The accidental release of unknown numbers of farmed Atlantic salmon into the waters around the San Juan Islands, east of Victoria, is "profoundly troubling" to BC's Green Leader.
Andrew Weaver says BC and Washington state are like the "wild west" allowing net-pen operations in our waters considering the lack of science in terms of safety:
" The concern of course if these start spawning in our rivers they start taking over pacific salmon. But the bigger concern is the extent to which the open net salmon farming is affecting, through virus contamination, our wild stocks."
Weaver says the BC Greens have been pushing to get fish farming out of the ocean, and onto land in closed containment systems for years.
" I find it troubling that they are substantive donors in many cases to both political parties, and it's one of the reasons why we got union and corporate donations out of our party. You know again, we would like to see the slow turnover in getting these permits revoked, not so much revoked, but not renewed so that we can get them out of the ocean and fill your boots with having closed containment fish farming on land."