CONTACT: Darlene
Schanfald, Vice-Chair
Sierra Club North
Olympic Group
360-681-7565 darlenes@olympus.net
INDUSTRIAL AQUACULTURE
FOOD or FOLLY? LOSING THE WILD?
Saturday 13 October 2018 3–5 PM
Historic Dungeness Schoolhouse
2781 Towne Rd, Just
off E. Anderson Road
Sequim, WA
The Sierra Club’s North Olympic Group and the Sierra Club ChapterWater Salmon Committee invites the public to join them for this important forum
about how our oceans are being commercialized for the few and the losses that
follow.
We are pleased to have the following speakers present their work
from years of experience.
Kurt Beardslee, Executive Director, Wild Fish Conservancy
(WFC)
The
Success of the Our Sound, Our Salmon Campaign: Phasing Out Atlantic Salmon
Aquaculture in Puget Sound.
Kurt Beardslee is the executive director and
co-founder of the Wild Fish Conservancy. For over a decade Kurt and his
science staff have investigated the substantial risk open-water Atlantic salmon
aquaculture places on the Pacific Northwest’s wild salmon.
In spring of 2017, WFC launched the Our Sound,Our Salmon (OSOS) campaign with the goal of phasing out Atlantic salmon net
pens from Puget Sound. The OSOS campaign was fundamental to the passage
of Washington’s recent net pen legislation marking the largest legislative removal
of Atlantic salmon net pens in the world.
Following the 2017 Cypress Island collapse of Cooke Aquaculture pens that released 260,000 penned Atlantic salmon into the
wild, WFC staff collected tissue samples from the escapees for that revealed
100% positive test results for Piscine Reovirus (PRV), a highly contagious and
debilitating salmonid disease. Genetic sequencing revealed the virus to be of
Icelandic origin marking the first time this foreign strain of the virus was
found in Pacific waters.
Laura Hendricks, Founding Director Coalition To Protect Puget Sound Habitat. Shellfish and Disappearing Beaches
Over the last 11 years, Laura
Hendricks’s Coalition has educated the public and regulators on shellfish
aquaculture’s harm to WA State’s marine life. Hendricks represented citizens
against the shellfish industry at a hearing before the Washington State
Shorelines Hearings Board and won the case to protect eelgrass, a WA State
Appeals Court precedent-setting case.
Hendricks will give an
update about pending legal action by the Coalition to Protect Puget Sound
Habitat, Protect Zangle Cove, and Wild Fish Conservancy filed against the WA Department
of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). That suit
demands an end to WDFW’s exemption of industrial shellfish aquaculture projects
from Hydraulic Project Approvals (HPA). HPAs
are state standards designed and required to protect fish and marine
habitats.
“With threatened
Southern Resident killer whales and endangered native salmon at extreme risk,
our state agencies have failed to implement the environmental protections that
are critical to the broad scale ecological recovery of Puget Sound,” says Patrick
Townsend, president of Protect Zangle Cove. “The action we are taking
today is one important step toward restoring sanity to the recovery process. We
must protect the tidelands from further loss of ecological function or we will
see the loss of iconic species so important to the people of Washington
State.”
Alfredo
Quarto, Co-director and Co-founder of Mangrove Action Project (MAP)
Question
Your Shrimp, A consumer Awareness Campaign
For
twenty-five years, Alfredo Quarto has worked with indigenous cultures around
the world helping them restore their mangrove forests and way of life, prior to
corporations having destroyed their ecosystems to industrialize the raising of
shrimp. He will have a short video about these villages and mangrove trees.
Quarto
is a veteran campaigner with over 40 years of experience in organizing and
writing on the environment and human rights issues. Formerly an aerospace engineer, his
experiences range over many countries and several environmental organizations,
with a long-term focus on ocean issues, forestry, indigenous cultures, and
human rights. Prior to MAP, he was the
executive director of the Ancient Forest Chautauqua, a multimedia traveling
forum with events in 30 West Coast cities on behalf of old-growth forests and
indigenous dwellers.
Anne Mosness has been tracking the federal NOAA
Department of Commerce in its push to raise penned salmon in offshore waters,
beyond jurisdictions and regulations of states.
She will speak on the current pending efforts, and losses, of such
government efforts. The public will hear about the recent Center for Food Safety legal win for fishing and public interest groups that challenged the Department of
Commerce's rules permitting industrial aquaculture offshore in U.S. federal
waters.
Anne Mosness is a fisherwoman that fished Copper River and Bristol
Bay, Alaska for decades, a multi-general family profession. She secured a position with the Institute for
Agriculture and Trade Policy and founded the Go Wild Campaign. She has worked
for several other national environmental and food organizations, received a
fellowship from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, represented US fisheries at UN
forums and Slow Food/Slow Fish conferences in Italy, and other global and
national events focused on sustainable foods and fishing, seafood labeling,
organic certification, marine ecosystem health. Anne has been a long time
contributor to the Puget Consumer Coop’s Sound Consumer magazine. Her latest article in the PCC magazine isentitled, "Wild salmon, killerwhales and us" published July, 2018.
Cosponsoring the event are Friends of Miller Peninsula State
Park, Olympic Environmental Coalition, Olympic Forest Coalition. and Protect
Peninsula’s Future.
The October 13 event is free. Handouts from the sponsoring and presenting
organizations will be available. Coffee
and tea will be served.
