Alaska worried by expanded Canadian fish farming
Date: 03-May-02
Country: USA
British Columbia fisheries minister said this week the Canadian province was aware of its neighbor's complaints, but would begin accepting applications to build more facilities for raising salmon in off-shore pens once its new environmental regulations were finalized - likely within the next few weeks.
The fish farms are illegal in Alaska, and Gov. Tony Knowles has issued a public plea to British Columbia to continue a seven-year moratorium on expanding an industry that he described as dangerous to the wild salmon fishery.
"What's at stake is the survival of a resource and an industry that is fundamental to our way of life," Knowles told reporters in Juneau on Tuesday where he met with fishing community representatives and environmentalists.
Knowles said he understands British Columbia's desire to stimulate its sputtering coastal economy, but said expanding salmon farms will cause more harm than good.
The Democratic governor has no plans yet for any legal challenges to the farms' expansion. For now, he said, he hopes to mobilize public opinion in Canada and the United States in favor of maintaining the moratorium.
Most farms use species of Atlantic salmon that are better suited to being raised in pens, but environmentalists say fish that escape into the wild can spread disease, compete for food and possibly displace indigenous Pacific stocks.
Alaska Fish and Game Commissioner Frank Rue said farmed Atlantic salmon from Canada have been found as far away as the Bering Sea off the northern state's west coast. "The history of exotic species throughout the world is terrible," Rue said.
B.C. Fisheries Minister John van Dongen said studies in both Canada and the United State had found no evidence that Atlantic salmon can breed and establish populations in the wild off the Pacific Coast.
Salmon have long been a source of conflict between Alaska and British Columbia, which both have major salmon fishing industries and share many of the wild stocks.
In the 1990s, Canada accused Alaska of contributing to a decline in several of the region's stocks of chinook, coho and other key species by overfishing as the salmon headed to Canadian rivers to spawn.
Van Dongen suggested Knowles comments were motivated in part by the complaints of Alaska fishermen who like their counterparts in Canada have seen prices depressed by competition from farm-raised salmon from Chile, Norway and Canada.
"I'm not discounting the environmental concerns, but their is an economic element too," van Dongen said.
