The way the B.C. government and the province’s fish farm industry do business you’d expect them to be guarding nuclear secrets, not salmon tissue samples. Yet, time and time again, they break out the cloak and dagger routine, twisting themselves up in knots to prevent industry information – specifically about disease and sea lice infestations on farms – from being made public. The question is why? (more…)
Farmed and Dangerous Blog
Posts Tagged ‘sea lice’
Time for DFO to stand up and deliver
Monday, August 23rd, 2010A report from the “epicentre” of the sea louse controversy in Canada
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010I recently spent a week in the Broughton Archipelago monitoring wild juvenile salmon as part of a collaborative endeavor between CAAR, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, independent scientists and all the salmon farming companies operating in the Broughton Archipelago. It’s a very unique project, bringing government, NGOs, scientists and corporations together to assess recent farm management changes on the incidence of lice on wild juvenile salmon. (more…)
Canadian scientist exposes DFO sea lice research biases
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010Neil Frazer, a science professor at the University of Hawaii who has been carefully following the BC salmon farming issue for many years, was recently part of a delegation to Norway to meet with top management at Cermaq, the parent company for Mainstream Canada. Mainstream is the second largest salmon farm company operating in BC. (more…)
Sea lice and Fraser River sockeye: understanding the issues
Thursday, June 17th, 2010In addition to the sea lice research that CAAR is actively undertaking in the Broughton Archipelago Monitoring Program (BAMP), CAAR members have also been studying patterns of sea lice infections on juvenile Fraser River sockeye. (more…)
Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture: more speculation than science
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010Recently, the salmon aquaculture industry and news outlets have been promoting a new approach to salmon farming called Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA), meaning that several marine species are raised in the same operation, such as mussels that eat the waste from salmon raised in open-net pens. This approach allows salmon farm companies to increase and diversify their product sales while using the same open-net cage technology and inputs. This new business approach also comes with claims that it will alleviate the impacts that salmon farms have on the marine environment, even going so far as to claim that problems like sea lice can be controlled. (more…)
Government-held sea lice data to be made public in BC
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010After a six-year battle, CAAR member group T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation along with Ecojustice won a Freedom of Information case to gain access to data collected by the British Columbia government on sea lice and disease levels at specific salmon farms. (more…)
