Tofino, BC - Friends of Clayoquot Sound confirmed that at least 12 sea lions drowned in the predator nets at Creative Salmon’s fish farms near Meares Island last week. A bear-watching guide with a group of tourists first sighted two carcasses near one of the farms in Fortune Channel. Creative confirmed its divers cut the carcasses of at least 12 sea lions from its nets. Predator nets are designed to keep natural predators of salmon from accessing the farmed fish. For almost a decade Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS) have highlighted the death of ocean mammals as a consequence of open net cage fish farming.
“These deaths were, unfortunately, predictable,” says Celina Tuttle, FOCS’s Wild Salmon and Aquaculture campaign coordinator. “The fish farms in the water are equivalent to ringing a dinner bell in the ocean for mammals whose main occupation is finding fish to eat. The presence of sea lions in the area is natural. It’s the fish farms that need to change.”
Creative removed guns from its sites after FOCS discovered a mass grave of sea lions shot at their farms in 2000. The company owns six of the 24 salmon farm licenses in Clayoquot Sound. The others are owned largely by Mainstream, which employs both guns and predator nets to deter sea mammals from feeding on fish in the open net pens. More than 5000 sea lions and seals have been killed by fish farms in BC since 1990, according to the government Marine Mammal Predator Control Statistics.
“What we see happening deeply concerns us,” Tuttle said. “Wild animals are dying for an industry that is inherently unsustainable and that is damaging to marine ecosystems and animals.” Other environmental impacts of fish farming are concentration of fish diseases and parasites, the use of toxics, pollution from fish feces and over-fishing to make feed pellets, which contributes to the decline in ocean health internationally.
Friends of Clayoquot Sound advocate for fish farms to be legislated to closed-containment systems.
For information Celina Tuttle, Friends of Clayoquot Sound, tel: 250-725-4218, www.focs.ca
Friends of Clayoquot Sound
PO Box 489, 331 Neill St., Tofino BC V0R 2Z0
Tel: 250-725-4218 Fax: 250-725-2527
Email: info@focs.ca
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