Aquaculture MEDIA RELEASE – 2 October 2018
MEDIA RELEASE – 2 October 2018
CONTACT: Darlene Schanfald, Vice-Chair
Sierra Club North Olympic Group
360-681-7565 darlenes@olympus.net
INDUSTRIAL AQUACULTURE
FOOD or FOLLY? LOSING THE WILD?
Saturday 13 October 2018 3–5 PM
Historic Dungeness Schoolhouse
2781 Towne Rd, Just off E. Anderson Road
The Sierra Club’s North Olympic Group and the Sierra Club Chapter Water Salmon Committee invites the public to join them for this important forum about how our oceans are being commercialized for the few and the losses that follow.
We are pleased to have the following speakers present their work from years of experience.
Kurt Beardslee, Executive Director, Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC)
The Success of the Our Sound, Our Salmon Campaign: Phasing Out Atlantic Salmon Aquaculture in Puget Sound.
Kurt Beardslee is the executive director and co-founder of the Wild Fish Conservancy. For over a decade Kurt and his science staff have investigated the substantial risk open-water Atlantic salmon aquaculture places on the Pacific Northwest’s wild salmon.
In spring of 2017, WFC launched the Our Sound, Our Salmon (OSOS) campaign with the goal of phasing out Atlantic salmon net pens from Puget Sound. The OSOS campaign was fundamental to the passage of Washington’s recent net pen legislation marking the largest legislative removal of Atlantic salmon net pens in the world.
Following the 2017 Cypress Island collapse of Cooke Aquaculture pens that released 260,000 penned Atlantic salmon into the wild, WFC staff collected tissue samples from the escapees for that revealed 100% positive test results for Piscine Reovirus (PRV), a highly contagious and debilitating salmonid disease. Genetic sequencing revealed the virus to be of Icelandic origin marking the first time this foreign strain of the virus was found in Pacific waters.
In his talk, Kurt will discuss the numerous risks posed by farming Atlantic salmon in open-water net pens as well as potential land-based closed containment solutions for this industry. He will give a brief overview of WFC’s current litigation to hold Cooke Aquaculture accountable under the Clean Water Act for releasing 260,000 non-native Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound. He will also discuss WFC’s ongoing Endangered Species Act (ESA) suit against the federal government for its failure to adequately protect ESA-listed species from the harm caused by industrial Atlantic salmon net pens.
Laura Hendricks, Founding Director Coalition To Protect Puget Sound.
Shellfish and Disappearing Beaches
Over the last 11 years, Laura Hendricks’s Coalition has educated the public and regulators on shellfish aquaculture’s harm to WA State’s marine life. Hendricks represented citizens against the shellfish industry at a hearing before the Washington State Shorelines Hearings Board and won the case to protect eelgrass, a WA State Appeals Court precedent-setting case.
Hendricks will give an update about pending legal action by the Coalition to Protect Puget Sound Habitat, Protect Zangle Cove, and Wild Fish Conservancy filed against the WA Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). That suit demands an end to WDFW’s exemption of industrial shellfish aquaculture projects from Hydraulic Project Approvals (HPA). HPAs are state standards designed and required to protect fish and marine habitats.
“With threatened Southern Resident killer whales and endangered native salmon at extreme risk, our state agencies have failed to implement the environmental protections that are critical to the broad scale ecological recovery of Puget Sound,” says Patrick Townsend, president of Protect Zangle Cove. “The action we are taking today is one important step toward restoring sanity to the recovery process. We must protect the tidelands from further loss of ecological function or we will see the loss of iconic species so important to the people of Washington State.”
Alfredo Quarto, Co-director and Co-founder of Mangrove Action Project (MAP)
Question Your Shrimp, A consumer Awareness Campaign
For twenty-five years, Alfredo Quarto has worked with indigenous cultures around the world helping them restore their mangrove forests and way of life, prior to corporations having destroyed their ecosystems to industrialize the raising of shrimp. He will have a short video about these villages and mangrove trees.
Quarto is a veteran campaigner with over 40 years of experience in organizing and writing on the environment and human rights issues. Formerly an aerospace engineer, his experiences range over many countries and several environmental organizations, with a long-term focus on ocean issues, forestry, indigenous cultures, and human rights. Prior to MAP, he was the executive director of the Ancient Forest Chautauqua, a multimedia traveling forum with events in 30 West Coast cities on behalf of old-growth forests and indigenous dwellers.
Anne Mosness, Go Wild Campaign
Current and Pending Efforts of the Federal Government to Raise Penned Fish
Anne Mosness has been tracking the federal NOAA Department of Commerce in its push to raise penned salmon in offshore waters, beyond jurisdictions and regulations of states. She will speak on the current pending efforts, and losses, of such government efforts. The public will hear about the recent Center For Food Safety legal win for fishing and public interest groups that challenged the Department of Commerce’s rules permitting industrial aquaculture offshore in U.S. federal waters.
Anne Mosness is a fisherwoman that fished Copper River and Bristol Bay, Alaska for decades, a multi-general family profession. She secured a position with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and founded the Go Wild Campaign. She has worked for several other national environmental and food organizations, received a fellowship from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, represented US fisheries at UN forums and Slow Food/Slow Fish conferences in Italy, and other global and national events focused on sustainable foods and fishing, seafood labeling, organic certification, marine ecosystem health. Anne has been a long time contributor to the Puget Consumer Coop’s Sound Consumer magazine. Her latest article in the PCC magazine is entitled, “Wild salmon, killer whales and us” published July, 2018.
Cosponsoring the event are Friends of Miller Peninsula State Park, Olympic Environmental Coalition, Olympic Forest Coalition. and Protect Peninsula’s Future.
The October 13 event is free. Handouts from the sponsoring and presenting organizations will be available. Coffee and tea will be served.
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