Not taking it lying down

A friend of ours, a marine biologist who once worked at Kejimkujik, used to work at a fish farm in New Brunswick. He said if you ever saw what they did there, you’d never eat farmed salmon.

Fish farms coop up thousands of fish in floating nets, where they feed and produce excrement. The nearest example on land would be a cattle feed lot, and you might expect a protest if one were proposed for next to the Halifax Public Gardens. Yet that is happening here in Queens County, and people are refusing to take it lying down.

Anyone who has ever spent a day at the Kejimkujik Seaside Adjunct, at Thomas Raddall Provincial Park or relaxed on Summerville, Carter’s or White Point beaches, knows that this is a special area with unparalleled beauty. Now a New Brunswick company wants to establish a huge, 29-hectare fish farm in their bay, just west of Port Mouton Island.

Here’s what’s wrong with the idea. Fish farms can pollute the water and beaches around them. Excrement plus feed not eaten by the fish build up both underneath the cages and in the water, adding not only the filth to the water but unwanted nitrogen and phosphorous as well. One study in British Columbia showed that the farmed salmon waste produced there in 2000 put as much nitrogen in the water as the untreated sewage from over a half million people.

Further, jamming all of those fish together creates the likelihood of diseases, which are treated in fish farms with antibiotics and disinfectants. Combined with the pesticides used for sea lice and the additives to fish feed, these chemicals find their way to the water. And the feed itself, if for salmon, is made up of other fish like mackerel, sardines and anchovies, putting pressure on those species.

Finally, the fish don’t all stay in the nets. It is estimated in Norway that well over a million fish escape each year. These are fish bred for growth, not intelligence or the ability to spawn, and they can overwhelm the native fish territories. And they travel long distances. Escaped Atlantic salmon from BC fish farms have been caught in Alaska.

Opposition to the fish farm is growing rapidly. The Queens Region is against it, and a large number of county residents have formed the Friends of Port Mouton Bay, which is leading the fight against the farm.

Queens MLA Vicki Conrad has taken the battle to the floor of the legislative assembly. She told the legislature that the Friends group had gathered over 1800 signatures in opposition to the fish farm and asked the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, Ron Chisholm, why he wouldn’t listen to the people in and around Port Mouton Bay and deny the application.

When Chisholm replied that his department would make a decision after the review process was completed, Ms. Conrad said her constituents did not have faith in the review process. I will add that their lack of faith has solid grounds. Just down the coast at the eastern edge of Lunenburg County, the people of Northwest Cove went to war to prevent a fish farm from being established in that idyllic spot, but lost.

The David Suzuki Foundation summed it up this way: “Worldwide, open net-cage fish farming industries use publicly owned coastal waters to support what are essentially intensive private feedlot operations that dump drug-laced sewage into the ocean. Governments looking for new opportunities in rural, economically depressed coastal areas often have encouraged the industry. But increasingly, citizens are questioning if any benefits are offset by the alarming array of environmental, social, economic and health costs.�

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Shortly after midnight on the Saturday night of the Music Nova Scotia festival in Liverpool, I found myself standing on the shore by Lane’s Privateer Inn looking across at the town. With the music of people like Jill Barber, J.P. Cormier, Charlie A’Court and Dave Gunning echoing in my ears, I saw harbour water that was like glass, the lights reflecting magically in the warm night.

It doesn’t surprise me that this was the most successful music festival MNS has ever had. Liverpool was a perfect venue, and I expect other organizations will sit up and take notice.

Tom Sheppard can be reached at tsheppar@ca.inter.net