishing pressure, solid habitat being present and the complete absence of farms.

 

[GLG]

All I'm pointing out is that when you look at 2011 numbers you have to also recognize that from 1963 to 1992 there were less.

I find those numbers to be highly suspicious..... some years looks like 100 breading pairs for the whole sound.
I don't fish that area and I really can't say if those numbers look right.... perhaps some of the locals would chime in and give us their thoughts on those numbers.... If those numbers are true it seems the sound was fished out for Chinook.

 

[ClayoquotKid]

The sound was "fished out" for Chinook by the end of the '60s.
As I said before, those aren't my numbers - you can be a suspicious as you like, it doesn't change them any.
Many years between 1960 and 1990 systems were walked instead of swum, so in a tannic murky river you might not see any fish at all - but the fact still remains that Chinook numbers were in the absolute toilet long before aquaculture, and since then, with enhancement, fishing closures and a natural upswing in favourable marine conditions they have come back a bit and may be getting better.
All this farm bashing is, as far as I am concerned, just a bunch of finger pointing and a refusal to acknowledge the fact that people killing fish and destroying spawning habitat has had far more impact than can be shown anywhere relative to farms being present.

 

[Dave]

The sound was "fished out" for Chinook by the end of the '60s.
As I said before, those aren't my numbers - you can be a suspicious as you like, it doesn't change them any.
Many years between 1960 and 1990 systems were walked instead of swum, so in a tannic murky river you might not see any fish at all - but the fact still remains that Chinook numbers were in the absolute toilet long before aquaculture, and since then, with enhancement, fishing closures and a natural upswing in favourable marine conditions they have come back a bit and may be getting better.
All this farm bashing is, as far as I am concerned, just a bunch of finger pointing and a refusal to acknowledge the fact that people killing fish and destroying spawning habitat has had far more impact than can be shown anywhere relative to farms being present.

Thankyou for the dose of common sense.

 

[GDW]

How many full time Canadians does your industry truly employ. I don't care about the number of jobs (1 employee can work 4 jobs) how many full time employees are there?