By Katie DeRosa for Times Colonist

Parks Canada is investigating after thousands of plastic aquaculture bags washed ashore on islands in Pacific Rim National Park southeast of Ucluelet. The MP for the area and a local environmental group are asking why it took a week to make the incident public.

The federal parks agency discovered on Nov. 10 that large bags, used to hold aquaculture feed, washed up on several islands in the Broken Group Islands.

“Parks Canada takes this issue very seriously and has begun cleaning up the debris within the national park reserve,” the agency said in a statement.

Parks Canada did not identify the company responsible and did not say if the bags came from a fish farm.

Gord Johns, NDP MP for Courtenay-Alberni, said he’s upset that First Nations communities and local cleanup organizations were not informed of the plastic spill.

“We want to know the details. What is their cleanup plan? How are they going to pay for it? When are they going to clean it up?” Johns asked. “We have cleanup volunteers who are ready to go. To not communicate with them is just really shameful and very disappointing.”

About 2,000 bags have been removed from four of the inner islands, but Parks Canada said stormy weather has made it challenging to reach all areas of the Broken Group Islands. The agency said it will “continue to assess the scope of the incident and clean up debris within the park reserve as weather permits.”

Surfrider Foundation, an environmental advocacy group that organizes beach cleanups, has contacted Parks Canada to offer assistance with the cleanup, said the group’s chair Michelle Hall.

Large plastic bags can break down into microplastics that become near-impossible to remove from sensitive ecosystems, Hall said.

The incident underscores the need for a strategy to combat plastic pollution, including plastic bag bans, she said.

Johns has tabled a motion in the House of Commons calling on the government to dedicate annual funding for marine debris cleanups and for a national strategy on ocean plastics. “The government keeps touting its world-class ocean protection plan, but it’s invisible when it comes to cleaning up marine debris and cleaning up ocean plastics.”

Alexandra Morton, an aquaculture critic and biologist, said she hopes Parks Canada carries out a thorough investigation that holds the offending company responsible. “I just hope they do a serious investigation and figure out where [the bags] came from and charge them,” she said. “The release of plastics is in no way a minor incident.”

The plastic spill comes a year after debris from shipping containers began washing up on Tofino beaches after they fell from the Hanjin Seattle cargo ship during rough seas on Nov. 3.

Parks Canada went after the company for damages, and obtained $76,600.

However, it took six months for the federal government to distribute those funds to First Nations communities and groups involved in the cleanup.