Tag Archives: Fish Farm
This Canadian First Nations group wants you to buy salmon raised on land
Alert Bay isn’t exactly a premier destination on British Columbia’s rugged Pacific Coast. On this winter day, there are more crows than people on the town’s wooden sidewalks, and most of the few small businesses near the waterfront are closed for the season. The biggest building is an abandoned salmon cannery, a reminder of what used to be here. It’s a past that Bill Cranmer remembers well.,, For centuries, he says, salmon sustained the Namgis’ lives and culture.,, Cranmer says if he and his Namgis First Nation people had their way, they’d get rid of open-water salmon farms. But they can’t, so they’re trying another idea for rebuilding a salmon economy for their community. They’ve built their own salmon farm — on land. >click to read<15:26
Puget Sound region’s Atlantic salmon fish farms could be headed for final harvest
The salmon-farming industry in the United States got its start right here in the Puget Sound region in the 1970s with experiments to raise salmon perfectly pan-sized or just right to fit the slot of a TV dinner. Union Carbide, then Campbell’s Soup, and a string of other entrepreneurs eventually decided docile, domesticated Atlantic salmon fattened up fastest and best in the open-water net pens they were test-piloting in Puget Sound. The industry really took off when federal fisheries scientists, with more than 1 million jilted Atlantic salmon eggs intended for restocking depleted East Coast streams, instead gave them to private industry. >click to read< 10:27
Nova Scotia: Storm damage to fish farm pens alarms Shelburne County fisherman
In addition to ice and snow, remnants of Nova Scotia’s first major winter storm are all over the shore of Jordan Bay, N.S. in the form of buoys and plastic pipes. The debris, which came from the Cooke Aquaculture fish farm, is concerning to commercial lobster fisherman Ricky Hallett. He suspects many of the fish died. “Seventeen out of 20 of the pens have the tops off them and most of them have the sides smashed down,” Hallett said. “I live just adjacent to the site and I can look right out on it.” click here to read the story 15:56
Washington DNR chief: Cooke to dismantle fish pens at Ediz Hook
State Department of Natural Resources officials began discussions Wednesday with Cooke Aquaculture Inc. representatives on dismantling the company’s Atlantic salmon fish farm off Ediz Hook, said state Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz, the elected head of DNR. Franz canceled the New Brunswick, Canada-based company’s aquatic-lands lease Dec. 15, citing violations including Styrofoam discharges, a defective anchoring system and operating 500 feet outside of its leasehold area by placing its anchors outside the boundaries set in the agreement. click here to read the story 15:43
Letter on Fish Farming – Shame on NOAA
NOAA, of all organizations, knows how destructive fish farms are to the ocean and its inhabitants (“NOAA wants to fund more fish farming to offset trade gap,” Dec. 14). Did they conveniently forget that in 2014 Aqua Bounty was fined for repeated environmental violations of genetically engineered salmon and banned from selling their GE fish in the USA? Or, how about the six storms in 2014 and 2015 in Jordan Bay, Nova Scotia, where 31 bird nets, 90 feet in diameter, and dead fish washed ashore, becoming aquaculture-site sewage and litter? click here to read the letter 20:52
British Columbia court grants injunction to fish farm, ending protests
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has granted an injunction to Marine Harvest Canada’s Midsummer Island farm, which is located amid a series of islands in the Broughton Archipelago, about 50 kilometres east of Port Hardy on Vancouver Island. Protesters began occupying the farm in September, although Molina Dawson, a protester with the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw Nation, said they scaled back their activity while the legal proceedings were underway. Justice Peter Voith said in the decision that the protesters’ presence “gives rise to real safety issues” and he agrees that Marine Harvest will suffer irreparable harm if the occupation of the farm continues. click here to read the story 15:24
Washington state senator says he’ll file bill to ban Atlantic salmon farming
Under fire after a collapse and massive escape last summer, Atlantic salmon net-pen farming would be banned in Washington under legislation that will be filed by Sen. Kevin Ranker this coming session. The legislation would allow existing state leases for the eight Atlantic net-pen farms now operating in Washington to run out by 2025. No permits for new farms would be granted, and no renewals for existing leases would be allowed. The bill also would require state agencies that regulate net-pen farming to keep a tighter watch on operations. click here to read the story 13:30
A Pacific bluefin tuna snagged in a fish farm pen in Scotland!
Salmon farmers off a Hebridean island have rescued a 300kg (47-stone) Pacific blue fin tuna after it appeared in one of their pens. Marine Harvest staff at Colonsay said they were stunned to see the fish, which is normally associated with the warmer waters of the Pacific. They said they spotted the 3m-long tuna after noticing “a feeding frenzy” near their salmon enclosures. The fish was eventually caught using a net and crane and returned to the sea. Farm manager Ali Geddes said: “We’d noticed a lot of activity around the southern part of the farm – there seemed to be a real feeding frenzy going on with the dolphins and porpoises. click here to read the story 14:54
Company offered money for Lummi Nation’s silence about net pens, letters show
Cooke Aquaculture offered to pay a premium price for Atlantic salmon caught by the Lummi Nation after a major spill from the company’s Cypress Island fish farm if the tribe would not advocate getting rid of net pen aquaculture. The tribe tartly rejected the offer. “Your demand to keep quiet for a few extra dollars is insulting,” Timothy Ballew II, chairman of the Lummi Indian Business Council, responded in a Sept. 14 letter. Nell Halse, vice president for communications for Cooke, said Wednesday the offer “was not an attempt to muzzle or insult the Lummi Nation, but rather an effort to negotiate toward common ground and respect the interests and concerns of both parties at the table …” click here to read the story 10:13
Lummi chairman calls bribery attempt ‘insulting and preposterous’ – click here to read the story
Cooke Aquaculture Fish farm has 60 days to fix net pens outside Seattle, risks losing lease
Just a week after the state Department of Fish and Wildlife approved shipment of 1 million more farmed Atlantic salmon to Cooke Aquaculture’s fish farm near Bainbridge Island, another state agency says it has found a hole in the nets and corrosion in the structure of the facility. The Department of Natural Resources on Monday notified Cooke that it is in default of the terms of its lease at its Rich Passage operation. It ordered the facility repaired within 60 days, or the department may cancel the company’s lease for the facility, which operates over public bed lands. click here to read the story 13:53
First Big Piece Of Fish Farm Puzzle Arrives On East End of Long Island
The bright yellow buoy bobs gently in the waves off Jackson’s Marina in Hampton Bays, emblazoned with a white fish above the legend “Manna Fish Farms,” and drawing eyes amid the fleet of white yachts and brown fishing vessels. The recent arrival, towed by boat from New Castle, New Hampshire, late last month and tipping the scales at 60 tons, will one day serve as the nerve center of Manna Fish Farms, the ambitious vision of Donna Lanzetta, a real estate agent from East Quogue who has been working for years to establish the first open-sea fish farm on the East End. click here to read the story 10:52
Land Based Fish farm gets cash injection
Ottawa is pumping $1 million into Hants County’s Sustainable Blue’s fish farming operation to boost production of Atlantic salmon and commercialize cutting-edge marine water treatment technology. Federal funding will allow the company to build a 300-metric tonne land-based saltwater grow-out facility, which will bring its total capacity to 500 metric tonnes. This will allow production of Atlantic salmon year-round. In making the announcement, Kings-Hants MP Scott Brison said the money from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency will benefit the self-contained aquaculture operation, which is the first facility of its type in the world growing drug-free fish, produced sustainably on land. click here to read the story 11:17
Alexandra Morton Challenges Federal Fish Farm Licences in Court
Biologist and wild salmon advocate Alexandra Morton headed back to court yesterday to push for stronger government oversight of the transfer of farmed fish into the Pacific Ocean to prevent the spread of a potentially harmful virus. Morton alleges that Marine Harvest transferred farmed salmon infected with piscine reovirus (PRV) to a net pen on the Fraser River sockeye migration route. Read more here 20:34
