B.C. biologist Morton may soon give up her campaign
By Robert Barron, The Daily NewsMay 6, 2011
After almost two decades campaigning against open-net fish farms on B.C.'s coasts, biologist Alexandra Morton said Thursday that she is nearly ready to throw in the towel.
Speaking at the Association of Professional Biologists conference being held in Nanaimo this week, Morton said she feels she has "failed" in her efforts to change government policies and industry regulations to make the controversial fish farms more environmentally friendly.
Morton said that with the election of a majority Conservative government in Ottawa, which she claims is in support of the fish farm industry, she can't see how she can continue her campaign.
However, Clare Backman, a spokesman for Marine Harvest Canada, a major fish farm company in the province, told delegates the industry has significantly changed since fish farming began in earnest in B.C. in the 1980s.
He said operational standards and environmental regulations at the 134 farms now in operation along the province's coasts have become much more stringent over the years and the negative impacts they have on the environment and wild fish are increasingly "minimal."
"I just don't know what else I can do," Morton told the Daily News.
"My efforts to try and save the wild salmon seem to be impossible. I'm broke and I have to survive. Once my work with the Cohen Commission is completed, I intend to reassess what's good for Alexandra and my family."
Morton moved to B.C.'s Broughton Archipelago in the early 1980s to study killer whales, but the growing proliferation of fish farms in the area led her to study their impacts on their surrounding environments, particularly wild salmon populations.
After conducting her own research and collaborating it with other scientists, Morton began a campaign to tighten up the regulations that govern the farms and for the industry to move away from using open-net pens to closed containment systems so they have no impact on wild salmon.
Backman said Marine Harvest Canada has been experimenting with closed-containment farming systems, but they are still a long way from being commercially competitive due to the high costs of energy and water usage in their systems.
He said it will likely be many years before they are fully developed.
Morton said she sometimes feels sorry that she went to the Broughton Archipelago in the first place.
"The research myself and others have done doesn't seem to be acceptable and our calls for the separation of wild and farmed salmon doesn't happen," she said.
"I'll continue to bring these concerns to the public for now, but I find the process these days to be extremely depressing."
