Farmed salmon and sea lice...hold the phone!

[Tonington]

This is a result that caught me by surprise, and no doubt quite a few others. In 2000 and 2001, there were record high returns of pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago. In 2002 and 2003, the returning pinks were only 3 and 12% of the previous runs respectively. In 2001, the juvenile pink salmon were found to be covered in lice, about 90% of the juveniles were carrying. The salmon returns plummeting, and the high louse counts lead to a hypothesis that fish farms were the cause, a reasonable hypothesis. This prompted groups like the Georgia Straight Alliance, and the Suziki Foundation to call for measures, such as fallowing and closed containment farms replacing open net pens.

There was even some high profile papers published.

Fast forward to today. A new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has examined 60 years of population counts of pink salmon, 20 years of farm production data, and ten years of sea lice counts from every farm in the Broughton Archipelago, and found that there is no relationship at all between sea lice counts in the farms, and the returns of pink salmon. There were some strong associations in between though. For example, the number of returning pinks is an excellent predictor of lice counts on the farms. As the adult pinks migrate past the farms, the lice jump to the net pens. Also, there is a strong correlation between the lice counts on the farm, and those on the juvenile salmon. But, the causal relationship breaks down for predicting returning salmon.

Pink salmon have even and odd year classes. They enter the marine phase early for a salmonid, at less than a gram of body size. They then return to their home river after two years spent in the marine environment, without fail. This is important, because if the cause is sea lice from farms, then the counts from farms in 2000 should predict the returns in 2002, the counts in 2001 should predict the returns in 2003, etc.

When all the data was poured over, this relationship was missing. The 2001 returning class which was so huge, was exposed to more sea lice as juveniles than the 2002 class of juveniles was.

Back to the drawing board!

 

[taxslave]

Been lots of news coverage on the Island about it. Since I have spent a great part of my life in that area logging I have been trying to keep up on it. I know many people that work on the farms and have been to quite a few of them and have dove in old sites just to look. After a few years the bottom looks like everywhere else.
The anti farm bunch are actually anti everything economic in this area and started with the theory that farms are bad and worked the data to try and confirm this.
Tonington: Since you work with this industry do you have any good info on closed confinement or dry land farms? I wonder if it is economically viable? Or could it be in the future?

 

[petros]

For once monoculture gets off the "hook".

 

[Tonington]

Been lots of news coverage on the Island about it. Since I have spent a great part of my life in that area logging I have been trying to keep up on it. I know many people that work on the farms and have been to quite a few of them and have dove in old sites just to look. After a few years the bottom looks like everywhere else.

It wasn't always like that. In the hay days, DFO gave out permits like crazy, and some farms were placed in areas with very low flushing action from tides and currents. The build-up on the bottom contributed to Hydrogen sulphide levels that were dangerous...to fish and all else.

These days though, the industry is regulated to the teeth. If the residents don't like the look of floating PVC rings, that's enough to stop it. Also, it's very much big business now...no small farmer can afford the legal fees to pay consultants and a legal team.

Tonington: Since you work with this industry do you have any good info on closed confinement or dry land farms? I wonder if it is economically viable? Or could it be in the future?

I know Suzuki changed his mind when he discovered closed containment. The thing is, it's so much more expensive. But not impossible. I recently saw an add looking for management and technicians at a closed farm group in New Zealand. They produce about 450MT a year, and would like to go up to 1,000 MT a year, though from what I gather it's predominantly smoked salmon. So that's value added, and I think that would probably be the best margins you could get to justify the increased cost of pumps, filtration, effluent control, etc. Consider grocery store prices, $21 a kg for smoked, and probably more like $7 or 8 for dressed salmon.

For once monoculture gets off the "hook".

Monoculture is still dumb. There's active research in polyculture systems, growing salmon, mussels, urchins, and even kelp in the farm leases. Adds value, and reduces the nutrient loading.

 

[petros]

Monoculture is still dumb. There's active research in polyculture systems, growing salmon, mussels, urchins, and even kelp in the farm leases. Adds value, and reduces the nutrient loading.

Raising a top of the food chain predator is pure insanity. What happens when the Peruvians and Chileans deplete the stocks needed for top of the food chain monoculture?

I'd love to ditch monoculture in the farm fields too but I'd go broke after the first harvest.

 

[Tonington]

Raising a top of the food chain predator is pure insanity.

The fish meal and fish oil component of salmon feed can and is being phased out. In another decade, the only fish material that will be in salmon feed will be enough oil to make sure that the end product that goes to market still has beneficial levels of DHA and EPA.

 

[petros]

They are going to use monocultured oilseed and grains? Right on. More salts, diesel fuel and petrochemical herbicides needed to grow food for fish and the salt runoff can kill even more wild fish stocks. Good idea.

Maybe 2012 will mean 70 million tonnes of potash rather than just 60 expected this year over last years 50 million tonnes of potash alone. I'd assume N and P usage will increase as well.

As a producer,investor and royalty beneficiary I think that is wonderful.

 

[bill barilko]

The fish meal and fish oil component of salmon feed can and is being phased out. In another decade, the only fish material that will be in salmon feed will be enough oil to make sure that the end product that goes to market still has beneficial levels of DHA and EPA.

Carnivorous animals can't be raised on a vegetarian diet-not now not ever.

 

[petros]

Carnivorous animals can't be raised on a vegetarian diet-not now not ever.

Shhhhhhh!!!! I want higher canola and flax returns. Hell, I'll even buy a header for sunflower if need be.

It baffles me how a person who pushes a green agenda is in one of the most pointless resource taxing industries on the planet.

As long as they keep blaming cottage owners & Winnipeg residents for deficating too much and using too much Windex I'll keep pumping the anhydrous into the soil to run off into Lake Winnipeg.

No qualms from me!

 

[Tonington]

Carnivorous animals can't be raised on a vegetarian diet-not now not ever.

Here's a quick lesson for you. Single-celled algae are the basis for the trophic web that includes carnivorous fish. That means the amino acids are derived from vegetarian sources. Salmon have digestive enzymes that include carboxylases, lipases, proteolytic enzymes, etc. We can determine what enzymes are present, how well they catalyze specific molecules. We can test the effectiveness of any feed stock we might want to use with in-vitro testing, and make fine-tuning adjustments in the animal model.

You can live entirely on a vegetarian diet. It requires very close attention, but that is exactly what a nutritionist does. Salmon are no different.

They are going to use monocultured oilseed and grains? Right on.

Going to? There is already grain and oilseed product in fish feed. My Aquaculture nutrition class for a term project investigated the use of camelina and canola as replacements for all and partial amounts of fish oil. There was no decrease in growth, or feeding efficiency.

 

[petros]

Here's a quick lesson for you. Single-celled algae are the basis for the trophic web that includes carnivorous fish. That means the amino acids are derived from vegetarian sources.

So is petroleum. Round Up Ready Algae is still in the works. Where can I get pontoons for my combine?

Going to? There is already grain and oilseed product in fish feed.

I know. Viterra (formerly Wheat Pool) has been making it for a long long time. They even set up trout pens on Lake Diefenbaker in the early 90's to use as a testing facility.

Feeding people isn't cost effective so it's better to feed top of the food chain fish.

 

[Tonington]

I know.

Oh? I guess your questions aren't really questions then. We'll have to get Jack to give you a lesson on sentence structure and punctuation.

 

[petros]

More uses for oilseed is better for my bottom line.

I would have thought you knew that the land locked folk in SK are years ahead of your comrades in aquaculture but few know that freshwater fish in SK is a fair sized and lucrative industry because we are land locked.

When we retire on the farm my wife wants to raise tiger trout. There are great grants available.

Saskatchewan’s aquaculture industry consists of about 108 licensed hatcheries and 2,000 licensed producers. Of these, eleven hatcheries and eighty production units are of commercial level. Unlike terrestrial agriculture, which is regulated by Saskatchewan Agriculture Food and Rural Revitalization, aquaculture is regulated by Saskatchewan Environment and Resource Management (SERM). SERM licenses hatcheries and fish production in aquaculture facilities within Saskatchewan.
The most important aquaculture species in Saskatchewan is rainbow trout: the province ranks third among Canadian provinces, producing about 875 tonnes per year of this species. Commercial production of rainbow trout is almost entirely from the Cangro Fish Farm on Lake Diefenbaker. This facility was started in 1993 and is owned by the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. Cangro raises rainbow trout from hatchlings to a two-kilogram market size, which are filleted and packaged on site and sold throughout North America.
While Saskatchewan aquaculture production is relatively small, the province may have a larger impact on the international aquaculture industry as a supplier of specialty feed ingredients. Aquaculture currently relies heavily on fish meal and fish oil from the capture fisheries as the primary feed ingredients for most aquaculture species. However, the explosive growth of aquaculture around the world has so much increased demand on these commodities that shortages are expected within the next ten years. Saskatchewan crops such as canola and peas have been shown to be excellent sources of protein for the replacement of fish meal in aquaculture diets; several Saskatchewan companies are developing protein concentrates of peas and Canola that further improve the nutritional value of these products as fish meal replacements. Fish oil is a rich source of omega-3 fatty acids, which enhance the nutrient value of fish to consumers. Most vegetable oils, however, are poor sources of omega-3 fatty acids. The exception to this is linseed oil produced from Flax; whole flax seed contains approximately 24% omega-3 fatty acids which, with the proper processing, is very palatable to aquaculture species. Aquaculture is a large, high-valued opportunity for the expansion of both fish and crop production in Saskatchewan.

 

[damngrumpy]

I don't eat fish anymore the farms, the brokers and importers have no credibility.
I will not eat fish, mushrooms or anything else that is processed or comes from
Asia period. I know many of the Canadian canneries what few there are, also
import from offshore areas mentioned above. If it says domestic and imported
ingredients of don't buy it. Most people would be surprised to to find that imported
food vegetables and fruit are not subject to the same high standards Canadian
producers have to follow. Seafood from China is a nightmare, if you knew you
wouldn't feed it to your dog let along eat it. I think people should know what they
are eating regardless of what it is. For example, if you knew about the organic
food industry in general, you would have pause to wonder. There is a new book
out that I got a copy of and am reading it. It is called Is it organic. It is a good
read and once again it demonstrates what we have been told and what is true
are two different things. I put in an address in case some are interested. I am
about 80 pages in and it is really interesting not one of those dry fact books
that comes along.

www.isitorganic.ca

 

[petros]

I don't eat fish anymore the farms, the brokers and importers have no credibility.
I will not eat fish, mushrooms or anything else that is processed or comes from
Asia period.

Sam I am?

I want to take advantage of "the lower quarters" we have along the Assiniboine.
It won't be long before we are restricted from using inorganic compounds in the river valley. I hope they plan on good compensation.

 

[Tonington]

Volcanic eruptions, giant squid and sea lice have all been invoked to explain the wild swings in British Columbia's famed Fraser River sockeye-salmon runs.

Now scientists are raising the possibility that a mysterious virus is responsible for killing huge numbers of Pacific salmon before they reach their spawning grounds.

"The mortality-related signature reflects a viral infection," a team of federal and university researchers reported Thursday in a study that tagged and tracked wild adult sockeye salmon, then biopsied their gill tissues.

The compromised salmon, which appeared to have a viral infection at sea -- a phenomenon study co-author Scott Hinch at the University of B.C. describes as "dead fish swimming" -- were 13.5 times more likely to die before spawning than healthy fish.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, does not identify a microbial culprit, but suggests the virus may be associated with leukemia and lymphoma.
Virus may have killed Fraser River salmon, study says

 

[Tonington]

More news this week on the work concerning declining wild salmon stocks. The epidemiologists are beginning to identify the factors involved. As the last article mentioned, they've already found molecular evidence of a pathogen, there is also an apparent relationship to the water temperature in the rivers.

That would make sense to me, fish pathogens are often most effective at higher temperatures, and salmonid immunological production is certainly more effective at lower temperatures.

If it is a disease, the combination of factors causing distress in the fish stocks is cause for concern.

It would be far easier to address if it was just the farms...

In B.C.'s Fraser River, a mysterious illness has killed millions of Pacific salmon, and scientists have a new hypothesis about why: The wild salmon are suffering from viral infections similar to those linked to some forms of leukemia and lymphoma.
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For 60 years before the early 1990s, an average of nearly eight million wild salmon returned from the Pacific Ocean to the Fraser River each year to spawn.

Now the salmon industry is in a state of collapse, with mortality rates ranging from 40 to 95 per cent.

The salmon run has been highly variable: The worst year came in 2009, with 1.5 million salmon, followed by the best year in 2010, with 30 million salmon. But the overall trend is downward.

Losses were particularly high in elevated river temperatures -warmer water makes it more difficult to deliver oxygen to the tissues of salmon.

Seven of the past 10 summers have been the hottest on record for the Fraser River. But experts say it's too soon to pin the blame on global warming.

"Clearly, a warming climate is going to produce some new stresses for Pacific salmon," said Daniel Schindler, a professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. "Some of those stresses will certainly be expressed through increased susceptibility to disease, including something like this."

But he added: "The reality is we have very poor understanding of how climate and disease dynamics interact with each other in salmon. We know they're going to be important, but we can't say a lot in detail."

Two years ago Prime Minister Stephen Harper ordered a judicial inquiry -known as the Cohen Commission -to investigate the salmon deaths, with a final report due by June 2012.

Scott Hinch, an investigator at the University of B.C.'s Pacific salmon ecology and conservation lab and a co-author of a study on the salmon that was published in the journal Science, testified before the panel last month. He told it that the virus could be the biggest factor that's driving the collapse.

The study raises "a big red flag," providing scientists with a possible new explanation, said Brian Riddle, the president and chief executive officer of the Pacific Salmon Foundation in Vancouver.

"The critical thing is that for years, people have wondered about the rate of decline and how it can be pretty consistent across most populations in the Fraser," he said. "This provides a viable reason now. We're discovering something new. There's still a lot unknown. We don't understand the origin of the virus. We don't understand how it functions."

He said much more study was needed.

"If this really is a virus and it's something we don't understand, then we don't know how to treat it or control it," Riddle said. "So this is something that could linger with us for a long time, and possibly until the animal learns how to deal with it. That will only happen through natural selection-type processes."

As part of Hinch's study, salmon were caught, tagged and implanted with radio transmitters and their blood, gill, muscle and fin tissues were biopsied. Scientists then tracked them and discovered that many were stressed and sick before they reached their spawning grounds.

According to the study, oceantagged salmon that had the gene signature associated with the viral infection were 13.5 times more likely to die before spawning.

Hinch said the scientists thought that the salmon became infected at sea, before making their runs up river. He likened it to "dead fish swimming."

If researchers can confirm the findings that a virus related to leukemia is responsible, "it would be quite novel," said Hinch.

While there's no similar research taking place in the U.S., Schindler said there was no reason not to assume that salmon in the nearby Columbia River in Washington state would be suffering as well.

Glen Spain, the Northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, said other issues were at play and that "a cascade of interrelated factors," not just a virus, could be causing the salmon deaths.

"There are fundamental habitat issues that weaken the salmon when they have too little water in the river or when the water is poor quality, when the population is truncated because of dams and there's less biological diversity," he said.

"All of those are risk factors for any number of diseases. It's sort of like the blind man and the elephant. Everybody thinks that what they've got in front of them is the elephant. The reality is that it's a whole ecosystem."

He added: "If this is a virus, it's an endemic virus and it's been out there for thousands of years. The question is, if it's attacking fish now, why now?"

Read more: Leukemia-type virus may be killing Fraser River salmon
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