Wild fish decline in the presence of fish farms

Re: “Farmed salmon ease pressure on wild stocks,” letter, Oct. 20.

Fish farms don’t save wild fish; they kill wild fish. Research in B.C., the U.K., Norway and other places shows that wild salmonids decline 50 per cent in their presence.

Fish farms kill lots of other wild fish, too. The Sea Around Us report says 19 of the top 20 global forage fish stocks — jack mackerel in Chile, for example — have been fished ruinously to make fish feed.

In an industry the size of B.C.’s, 5.76 billion forage fish are killed to bring one crop to harvest. For each farmed salmon, 113 forage fish are killed. B.C. is only 8.5 per cent the size of Norway’s industry, and that is just one of a dozen countries. The reality is that fish farms kill trillions of wild-stock fish.

And the sewage cost of fish farms in B.C. is huge — $10.4 billion in damage that we taxpayers don’t want to pay.

Sorry, the Cohen Commission doesn’t agree with the letter-writer. It said fish farms cause damage, and fish farms are to come out of the Quadra area in 2020, in the absence of more proof, as in the precautionary principle. It also calls for the conflict of interest of supporting fish farms to be taken out of Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

D.C. Reid Victoria

MARINE HARVEST CANADA Atlantic salmon swim in a pen at a B.C. fish farm. A letter-writer suggests ocean-based fish farms are harmful to wild salmon stocks and should be outlawed.