Viking Lars | Saturday, 1 December 2018
Right now, in Scandinavia, there is a massive focus on fish farming and the heavy, negative impact it has on the environment. In Denmark, our government is trying to pass an act that will allow for more open fish farms along our coast lines - directly against all advice given by sicentists and environmental organisations.
In Norway, open cage fish farming is huge, environmental issue. Escapees are causing mixed genepool in wild populations, the open farms pollute the waters they are in with feed residue, copper they use to protect nets, antibiotics, fish excrements and the open farms attract sea lice in number that kill the smolt as they exit the rivers. There's a host of other problems concerning this.
Renowned and respected salmon fly fisherman Mikael Frödin has now been sentenced for "encroachment" (what a word...) in the district court in Alta in Norway. In 2017, Frödin admittedly trespassed the Grieg fish farm in the Alta Fjord to document some of the problems. As I understand, the documentation (video) is part of a documentary that will air next year.
Frödin has admitted to the trespassing, but has argued that is was a journalistic duty to document the fish farm and it's impact on the envrionment. With this argument Frödin's latest step is to appeal the sentence.
There's is a huge resistance in Denmark against the government's wish to place more fish farms along our coast lines. Not least because "an entity" which is known on Facebook as "The Rabbit Katrine from Endelave" (Endelave is an island, close to existing fish farms and planned ones, famous for it's rabbits) and The Danish Sport Angling Associations have documented a substantial overproduction on one of the fish farms off the coast of Jutland. An over production they has no permission for, and that they kept a secret with falsified reports. Not only over production, but also an illegal hatchery and the hatching and feeding of Candian coho salmon has been documented, This whole affair actually began with Danish fishermen catching coho all of a sudden!
Futhermore I'm sure many of you have seen the many reports that document that farmed salmon is acutally not very good for you, full of different chemicals.
Support Mikael Frödin in bringing the problems of open cage fish farms to the public's attention by spreading the word on Facebook. Frödin has severl posts on the issue and the progress of the trial on his Facebook page, which can be found here. The PoD is a screen dump from Frödin's Facebook profile. There's more information on Frödin's blog.
Sorry for posting something like this on a Saturday morning, and even December 1st...
Have a great weekend
Lars