They're having a huge impact. I'm not saying it's just the fish farms. Most certainly, global warming is an issue; it plays its role. How much pollution plays a role, I'm not too clear. But certainly there is a direct and very distinct link between fish farms and the migrating wild stocks.
This year's crash directly correlates to a study that was done four years ago, in which they went out with little nets and were catching smolts that were passing through the fish farms. Every one of those smolts had up to 20 sea lice on them. That's death. After four lice, it's death. Yet, they pulled out 100,000 smolts, and every one of them was loaded with lice. The biologist said, “They're all going to die”. Now we see it this year. It was predicted that seven million were supposed to come back; it was absolute devastation.
I think there are some huge things that this provincial or federal government can do in respect to how the fish resource is managed. Siska is running an inland communal commercial fishery. This is something we've been saying for over 30 years: if you want better escapement goals or better management targets, you need to start downsizing the ocean fisheries and moving it into the inland, in small-bite fisheries. You can manage the resource, and it will rebuild.