Marine Harvest Pleads Guilty - alexandra morton

Marine Harvest Pleads Guilty - alexandra morton
As people from the Broughton Archipelago, where the crimes occurred, Alert Bay, Sointula, and Port Hardy looked on Marine Harvest pleaded guilty to charges related to illegal possession of wild fish. Marine Harvest made the unprecedented move to avert the 4 - day trial that had been scheduled.
At issue were juvenile pink salmon, almost certainly from Glendale River that ended up falling out of a huge bucket moving Atlantic salmon broodstock into a truck and 3cm herring that ended up in the farm salmon dump in Beaver Cove.
While flawed in many ways, this case made history twice over. It was the first time a private prosecution has ever been taken over and run by the Department of Justice to its conclusion and it is the first time the Norwegian salmon farming industry has been charged for taking wild fish. I would like to thank Todd Gerhart of the Department of Justice for taking this all the way...
Chief Bob "O'wadi" Chamberlin of one of the Broughton Tribes had this to say today: Marine Harvest convicted and fined for "incidental catch" of Wild Salmon smolts & Herring. DFO "missed" this in their monitoring of this Industry. I am not a statitician... But I believe it highly improbable, if not impossible, that this was the 1st & only time incidental catch occurred. Which points to monitoring gaps within the regulations, license conditions and operational policies.
Sea Lice impacts on Wild Salmon, Disease impacts on Wild Salmon, Incidental catch of Wild Salmon smolts, Herring "tonnage" as incidental catch..... Low Wild Salmon & Herring stock numbers! We need to establish our own Monitoring and Wild species protection measures...
Cermaq's lawyer: "Mr Staniford is turning this case into a Commission of Inquiry into Norwegian owned salmon farming worldwide."beg to differ with Cermaq this is all about salmon farming practices, about killing BC fish and wildlife, about the enormous weight of this worldwide industry bearing down on individuals and communities. In Broughton we were told this industry would be good for us. Well it is not. We have 27 Norwegian fish feedlots and our school is closed, there are 9 people left. The perverse thing is, this industry still can't make a go of it. Yesterday, an Intrafish article says Marine Harvest is "downsizing" laying off 60 people in BC, closing 10 farms temporarily because there is too much farm salmon on the market. Marine Harvest hopes the situation improves in two years.
What are we doing? Risking everything for an industry so greedy and out of control it is hurting itself now. Thank you to the people in this picture we stood together and witnessed history - may it be the turning of this tide back to the people and this amazing place we live in.