A massive lice outbreak at several fish farms on the west coast of Vancouver Island is killing wild baby salmon, which will have devastating effects on nearby forests and the region’s ecotourism industry, say conservationists.
The warning comes as test results show that salmon at several fish farms in Clayoquot Sound, near Tofino, are infected by up to 30 lice.
That’s 10 times higher than the mandated limit, which stipulates when farmed salmon need to be treated. The limit is in place so lice populations don’t get out of control and start infecting wild baby salmon as they swim past the farms.
LINK (via: The Star Vancouver)
Meanwhile, eastwards across the vast width of continental north America then still further eastwards across a few thousand more miles of Atlantic Ocean, others are having the same problem with farmed fish sea lice literally eating any passing little salmon or sea-trout smolt alive, causing historic runs of returning adult fish to crash in local rivers, a good many of which have long drawn large numbers of high-spending visiting fishers, but are increasingly now becoming not much of a fishing option. A new campaign was launched the other dayon this side of The Pond to encourage Scotland’s law-makers to cease choosing what at best are a very few hundred remote areas salmon-farming jobs (plus tax revenues from a very fishy farmed product sold) over what Scotland is famous for worldwide – wild rivers run by good numbers of wild, Atlantic “Scotch” salmon. But can you convince such well-suited and -booted and -financially remunerated Edinburgh-based political wallahs….? It remains to be seen.
https://www.salmon-trout.org/2018/04/26/demand-for-immediate-moratorium-on-salmon-farm-expansion/