February 11, 2008 (Vancouver Sun) Pacific Salmon Forum now agrees sea lice are killing salmon In a major blow to British Columbia's salmon farming industry, a government-funded research group says it now accepts a recent scientific study that warns of mass extinctions of wild pink salmon on the central coast due to salmon farming. In an uncirculated "communique" obtained on Friday by The Vancouver Sun, the Pacific Salmon Forum has acknowledged that sea lice infestations contributed to plummeting pink salmon populations in the Broughton Archipelago from 2001-2005 -- as noted in a recent article in Science, a leading international research journal. The article by Martin Krkosek, co-researcher Alexandra Morton and others, drew international attention. It warned that wild pink salmon could be extinct within four years on the B.C. central coast due to sea lice infestations arising from salmon farms in that area. Last year, a provincial legislature committee studying fish farming also recommended the industry switch from open-net sea pens to closed-containment pens that would prevent lice infestations at farms from spreading to wild fish migrating in the vicinity. Both recommendations have been ignored by the province. B.C. fish farms linked to sea lice outbreak January 27, 2007 (Toronto Globe and Mail) For the first time in Canada, scientists have used data from the world's largest aquaculture company to draw a link between sea lice from Atlantic salmon on British Columbia fish farms and soaring infection rates in wild salmon migrating nearby. Mass escape from Norway's fish farms threatens wild salmon January 5, 2007 (Yahoo News) Some 790,000 salmon and trout escaped from Norwegian fish farms last year, up 10 percent on the previous year and a trend that poses a serious threat to wild salmon, the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries has warned. The lax security at fish farms is "a criminal act that must be sanctioned the same as a hold-up or a rape," the head of the directorate, Peter Gullestad, told AFP. The fish raised on farms are carriers of parasites such as sea lice, which infect wild salmon and other maritime life. The fish that escape the farms, located in fjords and rivers along Norway's west coast, infect young wild salmon before they head off to the open sea, threatening their immune systems which are not yet fully developed. "It's dramatic. We're talking about a genetic cleansing of wild salmon," said Espen Farstad, a spokesman for the Norwegian hunting and fishing association NJFF. A total of 39 of 75 fish farms inspected by the directorate did not meet current standards. "The farmers do not have control over the situation. Authorities' controls are not sufficient. We are calling for a list of the fish farms at fault and for them to be boycotted," Maren Esmark of the Norwegian branch of the environmental group WWF told AFP. Industrial salmon costly to environment November 9, 2006 (Seattle Post-Intelligencer opinion by Alexandra Morton) Many in British Columbia, from fishermen to First Nations chiefs, are now calling for sustainable salmon-farming practices that would allow wild salmon, and all that depend on them, to survive. Yet, foreign-owned industrial salmon production companies are pushing to double the current number of cages, putting wild Pacific salmon at critical risk. Consumers, however, can make the difference. And to make our voices heard, we needn't look any further than our pocketbooks. Wild salmon are a sacred gift. From the moment their pink translucent eggs drop into cold mountain streams, they support life around them. They act as a virtual blood stream; their movement of ocean nutrients is key to the health of the land and sea. Industrial salmon production breaks this essential flow. Just one facility can hold more than a million fish. Perverting natural laws, pressing salmon into feedlots thick with feces, stimulates viruses, bacteria and parasites to grow unchecked. The pollutants and parasites metastasize from the pens and spread via ocean currents to contaminate wild fish with pathogens at a magnitude they were never designed to handle. Benign to adult salmon, small parasitic sea lice graze on the exterior of fish. Nature kept these parasites away from defenseless newly hatched wild salmon, but the mega- salmon farms have brought the two together, with disastrous consequences. Dead fish cannot return to spawn. Eagles, orca whales, grizzly bears and human communities all suffer, as a vital link in their food chain is severed. Some rivers in the Broughton Archipelago had fewer than 50 pink salmon return last year, with this fall shaping up as another disaster. There should be millions. Study finds lice from fish farms kill tiny salmon October 3, 2006 (Seattle Times) A team of Canadian scientists has found the most direct evidence yet that baby salmon pick up fatal infections of sea lice while swimming past salmon farms in British Columbia's Broughton Archipelago, and that the more salmon farms the more baby salmon die. "Before we knew there were potential problems," said Martin Krkosek, a doctoral student at the University of Alberta who was lead author of the study released Monday by the American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Now it is very clear we have severe problems here." In natural conditions, the adult salmon that carry the sea lice aren't in the migration channels and rivers at the same time as young pink and chum salmon, so the little fish are not infested, said Mark Lewis, University of Alberta senior Canada research chair in mathematical biology, who oversaw the research. But fish farms have changed that, raising hundreds of thousands of adults in floating net pens anchored year round in the channels where the young fish migrate. The young pink and chum salmon are only an inch long, and do not yet have scales to protect them from parasites, he said. Ransom Myers, a professor of biology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, who was not part of the study, said it was the most comprehensive to date on the issue and hoped it would push the Canadian government to take action to protect wild salmon. Bad image of fish farms impeding industry June 16, 2006 (Victoria Times Colonist) Sagging public confidence in Canada's controversial fish farm industry -- regarding both its environmental practices and product safety -- is impairing Canada's ability to take advantage of booming world seafood demand, according to a federal briefing document obtained by CanWest News Service. "While support for aquaculture is stronger in Central and Eastern Canada, the B.C. salmon aquaculture industry continues to face severe criticism by environmental organizations and negative media coverage," warns the Feb. 3, 2006, summary prepared for the Conservative government. "The criticism has compromised the public's confidence in the industry and the (Fisheries) Department's management of it." The criticism and negative media coverage, particularly of sea-lice outbreaks on both coasts, has resulted in "a loss of consumer confidence in the environmental performance of the industry and the safety of its products, public confidence in governments as regulators of the sector, and investor confidence in Canada as a place to invest and do business." Fish farms challenge our commitment to the wild March 19, 2003 (High Country News) Over the past decade, consumers across the nation have unknowingly witnessed an equally miraculous feat — inexpensive salmon fillets and steaks, available year round, at $3 a pound. This bounty, whether found in open-air markets, or under the cold fluorescent lights of a supermarket, has been brought to us by salmon farms. It’s a quiet revolution that has transformed salmon from a white-tablecloth item into a meal that almost anyone can afford. Enter this new player. Salmon farms threaten the health of wild stocks. They’ve taken a bite out of the market share of commercial fisherman. The multinational companies that run fish farms say that they’re working to be better neighbors and to prevent future harm to wild stocks. But even if these challenges are met, farmed salmon may be the Eucharist in the Church of Apathy. For those of us who don’t live in salmon country, who haven’t tasted the moist fecund air and heard the mumbling brooks; who haven’t seen (and will never see) the waters writhing with an in-migration of these powerful fish, the abundance of farmed salmon is an opportunity to let our collective conscience slumber again. It allows us to put down this remote and complex riddle of habitat protection, federal laws and treaties, and hydropower-producing dams. We laugh, but it’s easy to see the results of similar unconscious choices of the past: The great bison herds that once roared across the Plains are gone, and in their place we have industrial cattle feedlots. Now, with the advent of fish farms, we’re seeing the same wholesale replacement of creation with industrialized food production. This is a dangerous illusion: that we can enjoy the bounty of nature without protecting rivers, streams and landscapes. Farmed salmon turfed from menu at Milestone's March 13, 2003 (Victoria Times-Colonist) Farmed salmon has lost its spot on the menu at the Milestone's restaurant chain. Beginning Friday, all 23 of the company's restaurants, including Victoria's Inner Harbour site, will replace farmed salmon with exclusively wild stock. The move has been entirely consumer-driven, said Cathy Tostenson of the chain's Vancouver head office. "This decision to go from farmed to wild was based on guests requesting the change," Tostenson said. "Our guests have been questioning us as to why we have farmed salmon on the menu." Milestone's has 15 restaurants in B.C., seven in Ontario and one in the U.S. The Victoria restaurant is one of the busiest. Thrifty Foods had good customer response to its recent offering of so-called "eco-salmon" -- salmon raised in a closed-pen system rather than in conventional net pens in the ocean. Salmon virus costs fish farms millions March 5, 2003 (Victoria Times-Colonist) More research, co-ordination and money are needed to combat the problem which has resulted in "devastating death rates" at farms, said the B.C. government report, released Tuesday. "There is certainly a need for co-ordination," said Al Castledine, acting director of aquaculture development for B.C.'s Fisheries Ministry. It is clear that infectious hematopoietic necrosis -- IHN -- is a serious problem for farms, Castledine said. "We have seen no linkage to wild fish other than they are the original source of the disease." Even so, the issue can not be ignored, he said. Environmentalists, fearing that IHN can harm wild Pacific salmon, are again calling for an end to open net cages in B.C. waters. IHN exists naturally in the environment and was first recognized in the 1950s. It spikes at different times, with the first outbreaks at fish farms reported in the early 1990s. As for why more cases are showing up now, "I guess that's the $64 question. I don't think anybody can really tell you that," said B.C.'s chief veterinarian, Dr. Ron Lewis. The disease selectively attacks blood-forming cells so a fish's immunity drops. It cannot be treated. Pacific salmon are not as susceptible to the virus as farmed Atlantics, said Lewis. Sea lice affecting this season's smolts, scientist finds March 4, 2003 (Vancouver Sun) Preliminary research by independent marine scientist Alexandra Morton points to major problems with sea lice affecting pink salmon smolts currently travelling near fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago. Morton, who two years ago brought the problem of sea lice in the area to the attention of both the federal department of fisheries and oceans and the provincial ministry of agriculture, food and fisheries, reported that of the six sample fish she tested over the weekend, three were infected with sea lice. On Monday, scientists from the DFO were also in the Broughton Archipelago conducting research of their own, but John Pringle, manager of the Pacific region's environmental and habitat sciences division, said he had not received any information from the scene. Consequently, he said it would be premature to comment on Morton's numbers. "We're very concerned, obviously, but we can't say much more than that." "We're finding the whole area is loaded with lice," she said. Jennifer Lash of the Living Oceans Society said it is too early to draw any conclusions about the levels of sea lice in the archipelago, but it looks to her and Morton as if the so-called safe migration route set aside by farms and the province for wild pink smolts is anything but. 'Lessons not learned' in Ireland March 3, 2003 (Vancouver Sun) Sea trout once supported a thriving business -- until sea lice wiped them out "The awful thing is about lessons not learned," Greg Forde sighed when I told him the story of the pink salmon crash last year in six of B.C.'s Broughton Archipelago rivers and the suggestion by some scientists that sea lice from fish farms along the migration route were responsible. An estimated 31/2 million salmon, minimum, failed to return from their migration to the sea from the pristine region 300 km northwest of Vancouver. Forde is a big, rawboned, forthright man who once worked in the fish farming industry but now works for Ireland's western regional fisheries board. He's been struggling with a similar collapse of wild stocks that he says is also associated with salmon farms all along the Irish coast. "What we're hearing from Canada is that the sea lice are a factor where salmon farms are located on the salmon migration routes," Forde said. "It's all deja vu. It's the most frustrating thing to hear what's happened here has now happened in B.C." "Norway had some of the best rivers in the world for the production of massive salmon -- they are just gone," he says. "Why couldn't we learn from that? Why can't you learn from us? Is the B.C. government willing to make a place in the scheme of things for indigenous species?" "There are areas that must be left virgin for the wild fish. Where we have bays and rivers with no fish farms, the sea trout runs are basically healthy." Forde says. "What we would recommend is that fish farms be located only in areas where there are no rivers with migratory salmonid stocks." Ottawa plan for fish farm study 'corrupt, inadequate' February 21, 2003 (Vancouver Sun) Wild salmon pushed almost to extinction, biologist says The federal department of fisheries and oceans has announced a long-term study of fish farming and its effect on wild pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago, an action immediately condemned as inadequate by an independent biologist concerned the fish stock is on the brink of extinction. "They're going to experiment on a stock that's almost extinct -- that's sad and negligent," said marine biologist Alexandra Morton when she learned of the DFO plan to monitor pink salmon smolts travelling through the archipelago on their way out to sea. "I think that's criminal. I think that's corrupt." Morton and other biologists say sea lice multiplying in salmon farms located in the archipelago are to blame for a dramatic drop in wild pink salmon numbers last year. In late 2002, only 147,000 adult pink salmon returned to spawn in the archipelago -- east of the midpoint of Vancouver Island -- down from 3.6 million two years earlier. In The Northwest: Opponents are raising a stink over B.C. fish farms February 21, 2003 (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) As we traveled up Bedwell Sound on Vancouver Island in a buddy's Zodiac boat, one rule of British Columbia fish farms was quickly learned: You smell the pens before you see them. Fish farming has been kept out of Alaska: The 49th state fears that farmed fish, primarily Atlantic salmon, would escape from their pens and damage native Pacific fish runs. The inlets and estuaries of Washington, bordered by high human populations, have not been conducive to the pungent-smelling pens. By contrast, British Columbia has opened its coastline despite protests from natives and environmentalists. As well, European-based fish farm operators have opened their checkbooks to political candidates of the B.C. Liberal Party headed by Premier Gordon Campbell. A Nanaimo laboratory, run by Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans, has the job of promoting fish farms while simultaneously being charged with investigating reports that farmed fish have infected wild pink salmon with sea lice. "It is worth reiterating that wild salmon must come first; they cannot be replaced," Fraser wrote. The collapse of wild pink salmon populations is particularly acute near the Broughton Archipelago off northern Vancouver Island. It's also the densest concentration of salmon farms in British Columbia. The British Columbia government remains very much in bed with the salmon farm industry. It recently tapped, as president of the B.C. Aquaculture Research and Development Committee, the head of a company that supplies antibiotics and chemicals to fish farms. Protests are accelerating. A collision of nature and commerce February 20, 2003 (Vancouver Sun) Salmon farms are being blamed for the collapse of the Bond Sound pink run "This sea lice thing is so clear. It's just common sense where they are coming from," says Bennett. "To talk about it is labouring the obvious. If you see how the tide works in here, you know that the pinks coming out of Bond Sound go right along the side of the channel and they have to drift right past the fish farm pens." Morton is a sturdy woman, her strong, animated face framed by long hair that's streaked with grey. I found her preparing to cook dinner at the home she and partner Eric Nelson have built with timber milled at the site, the buildings sprawling down a steep hillside, the paths outlined in the winter gloom by a luminous necklace of clam shells. "There were millions," she says. "There were fish everywhere, millions and millions of them. I didn't realize then that these vast ribbons of fish were the exceptional output from that big brood year in 2000." Morton began taking samples and she says she discovered that as the smolts increased their proximity to the fish farms, the prevalence of sea lice increased. "Everywhere I went near the farms, the fish were covered with sea lice when I took them out of the water," she says. "Coho smolts were so frantic to escape the sea lice that they were jumping into boats. "I noticed bleeding at their eyeballs and bleeding at the base of the fins, which are a classic symptom of fish disease," Morton says. "I was horrified to see these baby fish being ravaged by these parasites. It was an enormous feeling of helplessness."  Take a look at the Seafood Card. Seafood is delicious and healthy. Would you like to know if it's caught or farmed in ways that support a healthy environment? Some wild fish populations are disappearing. But others are doing fine. It's important to know the difference when you go shopping or dining out. Your choice CAN make a difference! This Seafood Card, produced by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, together with the Seattle Aquarium and Vancouver Public Aquarium, can help you choose seafood that's good for you and good for the oceans. The SeaWeb Aquaculture Clearinghouse contains the enormous amount of research into issues concerning coastal and ocean change as described or reviewed in the many hundreds of scientific journals, conference proceedings, and institutional documents published monthly. A listing of pertinent articles from some of this published literature is presented. Abstracts for various citations are also included. Links and NGOs
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