Thursday, October 6, 2011

Yellow salmon



Have you ever seen a bright yellow salmon before? With shock and horror, I give you one.

This photo was taken yesterday by Dr. Alexandra Morton and activist Anissa Reed on the banks of the Fraser river.

They found several such dead yellow fish yesterday during a field trip. Those salmon clearly died of jaundice. And when Alex opened one fish, she found a severely diseased liver, one which appeared to be covered with tumor-like growths.

Don't eat that liver!

What is causing this deadly disease in so many of our salmon? Is it a virus? We don’t know. But we need to find out, right now.

Dr. Kristi Miller, the DFO researcher whose work has been recently published in the journal Science, has discovered a candidate virus which may be causing cancer and anemia in wild salmon. Yet last month, it was revealed at the Cohen Commission that she has been denied funding by DFO to test Atlantic salmon in fish farms for her virus. She was asking for $18,750 – a pittance in research terms – yet her DFO hierarchy told her that they didn’t have the money!

Why is DFO doing this? Why is it pretending that it does not have twenty thousand dollars to conduct critical tests on salmon disease? Why would it say that, when it was also revealed at the Commission that the federal government has given $145,000 to the fish farm industry to conduct “research” on how to make farmed salmon more palatable to the end consumer?

Pre-spawn death

As yellow salmon are dying on the banks of the Fraser, this DFO charade must stop. The people of this Province demand that viral tests be performed on fish farms - right now. Not next year. Not next month. Now.


WTF are those whitish growths in that salmon's gills?!

6 comments:

  1. I know it is the fish farms. Farms are not a part of the natural marine environment. Remove them.! This is what i honestly feel, needs to be done.

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  2. $18,500? That's not too hard to get. Put me in contact with this person needing that bit of research money, I'll help them run an online social media crowd funding campaign on indiegogo. They could have that easily given the number of people concerned about fish stocks and fish farms in BC. Since the Government is choking the granting bodies it's time to move outside the granting body system. Go right to the people.

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  3. Hey Marcus, get in touch with me

    ivan.doumenc@gmail.com

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  4. Thanks Ivan.......just heard DFO is cutting more funding. Heard good news about the adams having a good showing at this point. Lets hope they all spawn. Thank-you Marcus for your support. Lets hope there are lots of wild salmon lovers.

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  5. This has to stop DFO I want to know who is there higher up`s & why do they have so much power , who is there yes- no decision makers. The wild fish didn`t get these disease`s for no reason..! There needs to be answers to the questions that are put forth. DFO`s mandate is mismanagement, we need to go to the highest gov does anyone want to start a petition,I believe we can get answer at the next level. Speak there language write there language black & white is powerful with a stroke of a pen we can change things!

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  6. Any update on the situation? It's been two years and I haven't heard anything since.

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