Fish farming endangers wild salmon
June 9, 2009 by CVNews
Filed under BC news, Canada government, Environment, Nature
Male and female sockeye salmon. Sockeye is one of five main commercial salmon species in British Columbia. (Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
Message from Alexandra Morton in Norway, disease and sea lice are not under control in Norwegian salmon farms and BC stands to lose all.
I have been in Norway for 10 days because 92% of fish farming in British Columbia is Norwegian owned. I have met with many Norwegian scientists, members of the Mainstream and Marine Harvest boards, been to their AGMs, toured the area with fishermen, examined a closed-containment facility, met the Norwegians fighting for their fish and joined a scientific cruise.
I thought Norway had this industry handled and I expected to learn how marine salmon farming could work, but this has not been the case. My eyes have really been opened. This industry still has major issues that are growing and has no business expanding throughout the temperate coastlines of the world. The way they have been treating sea lice in Norway has caused high drug resistance. The only solution in sight is increasingly toxic chemicals. In the past two years (2007-8) sea lice levels have actually increased on both the farm and wild fish. The scientists I met with are holding their breath to see if drug-resistant sea lice populations will explode and attack the last wild salmon and sea trout. The same treatment methods have been used in BC and we can expect this to occur as well.
I am not hearing how the industry can possibly safeguard British Columbia from contamination with their ISA virus. Infectious Salmon Anemia is a salmon virus that is spreading worldwide, wherever there are salmon farms. In Chile, the Norwegian strain of ISA has destroyed 60% of the industry, 17,000 jobs and unmeasured environmental damage. The industry is pushing into new territory. If this gets to BC no one can predict what it will do to the Pacific salmon and steelhead, it will be unleashed into new habitat and we know this is a very serious threat to life.
Professor Are Nylund head of the Fish Diseases Group at the University of Bergen, Norway, reports that, “based on 20 years of experience, I can guarantee that if British Columbia continues to import salmon eggs from the eastern Atlantic infectious salmon diseases, such as ISA, will arrive in Western Canada. Here in Hardangerfjord we have sacrificed our wild salmon stocks in exchange for farm salmon. With all your 5 species of wild salmon, BC is the last place you should have salmon farms.”
New diseases and parasites are being identified. The most serious is a sea lice parasite that attacks the salmon immune system. There is concern that this new parasite is responsible for accelerating wild salmon declines. The Norwegian scientists agree with many of us in BC. If you want wild salmon you must reduce the number of farm salmon. There are three options.
The future for salmon farming will have to include:
- permanently reduction of not just the number of sea lice, but also the number of farm salmon per fjord,
- removing farm salmon for periods of time to delouse the fjords and not restocking until after the out-migration of the wild salmon and sea trout.
- But where wild salmon are considered essential they say the only certain measure is to remove the farms completely.
There are many people here like me. I met a man who has devoted his life to the science of restoring the Voss River, where the largest Atlantic salmon in the world, a national treasure, have vanished due to sea lice from salmon farms. Interestingly he is using the method I was not allowed to use last spring… Towing the fish past the farms out to sea. Another man is working with scientists and communities to keep the sea trout of the Hardangerfjord alive. There are so many tragic stories familiar to British Columbia.
The corporate fish farmers are unrelenting in their push to expand. With Chile so highly contaminated with the Norwegian strain of ISA all fish farmed coasts including Norway are threatened with expansion. I made the best case I could to Mainstream and Marine Harvest for removing the salmon feedlots from our wild salmon migration routes, but they will not accept that they are harming wild salmon. They say they want to improve, but they don’t say how. Norway has different social policies which include encouraging people to populate the remote areas and so fish farming seemed a good opportunity to these people. BC has the opposite policy, but the line that fish farms are good for small coastal communities has been used in BC anyway. I have not seen any evidence that it has even replaced the jobs it has impacted in wild fisheries and tourism.
It is becoming increasingly clear to protect wild Pacific salmon from the virus ISA the BC border absolutely has to be closed to importation of salmon eggs immediately and salmon farms MUST be removed from the Fraser River migration routes and any other narrow waterways where wild salmon are considered valuable.
Our letter asking government that the Fisheries Act, which is the law in Canada be applied to protect our salmon from fish farms has been signed by 14,000 people to date at www.adopt-a-fry.org
Please forward this letter and encourage more people to sign our letter to government as it is building a community of concerned people word wide and we will prevail as there is really no rock for this industry to hide under and longer.
Alexandra Morton
Glad to know this information is spreading beyond the coast. Wild salmon don’t do drugs! Thanks for reporting on this.
How do you know?
Do you have them tested?
Fishing endagers wild salmon.
Eating them does too.
But they’re so tasty, so what do you do?
I enjoy eating fresh salmon all year round,
Some I go out and catch
Some I grow myself.
Sad to see this MISinformation spreading beyond the coast.
You grow our own salmon, really? I thought the salmon grew themselves, or maybe nature grows them… but are humans really so cocky as to think they do the growing for these little fishies, lol
I think ‘growing’ salmon is kinda like raising GMO corn – if you do it around the wild varieties you are gonna cause ecological problems from interfering with nature. That appears to be the case here.
Hi there Mi Kai Lee!
I figured you would have something to say about this!
Of course I should have used the term “raise”.
I feed them, they grow.
I think that you and Alexandra would get along “swimmingly”
The fact remains that there are so few salmon left because they are not that smart, not because of lice.
If they were smart they would come back to different rivers every time and we wouldn’t be waiting with different types of nets and canneries to so efficiently wipe them out.
WestCoaster;
Please tell us about the “misinformation”. Where is your “information”?
Thanks
Salmon are “not that smart”? Since humans are about the dumbest creatures out there (judging by their actions) – how could a human possibly know whether a salmon is smart. Did you ask the salmon?
Wherever did we get this idea that homo sapiens is the best game in town? I thought all of creation was endowed with the same innate intelligence – since we all share the same creator. How can a human be smarter than a salmon? I think all creatures have equal capacity – it’s just that humans don’t seem to want to know that, want to act like they are above everything else.
Where on earth did we get that elitist idea?
I am sorry that humour was one of things to have been lost on the path to equal capacity.
Salmon stocks have been reduced from their once bountiful numbers by humans acting in every possible manner of irresponsibility.
Entire runs have been decimated by commercial ventures including canneries dotting the entire coast which would process and ship huge numbers of fish.
Sockeye, being the most sought after suffered the most.
Along with them the Chinook and Coho were targeted by ever increasing numbers of technologically advanced seine and gill net fleets.
Recreational fishing ( which I admit I enjoy at every possible opportunity ) also takes its toll.
To make matters worse we ( irresponsible humans ) have logged the watersheds which clean and cool the river water salmon rely on and ruined countless waterways with urban development.
The only chance that salmon have to stay part of our world is for us to stop eating them, put money into enhancement hatcheries and save some of their spawning grounds from ruin.
Aquaculture feeds people effectively and has a very low impact. Its that simple.
It is efficient – fish convert food at nearly 1 to 1 ( and less than half of that is protein ) Any warmblooded creature will never break 3 to 1 ( and most are fed fishmeal )
It is clean – fish poo released back into the ocean is utilised by microoganisms and bivalves as well as crustaceans – which all form the bottom of the food chain. It also helps to keep the acidity of the ocean down and provides calcium for shellfish and zooplankton to form their shells and exoskeletons.
To compare it with landbased farms such as chickens, pigs or cows is completely inaccurate. Warm-blooded poo was never meant to be part of the oceans or freshwater systems.
Polyculture involves harvesting multiple species out of one farm with salmon being at the top of the trophic chain. Fish poop goes all the way down through mussels, barnacles, oysters, sea cucumbers and feeds them.
Salmon farms are not wastelands in the ocean, they support a huge variety of life.
When positioned properly the tidal flow diffuses the waste and turns it into manna from heaven for all sorts of things on the bottom.
Farmed salmon only receive medication if they are sick. On average less than 2% of all feed given to any fish will contain any sort of drug.
Any poultry, pork or beef product will have been given antibiotics in almost all of their feed.
This of course excludes any organic farms.
Sea Lice – The sea lice that have been found to affect Pink and Chum smolts entering the ocean( the only ones small enough at that point to be affected by these parasites ) are a different species than the ones we deal with on salmon farms.
You mean they are not all the same thing? Thats right. Sea lice come in many forms.
The sea lice that have decimated the Atlantic salmon and sea trout stocks are passed by the Atlantic salmon farmed in the same waters. They are a particularly nasty species of louse that will actually consume the fish and not just live off the slime and scales.
There is more to it than the fearmongering, anti-everything leaguers like to lead you to believe.
Aquaculture is the way of the future and should be supported.
When was the last time you ate anything “wild” that you didn’t shoot, trap or catch yourself.
WestCoaster — you make some very good points. But in the end, all creatures are sentient and intelligent, and they get stressed when they are removed from their natural habitat and their freedom of movement is limited. Just like humans, stress takes a toll on health. It is no different for any creature — unless you think they are somehow without intelligence and without feelings, which would be a pretty arrogant presumption to make.
So I think the focus here should really be on the living conditions of these salmon, how they are being treated, what they are being forced to sacrifice in the name of profit (other than their lives). Surely this ‘profit’ thing is only (arguably) a benefitt for humans, not a benefit to the whole of creation on earth. In the big picture what is the merit of salmon farms, or any other kind of institution that incarcerates and kills living creatures? (This is a rhetorical question, not one that I am inviting a debate on.)
WestCoaster
You are making all kinds of claims, but where is your science?
The living conditions of these fish are the best possible.
The farms are positioned in areas of high tidal flow and high dissolved oxygen when possible.
When neccessary we add oxygen into the water by diffusing microbubbles and have a number of different methods to protect them from harmful algae blooms.
Fish are naturally gregarious and will school closely together even when in low densities ( fish are entered into the ocean at roughly 100 grams into about a 15000 cubic meter pen )
When they grow to a harvestable size ( around 5 kilograms ) they will still be at densities of less than 18 kg per m3.
Stress causes low growth rates and death.
Low growth rates and death cost money.
It is in our best interest to have the fishes best interest in mind with everything we do.
When they are handled, euthanized or harvested it is always done humanely.
Salmon can be fragile creatures and if we did not provide the best possible environment we would not be able to raise such an excellent product.
For links to Aquaculture infomation you can visit:
http://www.aquacultureassociation.ca
http://www.salmonfarmers.org
Or if you want to visit the official DFO page at:
http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/aquaculture/aquaculture-eng.htm
I am on the EAST COAST where all this mess started! The Industry and DFO sing the same song:::SHOW US THE SMOKING GUN!!
OK here is another bullet in the chamber. Salmon farming started in the Bay of Fundy in the late 70’s. By 1986 it was up to full commercial production. By the late 80’s we noticed our our population of Inner Fundy wild salmon stocks were crashing. Same old story from Industry and DFO: NOT US!! Really.
The Inner Bay stocks were unique since they only migrated to the Quoddy/Grand Manan area to return as grilse a year later.
Want to guess where the salmon pens are? Yes right in the middle of their feeding areas. The pens were fighting of sea lice and ISA from the get go just like Norweigh, Scotland, Ireland and Chile.
The cycle goes like this in the pens. Sea lice infestation, treat with Slice or Alphamax, sea lice return, treat again stressing the fish in the pen and BINGO ISA appears in the farm.
At the same time our wild stocks are swimming outside the pens in the same water. ISA is transmitted through the water to our wild salmon. WHO has inoculated our wild stocks? Who treated them for sea lice? Who asked the people of the bay if we were willing to sacrifice our Public Resources to generate a profit for the Industry?
Right now the Chile industry is in free fall from ISA and sea lice, ISA has reappeared in Scotland and Norweigh. The Bliss Harbour Salmon Industry in New Brunswick now has SLICE RESISTANT sea lice and they have stepped up to the next most stressful and deadly chemical. There is only one small problem. The chemical kill more that the sea lice. It also kills lobsters, clams,mussels, and it builds up in scallops.
ISA will reappear just like it has everywhere else the industry is located.
There is only TWO SOLUTION to the problems caused by the Salmon pens! GET THEM OUT OF OUR WATERS or CLOSED CONTAINMENT!!
Do it now before everything is gone including YOUR industry!!!!!!!