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Fish farm protest held in Comox

The rally took place on Comox Avenue, concluding at the entry to the BC Seafood Festival
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The Comox Valley’s second open-net fish farm protest in less than a week took place June 16.

A procession of a few dozen people made their way down Comox Avenue on Saturday to rally against open-net salmon farming. The group started at the Little Red Church and finished at the gate to Filberg Park — the site of the 2018 BC Seafood Festival.

The gathering outside the Filberg was much smaller than the procession as a whole.

Rally participant Molina Dawson, a 22-year-old member of the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw First Nation of Kingcome Inlet, said the protesters wanted to show support for wild seafood rather than farmed seafood.

“Where I come from, there are 18 fish farms in our territory and since they’ve been here, our salmon stocks have gone steadily down,” she said.

The protest, part of the Live for Wild Salmon Rally, follows a similar gathering that took place on Wednesday in downtown Courtenay.

The B.C. government will decide June 20 whether or not to renew provincial licenses for 20 fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago.