Letters: Fish farming story no more than PR

Editor: 

Bravo to the fish farming syndicate. What a public relations coup, “Sunshine Coast Trial launches new semi-closed fish farm technology” Keili Bartlett, staff writer tells all the positives about the new technology early in the article. Oops, water and pathogen exchange will still occur, farmed fish will do so much better protected from wild fish. Effluent will still flow out of the pens into the wild. And the cost, how benevolent can Grieg Seafoods be. Long-time Coastal resident fishers like myself sure used to take for granted the myriads of wild fish offering themselves to us for modest cost and admit ably superb recreation. We also used “best practices.” There was such abundance that it was unlikely to do harm. Well that all came to an end, during the late 1980s. A sudden crash in abundance of coho and chinook and a proliferation of salmon farming in sháshíshálem (the shíshálh language) lékw’émin (Jervis Inlet) all the waters that drain from it. Excuse me if articles like this make me gag. What appears to be no more than a paid advertisement posing as a news article. Few problems solved except for farm fish, great graphics a fine public relations expose. Some of us still have hope that biodiversity and abundance can recover on the B.C. Coast. 

John R. Dafoe 
Coastwise Guide and Consulting 
Halfmoon Bay