No fish farms, no sea lice!
As this video by Alexandra Morton shows, when floating-net fish farms are removed from BC coastal waters, wild juvenile salmon leaving those locations have no sea lice. Healthy juvenile salmon and a chance for wild salmon to rebound!
The Wild Salmon Action Team, a subcommittee of the Environment Team, was formed in 2018 to support coastal Indigenous groups fighting to remove salmon farms from their waters. The fish farms were introducing dangerous levels of bacteria, viruses, and sea lice into the waters directly in the path of migrating juvenile wild salmon. While logging and over-fishing have been detrimental to wild salmon in the past, and climate change is now the government’s explanation for record lows in salmon populations, the one obvious stressor that can be changed RIGHT NOW is to move fish farms out of the path of migrating wild salmon and preferably out of the ocean onto land. The Wild Salmon Action team has held fundraisers and educational forums to support Indigenous and environmental groups in these demands. Since 2019 we have also been working with MPs and MLAs to get the fish farms out of the water before 2025.
The removal of two fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago last summer and the findings of healthy wild juvenile salmon this spring shows us that the scientists and First Nations were right all along. As Jane Goodall said; “Mother Nature can heal. We just have to give her a chance”.
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