June 4th - We need you!

Calling all Groups and Supporters:

Aquaculture Press Conference and Rally Show your opposition to open net pen salmon aquaculture Monday, June 4 – 10 am to Noon, Lord Nelson Hotel, Halifax

Friends: Please make plans to attend the Atlantic Coalition for Aquaculture Reform’s big Aquaculture press conference & Rally on Monday June 4th, 10am to Noon at the Lord Nelson Hotel, Halifax. (Please note the date has changed from May 31 to June 4). The Hotel is located on South Park street near the corner of Spring Garden Road, across from the Public Gardens. The event will be held in the grand ballroom. We will need everyone’s attendance and help to fill the room, so spread the word and bring your like minded members and friends.

The purpose of this event is to come together to show our collective opposition to open net-pen salmon feedlots in Nova Scotia’s coastal waters and communities and to again call for a moratorium and a redirection of provincial support towards sustainable closed-containment systems. Groups and individuals will be coming from across the province to make a unified show of force. The coalition is growing as are the calls by the public for a moratorium. But the Nova Scotia government is not listening to the legitimate concerns of lobster fishers, salmon and trout anglers, tourism operators and local communities who will be affected most.  Meanwhile, the salmon aquaculture industry is making a big push to expand the number of open-net salmon feedlots (so-called “farms”) throughout coastal Nova Scotia.

The negative impacts of open net pen salmon aquaculture are well known and well document (a science brief is attached with more info). Wherever this industry has been allowed to set up, big problems have followed. These include major disease and parasite outbreaks, massive amounts of fecal pollution (essentially raw sewage), large numbers of escaped aquaculture fish leading to genetic “swamping” of local wild salmon populations, precipitous declines in wild salmon and sea trout populations in nearby rivers, chemical releases into coastal waters leading to harm to other wild species including lobster, and the list goes on.

Hundreds of letters and e-mails have been sent to the Dexter government pleading with them not to allow the same mistakes to be made in Nova Scotia’s coastal waters. But all to no avail. The government is stubbornly brushing off concerns and is welcoming open-net pen salmon feedlots into our waters with open arms. If we hope to stop this environmentally damaging industry we need to stand together and speak up now. We need to show our government, in a tangible way, that Nova Scotians refuse to allow salmon feedlots to shoved down our throats and into our precious bays and harbours against our will.

Please, come join us to stand and be counted on Monday, June 4^th at 10 am at the Lord Nelson Hotel, Halifax.

A special sneak preview of the upcoming documentary film “Salmon Wars” will also be shown.

For more information contact Ray Plourde – 442-5008, wilderness@ecologyaction.ca

Sign the online petition at: http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-open-net-pen-salmonid-aquaculture-in-nova-scotia