Morton, a member of the Raincoast Research Society and a founding member of Adopt-a-fry.org, said that she had filed a petition in the B.C. Supreme Court that argues that coastal waters are a federal jurisdiction. Therefore, she continued, the provincial government should not be allowed to renew leases on existing fish farms.

Straight.com previously ran an article by Morton in which she discussed the impact fish farms have on wild salmon. In the Broughton Archipelago in 2002, she wrote, 98 percent of young pink salmon inhabiting waters around fish farms were infected with sea lice; 99 percent failed to survive and spawn in nearby rivers the following year.