Again, I'm surprised that this makes such headlines and stirs up so much criticism from fish farm critics meanwhile this entanglement of cetaceans is common here and elsewhere in the world.....and none of these critics say boo about it. Instead, they use it as a rallying cry to remove net pens from the ocean because they are killing and injuring too many cetaceans. I don't think we should dismiss what happened here, but if critics are going to suddenly embrace this issue to save and protect cetaceans from unintentional entanglement in nets then you can't just look at one industry and point fingers while the other has a very extensive record worldwide for this same thing. Let Google be your guide on this one. Cetaceans being incidentally captured in commercial nets is worldwide, but the folks at Salmon Are Sacred have developed tunnel vision and just focused on aquaculture. Are they conservationists all the time or do they choose to be at certain times - depending on who the offending party is?
However, when you have commercial fisheries here pledging support to Mrs Morton (i.e. commercial fishers against fish farms Facebook page) and that same support being returned (i.e. Morton didn't condemn recent illegal commercial fishing this summer on threatened stocks and instead criticized DFO for taking action) then it starts to make more sense, in my opinion. One needs to look out for the other. Whales are meerly a pawn because if these critics truly were concerned about them then we would see equal effort with the industry that shoulders most of the responsibility.
Another thing that was mentioned in the article that Morton didn't pick up on (or ignored) was that the farm "site" in question was not active at the time. However, following the tradition from the new US President Elect, Morton has decided to divert from the facts to go on a rant about how these whales are attracted to these net pens because of the feed which attracts the herring.
What was a good question was do Fisheries have any rules about dismantling these places if not in use and if they are partly to blame. I don't know, but I would have to say that having these incidents happen can't be in anyone's best interests - government, industry, conservationists, the general public or the cetaceans. Damage to these sites costs the industry money and it's not inexpensive sending out crews from the department to rescue these cetaceans. Hopefully, there is something learned from this which can prevent this from happening again, but the important thing is that this issue goes beyond the aquaculture industry and includes the commercial fishing industry also.
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Topic: Another open-net salmon farm outrage: Now it's dead whales! (Read 17936 times)