Editor:
Re: Federal salmon inquiry (Coast Reporter, April 9).
This article brought to mind something I read a few years ago regarding open net fish farming in Norway that was suspected of causing a depletion of wild stocks.
The questions of closed containment on land was suggested as a cure and the government was giving it serious consideration. It was later I read that a ban was placed on any expansion of open net fish farms.
It was probably around that time that Norwegian fish farms expanded to Canada's West Coast. I listened to the Raif Mair CKNW program of fish farming where Alexandra Morton, fish biologist, was interviewed on a number of occasions. I believe Ms. Morton lives in an area where there are a number of open net farms and has seen first-hand the depletion of the wild salmon runs. I would take the word of Ms. Morton over anyone in the fish farming industry.
A former Norwegian cabinet minister who was at one time head of Norway's wild salmon commission, George Reiber-Mohn, has long been a critic of open net fish farming. He has been quoted as saying that he hopes B.C. and Canada can learn the lessons of Norway that open net fish farms can probably never successfully co-exist with wild salmon populations. He also stated that their error was giving the salmon industry too much freedom.
I think the provincial and federal governments would be criminally stupid to allow open net farms to continue.
Edwin S. Keeling
Sechelt
