Actor, model and activist Pamela Anderson is shown on Grieg Seafood’s Barnes Bay fish farm north of Quadra Island on July 27, 2019. Photo by Sea Shepherd

Sea Shepherd said that Anderson used a GoPro camera attached to a pole to record “diseased-looking fish” underwater at the Barnes Bay fish farm operated by Grieg Seafood. She boarded the site with Quocksister, his family and other First Nations people, according to Sea Shepherd.

The group provided video they said shows “deformed fish, fish with large pieces missing from their bodies, as well as fish swimming sluggishly” at the Barnes Bay site.

They said sluggish behaviour is “one of the most common symptoms associated to heart and skeletal muscle inflammation (HSMI), a disease caused by a Norwegian virus called piscine reovirus” or PRV.

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Hall said claims about diseased fish at the Barnes Bay site were unfounded, and that “you can’t diagnose a virus with a GoPro camera.” He said the fish were stocked at the farm two weeks ago from a land-based hatchery.

“We don’t put sick fish in the ocean,” he said, adding that the salmon at Barnes Bay were tested for PRV and sea lice before being moved to ocean pens and “they had neither.”

He added that “PRV is naturally occurring in our ocean and our fish pick it up in the water, as do wild salmon.”

Asked about the video clip, he said that some fish appeared to have scale damage, although it’s unclear how many distinct fish there are.

“Minor scale loss can occur as a result of handling the fish, but the scales grow back,” he said. “The population of fish in the farm is healthy and growing well.”

Hall also said the “fish were indeed swimming slower, because they had just eaten,” and that “salmon school and swim slower immediately after a meal.”

Pamela Anderson speaks about what she hopes an anti-fish farm protest ‘flotilla’ will achieve, moments before departing from Campbell River Saturday. Anderson, Sea Shepherd’s international chair, later boarded a fish farm site and recorded underwater video. Full story to come. pic.twitter.com/qmzoFi7lK0 — David Gordon Koch (@davidgordonkoch) July 30, 2019

Anderson and other campaigners said on Saturday that wild juvenile salmon were becoming trapped in fish farms.

“We need wild salmon to be able to make it past these kind of death traps, so they can get out to the ocean and actually feed the orcas,” said the Ladysmith-born Baywatch star shortly after arriving aboard the RV Martin Sheen.

Hall countered that “research tells us that salmon farms are not having a negative impact on wild salmon populations.”

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Paul Manly, Green Party MP for Nanaimo-Ladysmith, also took part in Saturday’s protest. He repeated calls from the Green Party for a phasing out of ocean-based open net pen-fish farms and a moratorium on new sites. He said there should be a plan for workers to transition out of the industry and warned about a collapse in wild salmon stocks.

Hall said that farmed salmon represent an important source of food and will take pressure off wild stocks amid growing human populations, citing a study from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

He added that all salmon farmers in B.C. have certification from at least one environmental standards organization.

According to a 2017 study commissioned by the BCSFA, more than 2,900 people were employed directly in salmon farming by 2016 and another 3,600 were employed through industry spinoffs.

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