Anti-fish farm activists held rallies at a federal office in Victoria and a courthouse in Vancouver Thursday in support of protesters occupying a farm just off Vancouver Island.
The campaign fell on the same day Marine Harvest, a major player in the B.C. fish farm industry, sought an injunction to block protesters and First Nations from occupying one of their farms east of Port Hardy.
Outside of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans office in Victoria, protesters surrounded the building chanting and waving signs with messages like "Evict Fish Farms" and "Indigenous Lives Matter."
"These fish farms are destroying what we know as salmon and replacing it with something that is not viable, is not sustainable and I would never call salmon," said protester Noah Stewart. "They're living as biological vessels for what they're calling meat, but is not meat. It's a contaminated source, and these vessels are being spread to all kinds of real salmon, migratory salmon, salmon that travel thousands of kilometres and live the cycles that a salmon should."
The rally was held in solidarity with another protest at B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver in support of fish farm occupiers. Meanwhile, inside of the courtroom, Marine Harvest asked a judge to help end the ongoing protest at its farm that began months ago.
The company provided videos to CTV that appear to show protesters occupying the farm verbally harassing its employees.
Marine Harvest Managing Director Vincent Erenst issued a statement citing the company had experienced "numerous failed attempts" at dialogue with protest organizers.
"Our staff must be able to work in a safe environment, and free of harassment and intimidation," he said. "We have delayed our business for many weeks to ensure the safety of activists and our staff, but can no longer delay, as our business involves a living, growing animal.”
The injunction hearing comes as a new study authored by independent biologist and fish farm opponent Alex Morton claims wild salmon near such farms are at high risk of contracting diseases such as piscine reovirus, or PRV.
"The evidence that we present in this paper shows a massive amount of wild salmon are being infected with the piscine reovirus from salmon farms, that these fish are having a harder time swimming up-river," said Morton.
In November, photographer Tavish Campbell released video footage showing an underwater pipe spewing blood from a fish processing plant into B.C.'s Discovery Passage. The effluent was tested and found to be infected with PRV, which has been linked to a potentially deadly disease called HRMI which can cause heart lesions and hemorrhaging in fish.
The B.C. government has done its own testing and said samples are currently undergoing lab analysis. The results are expected in the next several weeks.
B.C.'s salmon farming associations say Morton's research is simply activism masked as science.
"The data presented with this paper doesn't support the conclusions the authors are making," said Jeremy Dunn, Executive Director of the BC Salmon Farmer's Association. "They're taking samples gathered from grocery stores, other samples gathered of different species at a different time, upriver, downriver, multiple sampling techniques, a very limited sample size and they're saying something that isn't supported by any of the other research that's out there."
A decision on Marine Harvest's injunction request could be handed down in the next several days.
