Smoking gun missed its mark
by Grant Warkentin Terrace Standard, Published: September 26, 2011
The biggest mystery about Rob Brown’s latest column from Sept. 21 is why it so poorly represents the discussions which happened at the Cohen Commission nearly a month ago.
Apparently in that month Mr. Brown did not read through any transcripts and studies from the week he writes about, even though they are all publicly available online at www.cohencommission.ca.
The transcripts show that all four scientists tasked with writing technical reports about aquaculture for the commission had to agree, despite their differences, that aquaculture and wild salmon can co-exist. As well, they also had to agree that there was not enough evidence to conclude salmon farms influenced the 2009 Fraser sockeye decline.
If Mr. Brown had done some research before echoing conspiracy theories from the blogosphere, and read the publicly available facts for himself, he would have read how Dr. Kristi Miller was uncomfortable with her work being called a “smoking gun” which could solve the mystery of the 2009 sockeye decline.
“Actually, I had no intent of saying that,” she said (transcript for Aug. 25, 2011 hearing, page 29, line 8). “And I should clarify… what I really meant was that this could be a major factor. Not the major factor, because I also agree with others that there is no single major factor.”
Miller and most other salmon scientists involved with the Commission agree that there was no single factor which led to the 2009 sockeye decline.
In fact, a cumulative impact report which looked at all data gathered for the Commission during the past year concluded there were only two things likely to have had an effect on the Fraser sockeye run: climate change and marine conditions. Not salmon farms or logging or mining or anything else researchers studied. This can be seen in the addendum to technical report six, which is publicly available on the commission’s website.
Hopefully instead of taking Mr. Brown’s speculative and baseless opinion as fact, his readers will research for themselves the science presented at the Cohen Commission, and the transcripts of the discussions.
As for his comments about salmon farms being dirty and a “sin of the first order,” perhaps if he comes to tour a farm for himself he will see that salmon farms in B.C. are clean, highly-regulated and operated by people who care about the environment and wild salmon as much as anyone else in this province.
Grant Warkentin,
Mainstream Canada
PAA Note / ReferenceLinks :
Cohen Commission Transcripts are crossed links on the PAA blog at: http://www.farmfreshsalmon.org/blog/cohen-commission-evidentiary-hearing-transcript-links
http://www.farmfreshsalmon.org/blog/cohen-commission-evidentiary-hearing-transcript-links
The four Salmon Farm Reports and Transcript excerpt CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. KELLIHER:
are also crossed linked on the PAA Blog at: http://www.farmfreshsalmon.org/blog/salmon-farming-can-coexist-wild-salmon-cohen-commission-salmon-farm-reports
Grant Warkentin was responding to the following column:
Smoking gun
By Rob Brown - Terrace Standard, Published: September 20, 2011
The biggest mystery in Canadian fisheries over the last decade has to be the case of the troubled Fraser River sockeye. One year they return in numbers resembling what is thought to be historic abundance, the next they are in steep decline. Only a few years ago the pathetic returns of sockeye to the upper watershed of the Fraser had the First Nations of the region in a state of high dudgeon.
Many culprits have been fingered in this whodunit. Some accuse the First Nations who fish the river from canyon to coast claiming that illegal black market fishing, in particular, is to blame. Others point to the years and years of gillnet fishing at the mouth of the river. Still others speculate that the changing climate and the resultant high water temperature regimes might explain the plight of Fraser sockeye, while others claim that subtle changes in the ocean due to a climate change are the root cause.
While the debate over whether some or all of these factors may in part explain the baffling sockeye predicament, scientific super sleuth, Dr. Kristi Millar, of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, appears to have found the smoking gun.
Dr. Millar is a profiler; a genomic profiler. Genomic profiling is a leading edge scientific tool that enables detectives, like Kristi Millar, to examine how cells have switched on and off in response to stressors like disease or lack of food. After an alarming decline in Fraser Sockeye in 1992, her bosses at FOC/DFO put Dr. Millar on the case. Miller ran genomic profiles on the Fraser sockeye as they approached the coast and found that most of the fish were fighting a virus that weakened their immune system.
Two years earlier, Dr. Michael Kent, then the Director of the Pacific Biological Station, had found tumours in the brains of farmed salmon while studying a leukemia outbreak in salmon farms located near the Discovery Islands. He subsequently named the disease, plasmacytoid leukemia and published his research on it. In an attempt to soften the connotative blow, the fish farmers renamed it marine anemia.
Millar observed tumours in the Fraser sockeye. She read the salmon cells attempting to track down make a viral match. She found it. Plasmacytoid Leukemia.
Salmon farms, like pig farms, chicken farms, and feed lots for cattle, are incredibly filthy places. Situating them in the world’s richest and most biologically valuable habitat on the planet was a sin of the first order. The fact that the people responsible for siting for these foul, lousy operations were working according to the antediluvian principle that the solution to pollution is dilution, and were completely unconcerned with the migratory routes of salmon, is a big time crime.
In 1992 fish farm feedlots were built on the migratory route of Fraser sockeye. The numbers of those fish promptly went into steep decline. Many discrete stocks make up the entire Fraser sockeye run. Most of the sockeye migrate past the Discovery Islands. The sockeye bound for the Harrison River do not. In contrast to the many Fraser Sockeye runs, the Harrison fish increased in abundance. Then fish farms were sited along their migratory route. A generation after these farms went into production, the Harrison sockeye began dying unspawned in alarming numbers.
It turns out that a single salmon farm with 1,000,000 fish can shed 60 billion viral particles per hour during a disease outbreak. It seems obvious that the big killer of Fraser Sockeye may be viral leukemia they are picking up when swimming past fish farms.
Dr. Millar published her findings in the prestigious Journal Science. For her efforts she should have been given the highest praise and lavish funding to continue her good work on behalf of fish and us, right? I’m afraid not.
The privy council has forbidden her to speak to the press. She has not been allowed to attend meetings. Her research funding has been cut. The behaviour of her colleagues in FOC suggests that they have been told to treat her as persona non grata. When she arrived to testify before the Cohen Commission, an inquiry into the problems of Fraser Salmon, she was flanked by men in dark suits with ear buds, as if she was a Nazi war criminal on trial in Israel.
The scandalous treatment of Dr. Millar goes right to rot and disease in the highest echelons of the federal government. This is not Syria. In this country, we expect our leaders to encourage free and open scientific inquiry, especially when one of our most precious resources, Pacific Salmon is clearly at great risk.
Write the PM and your MP. Ask Harper how this could happen Canada.
