Voices for Wild Salmon echoes around the World on Oceans Day

Salmon Are Sacred is marking World Oceans Day today by issuing a global call to the wild salmon people of the world: ‘Salmon Feedlots: Get Out of Our Ocean’.

The ‘Voices for Wild Salmon’ campaign has been launched in Canada with expectations of 100,000 supporters by August when the ‘Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River’ will investigate the impact of infectious diseases from salmon feedlots on wild salmon.

The first voices were collected last month in Roberts Creek, in the form of signed salmon postcards and support is flooding in with paper salmon being delivered via email, hand and mail. When we are 100,000 strong these paper fish will continue the ‘Get Out Migration’ travelling to the BC Parliament in Victoria, the Cohen Inquiry in Vancouver, House of Commons in Ottawa, Norwegian Parliament in Oslo and to the head offices of the Norwegian-owned salmon farming companies harming wild salmon.

“Salmon Are Sacred is calling on people to take a stand for their fish, if we remain invisible BC salmon will increasingly be managed from Norwegian boardrooms,” said Alexandra Morton who recently finished her ‘Mayday for Wild Salmon’ tour. “Wild Pacific salmon – the people’s icon of British Columbia – are being killed by salmon feedlots and government is standing by and just letting it happen. It is the same around the world. If we want wild salmon the factory fish feedlots must be removed from the ocean. It is extremely foolish to allow this industry on the Fraser River migration corridor.”

“The Wild Salmon People’s voices will be heard loud and clear,” said Anissa Reed of Salmon Are Sacred who is organizing this paper salmon migration. “85% of people in BC – that’s over 3.6 million – want wild Pacific salmon but their voices are not being heard. DFO considers the public’s negative feelings about salmon feedlots a ‘crisis’ and the industry keeps hitting with million dollar ad campaigns to gain favor while they continue to spread disease with their foreign farmed salmon.

We are providing an opportunity for people to gather strength and be an unfaltering stronghold for the wild salmon, by sending us a paper salmon to represent your voice. Wild salmon give life to this coast and salmon feedlots destroy it.”

Salmon Are Sacred is calling on people from all over the globe to echo the call for salmon feedlots to get out of our ocean.

“Basic history lessons from across Europe in Scotland, Norway and Ireland teaches us that healthy wild Atlantic salmon stocks and open net cage salmon farming is incompatible,” said Orri Vigfússon, Chairman of the North Atlantic Salmon Fund. “Disease-ridden feedlots must be removed as a matter of urgency from the migration routes of wild salmon.”

“There is simply no right way to do the wrong thing,” said Kurt Oddekalv, leader of the Green Warriors of Norway (Norges Miljøvernforbund). Even in Chile (where there are no wild salmon) there is support to remove salmon farms from our ocean.

“Salmon farming companies are draining the Southeast Pacific Ocean to produce fish meal and fish oil to fuel the expansion of this unsustainable industry in Patagonia waters,” said Juan Carlos Cardenas, veterinary doctor and director of Ecoceanos in Chile.

“The international community and consumers must join forces to stem the tide of waste pollution, chemical contamination, infectious diseases and parasite infestation.”

Public support to get salmon feedlots out of our oceans is spreading all over the world. In 2008, people from Norway, Chile, the UK and the United States came together in British Columbia to sign the International Declaration Against Unsustainable Salmon Farming and in Victoria in 2010 over five thousand people demonstrated outside the BC Parliament in Victoria as part of the ‘Get Out Migration’. Fin Donnelly MP, the NDP’s Fisheries critic, has collected over 10,000 postcards as part of his proposed Wild Salmon Protection Act (Bill C- 518) and in March 2011 presented over 9000 signatures in the House of Commons in Ottawa requesting the federal government take action against open-net fish farms in British Columbia.

People can download a salmon postcard or find ideas to create their own representation online via: www.salmonaresacred.org