The Hook

ME2

DFO has conducted extensive research into the Fish Farm, Pink Salmon, Sea Lice interactions, in large part as a result of Morton's claims.

Their results were quite interesting.

Pink Salmon juveniles were found to contain very low levels of sea lice, an infestation rate of 2 percent, with the vast majority of the fish which were infected hosting only a single louse.

Chum Salmon juveniles, and Three Spined Stickleback had much higher infestation rates than Pink Salmon juveniles.

There was found an interesting relationship between Stickleback and Pink Salmon, where Stickleback would actively delouse Pink Salmon juveniles, with a distinct preference for gravid female lice. The Sealice were a preferred food source for Stickleback.

Sea Lice were found to have difficulty keeping their attachment to Pink Salmon juveniles. In short the Sea Lice kept falling off, to the extent that in confined long term testing, the researchers had to keep manually attaching Sea Lice to Pink Salmon juveniles to test the effect of Sea Lice infestations on Pink Salmon juveniles.

DFO found that there was no relationship between fish farms and Sea Lice infestations on Pink Salmon.

Illahie

I thought Rafe Maier had embarrassed you sufficiently. Now here you are again with the same stuff.

Is thetyee doing BC a disservice?

Is thetyee doing BC a disservice by misreporting on this issue?

Morton is a colourful character, and it is probably fun to report on her rants, but is thetyee harming our fish stocks by failing to report on the facts?

DFO has spent millions of (taxpayer) dollars studying Morton's allegations. They put some of their best scientists to work on this issue. The money, equipment and expertise could certainly have been better used elsewhere.

In 2007 more than 100 million Sockeye smolts went missing in the mouth of the Fraser river, or the lower Strait of Georgia.

Does thetyee have the blood of 100 million sockeye on its hands? Does Morton? The spring migration is the spring migration, and personal and equipment used on one project is not available for other projects. Is thetyee contributing to the demise of our wild fish stocks?

DFO's study results are freely available to those who are interested.

A brief summary follows:

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/aquaculture/lice-pou-eng.htm

Sea lice science

The DFO is not the last word on sea lice, Illahie.

And although there is not a consensus (there hardly ever is) amongst scientists on whether or not salmon farms directly impact sea lice infestation on wild fish, Morton is certainly not the only one looking at it.

In 2007, Martin Krkosek at the University of Alberta published a well-publicized paper in the Journal of Science showing a correlation between sea lice, salmon farms and wild salmon.
(http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=58e0b133-7f4c-4702-a003-ef633c3330e5&k=65284)

And here is a good summary of the scientific literature on the subject prepared by UVic's Brian Harvey for the government-appointed Pacific Salmon Forum.

(http://www.pacificsalmonforum.ca/pdfs-all-docs/ScienceandSeaLiceFinalFeb22-08.pdf.)

He concluded that the scientific picture we do have is that:

"- Salmon farms in the Broughton produce large numbers of sea louse larvae;

- Encounters between those farm-produced larvae and juvenile pink and chum salmon
cannot yet be observed but are completely plausible biologically and in all current
mathematical models;

- The percentage of sea lice on wild salmon that come from salmon farms can’t be quantified

- Drawing a direct link between sea lice produced on salmon farms and the status of wild salmon populations will be a lively area of research."

Colleen Kimmett

Right over the top

Illahie's rhetorical questions and ad hominem tone suggest that s/he is not a disinterested observer. Perhaps s/he's in the employ of a major marketing enterprise, e.g. a fish-farm advocacy group, or the PAB?

The suggestion that the Tyee somehow bears responsibility for declining salmon stocks, based on the bias of its reportage is so utterly laugable, that I think it might be the latter. Sounds a lot like someone used to authoring political smear copy....

The rhetorical question, which occurs no less than 4 times in the copy, and in the subject line, is a an obvious clue that this is someone whose stock-in-trade is FUD.

Thank you for your response Colleen

It is certainly true that DFO is not the last word on sea lice. It is however their responsiblity to manage fisheries, so their research matters. It is also a serious well designed multi million dollar research effort.

Feel free to disagree with the results if you wish, but it is only responsible journalism to recognize that the research exists.

Fish story

Deeby says: "The suggestion that the Tyee somehow bears responsibility for declining salmon stocks, based on the bias of its reportage is so utterly laughable."

Funny, I wish I had a nickel for every time I've seen in the Tyee comments section that Can-West Global (aka the Vancouver Sun) is responsible for every right-wing sin imaginable. Sauce for the goose?

Funny, too, that anyone who disagrees with the gospel according to Alexandra is automatically labelled a lackey of the fish farms. Never let the facts get in the way of a good ad hominem argument.

The attempt to link lice from fish farms to migrating pinks was dubious to begin with. When nearly two years ago Morton and Krkosek produced their four cycle "extinction" model for pinks in the Broughton, of course blaming it on lice from farms, they hit a low water mark.

The fact that they excluded returns from the Glendale (which accounts for more than 80% of returning pinks in the Broughton) brought hoots of derision from other scientists and consigned that study to the trash heap of junk science.

And I wonder what their "extinction" hypothesis looks like now, with pinks returning in such high numbers this year that they opened up a commercial fishery for them.

Yet they continue to draw phenomenal media coverage, even in the nasty right wing rags. How could that be?

Illahie is right. The cause of fisheries research has been badly skewed by this artificial construct over lice and fish farms, and one can only wonder what we'd all know about wild salmon stocks now if all that money had instead been directed at the issues the scientists think might be responsible for the collapse.

But that just wouldn't do, would it, because we'd lose the bogey man and take away one of Rafe's precious rants.

blackie

Long story short, you don't have a clue as to why salmon stocks collapsed but that it must be the Tyee's, Rafe's or Morton's fault.

Are they also at fault for the collapse of east coast cod?

As for Can-West

They appear to be bankrupt. It seems that that little issue was caused by declining circulation. And that seems to have been caused by there not being enough right-wingers, since Can-West doesn't even try to appeal to anyone else.

Illahie

Hate the Tyee becaus its "unbalanced"?

Yet you read it every day.

Sealice problem in the Broughton's

Sealice have a problem in the Broughton's

The BC coast is mountainous. There is are large icefields which stretch from Toba and Bute inlets in the south, up the coast. Knight Inlet at the head of the Broughton's stabs deep into the heart of it. It continues up through Rivers and Smith Inlets, up to Bella Coola.

The Klinaklini is one of the great BC rivers. It starts deep in the interior plateau, collects large amounts of water from the ice fields which drain into the head of Knight Inlet. The mighty Franklyn glacier next door comes within a few miles of tide water.

Further out the inlet the Anawati and Glendale rivers are direct runnoff rivers which swell during the smolt migration in the spring.

Even the muddy Kakweiken river adds to the fresh water inflow. All that fresh water has nowhere to go but out past Minstrel Island into the Broughton's. If you want to cross the channel between the Cracroft's you better have gumboots. Even the narrow Chatham channel is only 20' deep.

The problem is that sea lice cannot tolerate fresh water. The Broughton's are a lousy habitat if you are a sea louse because of the low salinity.

DFO and sea lice

DFO knows exactly how serious sea lice are. What many people don't know is that I worked for two years with DFO on their Broughton sea lice project under the Pacific Salmon Forum. Dr. Brian Riddell head of Salmon for DFO has visited my research station many times and we have had frank discussions. Riddell recently quit DFO.

When the cod collapsed on the east coast, three scientists wrote a paper titled: Is scientific inquiry incompatible with government information control?

They report that while there was still time to reverse the cod decline DFO:

Misinformed the public
Muzzled their own scientists
Offered plausible but very wrong theories
Did nothing while there was still time

Sounds corrupt doesn't it? And no one was held accountable. This paper as published in Canada's leading scientific journal CJFAS.

Why? Who knows but the Hibernia oil well went onto the Grand Banks right after all the fishermen were grounded for lack of fish.

Norway is an important investment partner in the Alberta oil sands....92% of salmon farms in BC are Norwegian.... Perhaps Stephen Harper does not dare serve the people of BC. Perhaps he is sending a message to Norwegian business partners that he can suppress any public opposition to Norwegian investments in Canada?

I don't t know, I am biologist, but one thing for sure, whatever DFO is doing, they know salmon farms endanger wild salmon stocks and they are not dealing with it.

Fish farms break the natural laws and allow pathogens to breed exponentially. DFO knows this. Everyone knows this, except the public who are clinging to the hope that government works for them.

Why is freshwater deadly to sea lice?

Sea lice are adapted to live in a normal saltwater environment with a salinity of about 35 parts per thousand. The body fluids of a sea louse have a lower salinity. The sea louse has to constantly fight to retain water in its body, and to pull water in against the osmotic gradient. As a result sea lice are always trying to pull in water to keep from dessicating.

If the sea louse encounters a fresh water enviroment, the sea louse is still trying to pump in fresh water, but the osmotic pressure has reversed, the sea louse is flooded with fresh water and it pops

Stockhome Syndrome

We are often told that a journalist is one of the most important parts of a free society. We depend on the journalistic community to get beyond the spin of politicians and government bureaucrats, to look beyond the spin of the corporate executives and special interest groups and to tell the real story.

Is it possible for a journalist to get Stockholm Syndrome? Is it happening here on thetyee?

Illahie

Tell the real story?

Would that be the government line brought to us by Can-West?

Pretty sad commentary on the state of the Sun, the Province, CKNW and BCTV. But then I agree with you, we can't look to those places and expect to ever be told the truth. So I, and you, look to small web based 'zines for the real news.

Of course the discussion we should be having is what happened to the mainstream media.

Ok so now we know

After wasting millions of dollars on this frivolous exercise, we know that there is no association between sea lice and fish farms.

Actually most of us don't know.

Colleen Kimmett doesn't seem to want to report on it. Rafe Mair has not yet issued a mea culpa (and don't hold your breath waiting for one). No word yet from the noted academic Crawford Kilian on DFO's scholarly work on this issue.

I suspect that there are two reasons for the lack of reporting on this issue. Most of the environmental crowd is pro environment (who isn't) and want to stick it to the fish farm industry regardless of whether the fish farm industry actually causes any environmental harm.

More importantly I think is that the reporters who hung on to every word of the oracle of fish slime eating copepods are probably embarrassed for being taken for a fool. It is better to avoid reporting on this issue then to admit that they were chasing a false cause.

Will this be the end of the issue. Not at all likely. The anti fish farm propaganda campaign has been going on for 30 years now. Like a bad virus, it will likely morph into something else.

The Mighty Tyee

The mighty Tyee, now just a spawned out kelt
Eyes going dim
Food for the Gulls
The hook has lost its barb
Journalism is dead
May it rest in peace