MAMKA, the group involved in investigating the massive die-off of salmon off the province’s south coast last summer has completed its final report, and it attacks the media and “special interest groups” for what it calls “negative propaganda” surrounding the incident.
The aquaculture industry is a major economic engine on the province’s south coast. At the time of the incident, serious questions were raised about the level of government oversight involved in local aquaculture operations and the subsequent clean-up.
(Jamie Gaskill, the Managing Director of Northern Harvest Sea Farms, addresses media following the salmon mortality. October 11, 2019.)
MAMKA is a collaboration of two Mi’kmaq First Nation communities, the Qalipu and the Miawpuek. The report’s introduction focuses on what it calls the negative messages surrounding the deaths of more than 2-million salmon, which MAMKA concludes was caused by an extended period of unusually warm water.
In the report’s introduction, MAMKA says that aquaculture is “besieged by special interest groups with inherent biases.” It also outlines what it calls the “objective response” from “both levels of government” and the management of Northern Harvest Sea Farms.
(Images courtesy MAMKA.)
MAMKA says the amount of shoreline affected at the time of the incident was small, “approximately 2 per cent of the adjacent shorelines.”
It says that by February, drone footage and other observations showed the same area had seen dispersal of organic material, and “no seabirds were found with fish oil.”
