Morton fills Civic Centre

Brad Bird
January 30, 2010
Oceanside Star

Close to 600 people packed the main hall in the Civic Centre Saturday to hear and see the leader of the fight to save wild salmon, Alexandra Morton. And she didn't disappoint.

Inspired perhaps by the standing ovation she got in the Qualicum Beach facility before she even began, Morton delivered a strongly worded indictment of the effects fish farms are having on wild salmon stocks in B.C. and the world over.

But she had good news for most of those present, saying the farms - which spread fish-killing lice and disease - contain the seeds of their own destruction. "The fish farms themselves are killing themselves off," she said. "They're shutting themselves down."

It would be nice if fish farms and wild salmon could co-exist, she said, for the sake of the people working the farms, but the science shows it can't be done. The wild salmon, which she called the lifeblood of the west coast, won't survive unless open-net farms cease to operate.

Closed-containment farming on land can work, in her view.

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