A fish farm is blaming storms for a spill of 2-thousand plastic feed bags that washed up on several of the protected Broken Islands near Tofino.
Omega Pacific Sea Farms says its Jane Bay operation in Barkley Sound was affected by storms, including one on October 18th that caused one of its barges to partially sink.
In a statement the company says the Coast Guard deemed the incident a low risk to the environment. When a second storm hit on November 6th the damaged barge suffered more problems, and a number of plastic bags ended up spilling into the water. Omega Pacific says it was an unfortunate event, and says they recovered some of the bags. They also offered thanks to groups who've been picking up thousands of the bags from the beaches.
Parks Canada is in hot water for not informing stakeholders of the situation. A leaked memo said charges might be laid against "an aquaculture company" that they did not identify.