Greenpeace has been actively campaigning against open cage fish farms for decades.
Greenpeace has opposed open net cage fish farms for over a
decade. The international environmental organization began
campaigning for strict aquaculture standards in the early 1990s
when Norwegian rivers were being poisoned with Rotenone to kill
escaped farm salmon and the shrimp aquaculture industry was rapidly
devouring tropical mangrove ecosystems.
Unfortunately, despite these global lessons, fish farms have
been introduced in the Great Bear Rainforest and permits for more
farms are being handed out like raffle tickets. The ecological
impact of these farms include the spread of sea lice and disease to
wild salmon and the escape of the non-native Atlantic salmon into
habitat normally used by wild stock.
Greenpeace is not alone in its opposition to open net fish
farms, and we were recently invited to the traditional territory of
the Musgamagw-Tsawataineuk First Nation in the coastal rainforest
to help them with their struggle against the farms.
A growing body of evidence implicates the fish farms in the most
significant crash of pink salmon ever witnessed in this area. Of
the 3.6 million pink salmon that migrated out of the streams in
this part of the Great Bear Rainforest, only 147,000 were counted
returning to spawn in 2002 (Canadian Department of Fisheries and
Oceans, 2002)
Profits from salmon farms in the Great Bear Rainforest primarily
line the pockets of international corporations while those that
rely on the rich traditional food source of wild salmon suffer.