Ottawa must immediately freeze new licences for salmon farms in the Discovery Islands, remove the promotion of fish farming from Department of Fisheries and Ocean (DFO)’s purview and implement and properly fund a wild salmon policy that was only half-heartedly adopted in 2005.
Those are some of the more important of the recommendations of Justice Bruce Cohen’s long-awaited west coast fishery report, tabled in the House of Commons Wednesday.
Cohen also recommends that DFO work to eliminate the so-called “derby style” approach to commercial fishing – a move sure to anger many fishermen – and get a clearer definition of the native food, social and ceremonial fishery.
Cohen’s report is the product of a $26 million inquiry struck by the Stephen Harper government in 2009 to probe the collapse of the 2009 Fraser River sockeye run.
Only 1.3 million fish returned that year. The very next year, however, B.C. saw one of the largest runs in a century – 29 million fish.
After months of testimony and reams of scientific data, Cohen concluded there is no single “smoking gun” that could explain either the 2009 collapse or the 2010 rebound, although he said there was little question that climate change and warming ocean and river temperatures were one of many stressors salmon face in their four-year life cycle.
He also concluded that there is strong evidence to support the notion that diseases from fish farms along the migration routes of salmon can pass to wild stocks.
Among his recommendations is an analysis of fish farm sites in wild salmon migration routes, followed by their removal and relocation if evidence is found that they pose a risk of spreading disease.
Stewart Hawthorn, a board member with the BC Salmon Farmers Association, said there are only five salmon farms in the Discovery Islands areas, out of a total of about 70 province-wide.
“He’s got a particular concern around the Discovery Islands area requiring some additional research, and we are very supportive of that,” he said.
