Column claims about fish farming questioned
By Grant Warkentin, The Daily News August 15, 2012
Re: 'Protecting wild fish must be a priority' (Daily News, Aug. 13)
Columnist and reporter Walter Cordery makes errors and assumptions in his column about salmon farming in Clayoquot Sound that need to be corrected.
First, he assumes the IHN virus was brought to the area by salmon farms. This is wrong. It is a scientific fact that IHN occurs naturally in the Pacific Ocean, and that it is carried naturally by wild fish.
The most likely explanation for the infections at our Dixon Bay and Millar Channel farms is that our farmed fish caught the virus from passing wild fish.
Our farmed fish are highly susceptible to the virus, since they are a different species than Pacific salmon and have not evolved alongside the virus, developing resistance like their Pacific cousins.
Thankfully we rarely ever experience any problems because of this virus. The last case was nearly 10 years ago.
Second, he assumes salmon farms are breeding grounds for disease and parasites. Contrary to his assumption, our goal is to keep our fish healthy to harvest. We do this through good animal husbandry, good feed and careful farming practices. We rarely ever need to use antibiotics or sea lice treatments. We keep our fish healthy, and they pose little risk to passing wild fish.
Third, he makes the rather offensive suggestion that people who work in aquaculture will say anything to defend their jobs, even if they know it harms wild fish. This is untrue.
Many people in my company, including myself, love sport fishing and don't want to see any harm come to wild salmon. We have many practices and precautions in place to make sure we are farming fish responsibly in a way that does not threaten wild fish. Fourth, he suggests that fish farm companies make political donations to gain favours. This is untrue. Mainstream Canada follows an explicit policy to never make political donations.
Finally, it's disappointing that despite spending two weeks in Clayoquot Sound, Cordery did not stop in at our Tofino office to see for himself what we do. He is welcome to contact us anytime in the future, we would be happy to answer his questions and arrange for a farm tour, if possible.
Grant Warkentin Mainstream Canada
Here is the column Grant Warkentin responded to:
Protecting wild fish must be made a priority
By Walter Cordery, The Daily News August 13, 2012
I spent some time during the past two weeks on the West Coast of the Island.
During that time, I decided to check out the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, established in 2000 to celebrate the unique ecosystems of the area. I hadn't been in the Clayoquot since the "war in the woods."
In 1990, during the height of that dispute with MacMillan Bloedel, I saw the passion of people who wanted to see the Clayoquot preserved, including Nanaimo's Order of Canada-winning environmentalist Merv Wilkinson. Wilkinson was one of many who refused to let M&B employees log the sound. And he was one of many arrested for this protest.
Last week, I wondered what Wilkinson, who died in 2011 at the age of 97, would think if he knew that a salmon farm had brought a deadly disease to the area.
Mainstream Canada's farm at Millar Channel in Clayoquot Sound has been ordered to cull hundreds of thousands Atlantic salmon in the sound after the virus, infectious haemotopetic necrosis, or IHN, was discovered in the net pens holding the fish, said B.C. Agriculture Ministry fish pathologist Gary Marty.
Another Mainstream operation, the Dixon Bay Farm in Clayoquot Sound, had to carry out a similar cull earlier this year when IHN was found there in May.
Muzzled DFO scientist Dr. Kristi Miller, head of the molecular genetics section at Nanaimo's Pacific Biological Station, found the infectious salmon anemia virus on two Creative Salmon farms in Clayoquot Sound last year. Neither DFO or the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have responded to the detection of these deadly viruses with follow-up testing.
These viruses are highly contagious and can be fatal in both wild and farmed salmon.
The threat to wild salmon is just one of the reasons why expansion of fish farms in the Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve is opposed by a number of groups.
Open-net fish pens are the problem. Huge numbers of fish in an enclosed environment is a recipe for disease that will spread. Unfortunately the viruses mentioned above don't just affect the predominately-Norwegian-owned Atlantic salmon fish farms. They are picked up by wild salmon swimming by as they leave or return to their originating rivers along the coast. As can sea lice which have been found in numbers of wild salmon in the Broughton Archipelago. These issues force me to wonder why consecutive federal and the provincial governments continue to allow more open net fish farms on the coast.
These decisions are putting wild salmon at risk and that's unacceptable.
The problem is governments see fish farms as creating jobs, which means more income tax dollars for themselves. They are willing to put the environment and B.C.'s iconic wild salmon at risk in order to create a few thousand jobs.
I've no doubt that those who work for the aquaculture industry will defend the industry; just as I've no doubt that people who work in the tobacco industry defend that industry.
Governments have broad responsibilities and of course fostering economic growth is among them.
But at what cost?
Report after report after report demonstrate that fish farms do threaten wild salmon but governments refuse to accept the findings of peer-reviewed science by people like Alexandra Morton.
What they don't refuse to accept are donations from the large fish farm companies to their political campaigns, which in my mind puts them in a conflict of interest.
The West Coast of Vancouver Island is too precious to be put at risk by economic interests. It's time the governments insist that fish farmers move towards closed-net, onshore pens that remove the risk of spreading infections.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada, formerly the Department of Fisheries and Oceans must return to its original mandate and that is the protection of wild fish stocks in Canada.
