No difference in wild pink salmon returns whether near are far away from salmon farms
Letter submitted to the editor;
Nanaimo Daily Times, August 18, 2011
If Alexandra Morton is reviewing her own research on salmon farming to present to the Cohen Commission later this month (Biologist Morton decides to fight on, August 16, 2011), I hope she doesn’t forget to include her latest study she penned in late 2010 which concluded “the survival of the pink salmon cohort (in the Broughton Archipelago) was not statistically different from a reference region without salmon farms.”
That’s right, no difference in wild pink salmon returns whether near are far away from salmon farms.
I fear she might have forgotten about this one, because it’s not mentioned on any of her websites…
Greg Gibson
Comox
Reference Link:
Sea lice dispersion and salmon survival in relation to salmon farm activity in the Broughton Archipelago
Oxford Journal, Ices Journal of Marine Science, October 2010
Alexandra Morton1, Rick Routledge2, Amy McConnell3 and Martin Krkošek1,4,*†
...The survival of the pink salmon cohort was not statistically different from a reference region without salmon farms.
http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/10/09/icesjms.fsq146.abstract
Greg responded to the following News Article:
Biologist Morton decides to fight on
By Robert Barron, Daily News August 16, 2011
While acknowledging that's she's "exhausted" from almost 20 years of campaigning against open-net fish farms on B.C.'s coasts, biologist Alexandra Morton said she has decided to continue the fight to the end.
Morton is scheduled to testify Sept. 7-8 in Vancouver at the Cohen Commission inquiry into the cause of the disastrous decline of the 2009 Fraser River sockeye salmon.
She told the Daily News in May that she felt she had "failed" in her efforts to change government policies and industry regulations to make the controversial fish farms more environmentally friendly, and would "reassess" her campaign after she gave her testimony at the Cohen Commission inquiry.
But she said from her home in B.C.'s Broughton Archipelago Monday that she will "continue indefinitely" to fight for the cause, despite the lack of progress in convincing Ottawa and the industry to move away from using open-net pens to closed containment systems so they have no impact on wild salmon.
But farming supporters maintain that the industry has significantly changed since the farms began in earnest in B.C. in the 1980s. They claim operational standards and environmental regulations at the 134 farms now in operation along the province's coasts have become much more stringent over the years and the negative impacts they have on the environment and wild fish are increasingly "minimal."
"I really just want all of this to be over with so I can get back to what I originally moved to the Broughton Archipelago to do many years ago, which is to study whales and dolphins in that area," Morton said.
"I don't think a lot of people realize that I'm not an environmental group, but just an individual who is concerned about what's going on the waters around B.C. and I'm not getting paid by anyone for my efforts.
The public needs a clearer view of what's going on with this issue and I'm going to continue in my efforts to get my message to the people."
Morton moved to B.C.'s Broughton Archipelago in the early 1980s to study killer whales, but the growing proliferation of fish farms in the area led her to study their impacts on their surrounding environments, particularly wild salmon populations.
After conducting her own research and collaborating with other scientists, Morton began her long campaign to tighten up the regulations that govern the farms.
"I've spent the last nine months plowing through all of my research and documents and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to tell the commission what I know compared to what the industry and government has been saying," she said.
"I was feeling pretty down and exhausted the last time I was interviewed by (the Daily News), but I've decided that it's not time for me to give up the campaign yet."
