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Tourism Operators Pressure Salmon Farms
By The Canadian Press
A group of British Columbia business owners took out a full-page ad in the first section of a national newspaper last Friday, hoping to pressure the provincial government to force changes in the salmon farming industry.
The group of wilderness tourism operators, sport and commercial fishermen, seafood processors and concerned residents says open pen fish farms must be moved away from juvenile salmon migration routes along the B.C. coast.
The ad, addressed to Premier Gordon Campbell and the provincial and federal ministers of fisheries, is entitled “The Future of B.C. Salmon Is In Your Hands” and ran in Friday's national edition of the Globe and Mail newspaper.
Craig Murray, owner of Nimmo Bay Resort on the northeastern tip of Vancouver Island, notes fish farming is worth $600 million to the B.C. economy, but wilderness tourism and fishing combined bring in more than $1.6 billion.
There is concern that juvenile salmon heading out to the ocean past sea lice-infested open-pen fish farms in Georgia Strait become infested by the lice and eventually die.
The launch of the ad coincides with the unveiling of the SaveBCsalmon.ca website offering an online petition urging the relocation of fish farms away from wild salmon migration routes.
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Source:
Westcoaster.ca
Nov. 12, 2007
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