BC Salmon Farm Impacts on Wild Salmon to be Investigated by Alexandra Morton and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

The Martin Sheen

Undercurrent News reports that biologist Alexandra Morton and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society will begin a weeks long investigation of salmon farms in the northern area of the Salish Sea. Through use of Society's vessel, The Martin Sheen, Ms. Morton will audit and monitor salmon farms along the migration route of the wild salmon leaving and returning to the Fraser River along the eastern shoreline of Vancouver Island.

Salmon Net Pen Locations

and Routes of The Martin Sheen

and Wild Salmon

Along the route Ms. Morton will be looking for impacts from these pens of concentrated populations of salmon and risks those impacts pose to wild salmon.* Testing will look specifically at the plumes flowing down current from these structures, measuring concentrations of parasitic sea lice, Piscine reovirus, ISA virus, and Salmon alphavirus (see here for a discussion of the virus and their impacts).

*most farmed salmon are non-native with genetically modified species ("frankenfish") having been recently approved

Decades of research leave little doubt to the risks these operations pose to the wild populations of salmon. In Puget Sound there is a press by industry to expand these operations, putting at risk the native salmon runs. Marketing efforts which claim farmed salmon lessen pressure on wild salmon ignore the risks Ms. Morton continues to elevate.

Ms. Morton has spearheaded the effort to bring to light the risks posed by what has been marketed as a benign operation. You can help Ms. Morton on this page or the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society on this page. Get involved. Tell your seafood buyer to stop buying salmon farmed in open water net pens.