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Advocates called for the complete closure of five open-net salmon farms in the Northern Georgia Straight Tuesday to protect migrating juvenile wild salmon from being infected by sea lice.
“It’s increasingly clear that wild and farmed salmon cannot share the same water and that actually farmed salmon should not be grown in the wild at all,” said Ruby Berry of the Georgia Straight Alliance.
Berry hopes the removal of the farms will reduce the level of sea lice and pathogen risk in an effort to positively impact the mortality rates of the young fish.
Studies of sea lice infection levels of juvenille wild salmon in the region have shown the fish host more sea lice near the farms rather than far from the farms, according to Corey Peet with the David Suzuki Foundation.
The Coastal Alliance For Aquaculture Reform believes a transition to closed-containment fish farming is essential to protecting salmon stock.
In a prepared statement, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans contends, “scientists [working in the Broughton Archipelago] have determined that virtually no mortality due to sea lice occurs in juvenile pink salmon of 0.7 grams or more in weight, and established the threshold level of sea lice that fish smaller than this weight can carry with no mortality.”