In December, Federal Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan ruled salmon factory farms in the Discovery Islands would have to close by June 2022. That left the fingerlings and juvenile salmon in those pens with nowhere to go.
Cermaq, one of the big factory fish farm companies, shot back. They asked to move 1.5 million feedlot fish to its Venture Point and Brent island sites north of Campbell River between Quadra and Sonora Islands.
They also wanted to extend their license until 2023. The federal government turned them down.
Apparently Cermaq isn’t finished yet.
Like asking Mom after Dad said no, Cermaq has now gone to the federal court to see if the courts will overturn the decision.
Cermaq says they want to transfer their fish to these two sites so they can humanely grow them out. Otherwise they’ll have to do what Mowi did, which was to kill a million of their fish.
The federal court hearing happened June 28, but we won’t get a decision until October.
Most of the factory fish farms in the Discovery Islands were closed this spring. Local people who study wild salmon and sea lice found that, this year, the wild salmon swimming through the Islands had almost no sea lice on them.
Cermaq seems more interested in continuing their operations, than the health of wild stocks.
