Lethal Atlantic salmon virus found on the West Coast

Tonington

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 27, 2006
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Dear Minister Ashfield
I would suggest you stop treating us like fools. Your attached letter is grossly inadequate. Download Initial Request for 2011-001-03100.pdf (440.4K) Show us your Moncton test results because your lab is the only one that cannot find ISA virus. I would also suggest you stop obsessing over the quality of the River Inlet samples and go out and get your own samples. You have an entire department at your disposal.
Obsessing over the quality of samples? That is ridiculous. The test results that were weakly positive were of poor quality. As has been said many times now, PCR is very sensitive. With samples that are degraded, the test specificity and sensitivity decline rapidly. The Moncton lab will release the results, when the full results are in, which includes other diagnostic tests. Alexandra Morton and all the activists will get their chance to spin the results when they are tabled before Justice Cohen.
Yesterday I received yet another set of positive ISAv results for salmon of the Fraser River. Download Report231111[13].pdf (15.9K)
You can stop calling the 1st Norwegian tests a "negative" result. Be more accurate and call them what they are - a weak positive. Download Report 021111.pdf (22.0K) You can't wave a magic wand and make black white.
Yes, finally she is calling the tests weak positives. These were most likely false positives. If both ISAV tests have the same sensitivity, and they only hit one positive out of 5 re-runs for gill tissue, and only on one of the tests, and no positves on any of the heart tisse re-runs, then the odds are highly suggestive that this was a false positive.

In fact the Norwegian researcher who tested the samples is asking the same question, just what are they detecting with that test?

I want to see Dr. Gary's Marty's PCR results. Don't just tell us he tested 5000 fish and got a negative, you need to tell us what segment and what probe, we need details because you are risking our fish with your actions.
That's ridiculous rhetoric. Dr. Marty tests samples, he's not risking anything. Alexandra Morton and her activists are so myopic that they can't even separate between the farmers who they assert are causing the damage, and the professionals who diagnose samples in a lab. Ridiculous.

As for Dr. Laura Richards, she personally petitioned to waive the Canadian Fish Health Protection Regulations in 2004 so Atlantic salmon eggs could pour in from an unapproved hatchery. That is why her words are meaningless to me. Download 2004 Fish Health1[1].pdf (2176.3K)
This is simple bureaucratic nonsense. I've filled out these import certificates before. Not all hatcheries will have been approved, but there are mechanisms in place. The hatchery in question had detailed health summaries of their broodstock and their progeny, they had secure water sources, and had not imported new stock to their hatchery in over 5 years. They met all the conditions, except for the red tape of government regulations which by no means should be taken as a guarantee.

I mean which is it? Do you trust the Fish Health Guidelines and testing, or not. They seem to want to have it both ways. How do you submit samples of fish for re-testing by Canadian labs when those fish are gone?

Ignorance runs rampant with Morton and her crew.

There is no reason BC would not have been contaminated by ISAv. Your department left the door wide open! You did not include ISAv on the hatchery import forms, likely because no one can actually sign a document saying there is no ISAv in Atlantic salmon eggs - the virus is that widespread. Your department did not even make ISAv a reportable disease in salmon farms, even as the same companies as use BC waters triggered a massive ISAv epidemic in Chile. This is unconscionable.
This is patently false. ISAv is a reportable disease...There is very good reason for BC having no ISA contamination...there have been no disease outbreaks in the farms. ISA is lethal, highly lethal. 90% of all fish will die lethal. That hasn't happened.

Shame on you. As we face grave uncertainty over introduction of the most lethal salmon virus known, you give the salmon farming industry a million dollars to go to trade shows so they can peddle their wares while we pay for the consequences.
Rhetoric. More rhetoric.

In my opinion, Mr. Ashfield you, predecessors and key members of your department belong in court for reckless behaviour risking the most generous gift the people of British Columbia receive every year. You are not here to see communities of people, whales, eagles, bears come to life when the salmon come home. They are much too valuable to be risked by vacuous statements by the likes of you. Either stand up strong and fight for our fish or step down Mr. Ashfield.
Not supported by her so called facts. Reaching rhetoric.

Hundreds of British Columbians go into the rivers every year to fight for the wild salmon. We work for the wild salmon because we understand their value and we are not going to let you take this away from us. As hundreds of thousands of sockeye salmon died every year in the Fraser River, before spawning, your department would not give your own scientists the money to find out why and when they came up with a very strong theory you starved them further for funds and locked their voices away from the media. And yet you throw money to the foreign owned salmon feedlot industry.
Here I actually agree. There should be more money for DFO.

Please resign and take your senior Pacific Region staff with you. Remove the Pacific Biological Station from political clutches so that they can do the work that needs to be done. We need some people at the helm who want wild salmon to survive and you sir have shown no such ability. Step away from our fish.
More slander.
Dr. Alexandra Morton
She has a Bachelor of Science. She's no more a Dr. than I am...
 

Tonington

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 27, 2006
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Just what I expect form you/yours.

Can't manage a response ehh? It is slander, she goes from very weak evidence to highly certain negative and defamatory statements. That's called slander. Just because you activists can't manage the scientific arguments, you claim conspiracies and incompetence to hide your own shortcomings.

Pathetic.

Here's a nice picture showing the difference between the activists simplified view of science, versus reality. It's messy, but it works:
 

gillnetter

New Member
Nov 27, 2011
6
0
1
Sitka Alaska
Can we all agree that raising a salmon from the other side of the country,a different ocean and a species foreign to the pacific ocean and raise them in a confined area and treat them with drugs not to mention coloring there food to make a pinker flesh is going to have serious negative effects on the environment they are raised in?
 

Tonington

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 27, 2006
15,441
150
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Nothing is showing

Except your ignorance, and Morton's intellectual bankruptcy. Hardly nothing.

Can we all agree that raising a salmon from the other side of the country,a different ocean and a species foreign to the pacific ocean and raise them in a confined area and treat them with drugs not to mention coloring there food to make a pinker flesh is going to have serious negative effects on the environment they are raised in?

No. Define serious, and give evidence, then we'll talk.
 

bill barilko

Senate Member
Mar 4, 2009
6,038
582
113
Vancouver-by-the-Sea
Except your ignorance, and Morton's intellectual bankruptcy....
If you're incapable of hotlinking a simple picture how thorough are your experiments?



No. Define serious, and give evidence, then we'll talk.
Canadians shouldn't have to prove that money hungry corporations (and their paid shills who have money as their god) that have devastated Salmon runs in Norway, Scotland and Ireland won't do the same here.

Put the feedlots on land-recycle the waste and if you can't make money without damaging the environment then Go Back To Where You Come From!!!
 

dumpthemonarchy

House Member
Jan 18, 2005
4,235
14
38
Vancouver
www.cynicsunlimited.com
And wild fish stocks around the world are collapsing. If people want sea food in the future, they will either have to accept that it's going to be very expensive, or that consumption will have to decrease, or that aquaculture will have to fill the role. Theirs no getting around that.

You don't know what you're talking about with fish feed. Fish feeds are formulated diets, and the farmed fish are actually more efficient consumers of their feed. So if you're looking at ocean carrying capacity, and how much food can be produced, aquaculture will allow us to feed more people on the same amount of resources.

Where did the farmed salmon get the sea lice from? Wild fish.

Farmed fish is frankenfood, garbage. Farmed fish tastes mushy, it's poop.
 

gillnetter

New Member
Nov 27, 2011
6
0
1
Sitka Alaska
In Alaska, where I fish we do not have the evil spawn of farmed salmon,unless they escape from a net in BC and we are blessed with a superior management system that prevents over fishing. Unlike the country I am a proud citizen of and would die for ,Canada.{the tattoos on my back prove it and my passport} the management system failed, the fisherman tried to catch the last fish and almost succeeded and farm salmon was welcomed into BC by the government to make up for jobs lost in fishing industry and for tax dollars to feed the machine.
My argument is simple. When you mess with mother nature you are left with an inferior product and problems to the environment.
 

Tonington

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 27, 2006
15,441
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In Alaska, where I fish we do not have the evil spawn of farmed salmon,unless they escape from a net in BC and we are blessed with a superior management system that prevents over fishing. Unlike the country I am a proud citizen of and would die for ,Canada.{the tattoos on my back prove it and my passport} the management system failed, the fisherman tried to catch the last fish and almost succeeded and farm salmon was welcomed into BC by the government to make up for jobs lost in fishing industry and for tax dollars to feed the machine.
My argument is simple. When you mess with mother nature you are left with an inferior product and problems to the environment.

This is seriously funny. No farmed salmon? You don't mess with nature?

Bull $hit.

Your state raises billions of smolts in hatcheries and releases them into the environment to support the wild fishery. It's called salmon ranching. What's more, your state doesn't collect enough information to assess the impact on biodiversity from these programs. So your state now is dependent on these farm raised smolts for fully one third of the wild harvest state-wide.

Here on the East coast, where we no longer have a fishery, we still raise salmon in hatcheries to try to help them rebound, but we have geneticists who prioritize pairwise matings to maximize the genetic variability in the offspring. Alaska isn't doing this.

You are messing with mother nature. Your "superior" management includes a known risk for stock health, and you require aquaculture to maintain your harvest numbers. Without it you would be over-fishing.

And you have no idea what you're doing to nearby rivers. Straying is when a fish spawns in any river but that from which it was raised. Oregon has some experience with salmon ranching. They had low numbers of strays from their total hatchery production, about 6%. But these strays moved into locally adapted and genetically distinct sub-populations in other rivers, and soon 3/4 of the fish in nearby rivers and streams were strays.

There is a known effect of hatchery raised fish. They aren't attuned to the conditions of wild fish, they have poor fitness in comparison for wild conditions. For example, hatchery raised fish have lower survival from smolt to adult, but higher survival from egg to smolt. They are more aggressive feeders, and less effficient at foraging than wild fish. The breeding success is higher in wild fish, but they produce smaller eggs with lower fecundity.

There are two farming practices for marine production of salmonids in North America. If you were to compare salmon farmed in cages, to your ranched fish, for every farmed salmon introduced to a net pen, there are 250 salmon loosed for ranching. The ranched salmon will consume 70 times the amount of feed, and produce less than 10 times the total production.

So which is a more efficient use of resources?

A host of issues. Ignorance is bliss ehh?

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On another note, I have reason to be pissed at DFO today. Turns out that ten years ago, the wife of the Virologist here at the Atlantic Vet College who worked on those samples that everyone was talking about in October was doing some research on Vancouver Island, with DFO. She took samples of Pacific salmon, and guess what? She found ISA in those fish! DFO disputed her results, and wouldn't let her publish her paper.

The kicker? Her conclusions were that Pacific salmon may have their own naturally occurring strain of ISA. But DFO for whatever dumb stupid reason wouldn't let her publish. Imagine what researchers could have learned in 10 years.

More politics instead of sound science.
 
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bill barilko

Senate Member
Mar 4, 2009
6,038
582
113
Vancouver-by-the-Sea
The net pen apologists all speak from the same script/speak with the same drooling mendacious mumble.

As unpopular as they in polite society I suppose we should have some sympathy for their lost cause but seeing the damage that's been done they can look in the dictionary between sh!t & syphilis.
 

bill barilko

Senate Member
Mar 4, 2009
6,038
582
113
Vancouver-by-the-Sea
Go to university and you can learn professional science too!
Stick with your studies and you too can learn to parrot the biostitute line.

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Oh wait-you're already parroting that line-in fact that's all I've ever seen you do.

But the human spirit is indomitable-maybe one day in a fit of honesty you'll take up an feasible sector of the mariculture trade like Scallops or Oysters-and finaly admit that raising piscivorous fish is unsustainable.
 

Tonington

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 27, 2006
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Well CFIA has finished testing:

Canada Completes Infectious Salmon Anaemia Testing: No Confirmed Cases in BC Salmon

December 2, 2011: The Government of Canada in collaboration with the Province of British Columbia has completed testing all samples related to the suspected infectious salmon anaemia investigation in BC. Based on the final results, there are no confirmed cases of the disease in wild or farmed salmon in BC.

The CFIA has also conducted a preliminary review of an industry-led testing program for farmed species. The review found that there has been a significant amount of testing for viral diseases, including infectious salmon anaemia, in farmed fish over the last 10 years.

In recent years, the Government of Canada and the Province of BC have tested over 5000 wild and farmed salmon in BC for infectious salmon anaemia. None have ever tested positive.

Infectious salmon anaemia poses no risk to people. Pacific salmon appear to be resistant to the disease.

Under the CFIA’s National Aquatic Animal Health Program, suspected federally reportable diseases, such as infectious salmon anaemia, must be confirmed at the Fisheries and Oceans Canada national reference laboratory.

For more information on infectious salmon anaemia, visit Canadian Food Inspection Agency - Aquatic Animals or call 1-800-442-2342.
Follow us on Twitter for the latest on animal health: Twitter.
Related Information:


Media inquiries:
CFIA Media Relations
613-773-6600
DFO Media Relations
613-990-7537
 

taxslave

Hall of Fame Member
Nov 25, 2008
36,362
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She has a Bachelor of Science. She's no more a Dr. than I am...
__________________________
I believe she was granted an honorary doctorate from some diploma mill.

Can we all agree that raising a salmon from the other side of the country,a different ocean and a species foreign to the pacific ocean and raise them in a confined area and treat them with drugs not to mention coloring there food to make a pinker flesh is going to have serious negative effects on the environment they are raised in?

NO because that would be a lie.
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
117,690
14,377
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Low Earth Orbit
Well...I guess I'll have to hurry up and go fishing and rockhounding in Kamchatka before it's too late to do the salmon fishing.