Wild Salmon Cafe

Wild Salmon Café entertains and educates in the mid-Fraser.

Press Release: Salmon Talks Lillooet,  February 20, 2010

Lillooet BC, St'át'imc Territory

On their way to declaring Lillooet a Farmed Salmon Free Zone, the Salmon Talks collective presents a night of music, dance and speak for Fraser River wild salmon.

The Wild Salmon Café will proudly serve the best source of protein available in the world - wild salmon! Dinner by donation starts at 5:30pm on March 20, 2010, at the Lillooet Friendship Centre. Musicians, poets, dancers and speakers will follow up with a family friendly evening of celebration that honours the keystone species in BC's interior: Pacific salmon returning to the Fraser River.

Since the unprecedented crash of salmon stocks of every species and origin along the Fraser last year, an action and education campaign has begun. Elders, youth, biologists, fisheries technicians, artists and environmentalists in the Upper St'át'imc (along the mid-Fraser) have formed The Salmon Talks to organize events that will raise awareness of the critical importance of wild salmon here. The Wild Salmon Café is the first event!

 

Since it has become widely known that open-net-cage fish farms along BC's coast are a major contributing factor to wild salmon's decline, the harvesting and emptying of three specific farms in the Wild Salmon Narrows, Georgia Strait, is the first goal. Joining with the Georgia Strait Alliance, the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, and dozens of concerned citizens’ organizations, Salmon Talks Lillooet is demanding that Atlantic salmon in farms at Sonora, Venture and Cyrus Rocks (all Norwegian owned) be harvested, which means emptied, as an emergency precaution. Cyrus Rocks salmon are at harvestable weights now, and the others are only about six months premature for harvest.

The farms must be emptied before Fraser smolts reach the area on their outmigration – about May. The adult farmed Atlantics there have sea lice, which transfer to juveniles: historically juvenile salmon are not exposed to adult salmon and therefore are not exposed to sea lice, which are lethal to smolts. Farmed salmon eat the smolts too, as recently proven by Alexandra Morton – now suing Marine Harvest, Norway, for illegal possession of wild salmon! There are 80 fish farms in the Georgia and Johnstone Straits, and Fraser smolts must pass directly by 30 of them to get to sea.

Sockeye, Chinook, steelhead and Coho are at “endangered,” and, “critically endangered” levels throughout the Fraser watershed, according to the 2009 Red Listing of Pacific salmon by IUCN scientists. Important steps need to be taken now. “In the short term, even before the federal judicial inquiry is completed, we must be prepared for … experimentally removing farmed salmon from sockeye migration routes.” - Statement from Think Tank of Scientists, December 9, 2009, SFU Vancouver.

For more information on Salmon Talks Lillooet and the Wild Salmon Café, contact:

salmontalks@gmail.com Or by phone,  Kerry Coast: (250) 256 2435   or   (250) 256 7523