Sockeye hearings shift focus to aquaculture
By Derrick Penner, Vancouver Sun, August 16, 2011
The Cohen Commission into the decline of Fraser River sockeye salmon stocks will turn its attention to a significant point when hearings resume tomorrow in Vancouver on topics that surround salmon farming.
To date, Justice Bruce Cohen's commission has received some 1,300 pieces of evidence and exhibits ranging from reports and emails to research studies on a wide range of subjects, but aquaculture has been a prominent topic among public submissions to date.
And in the coming weeks, key research that the commission has initiated will be tabled along with the testimony of expert witnesses on topics surrounding salmon farms, including Kristi Miller, the Fisheries and Oceans Canada scientist who was controversially prohibited from giving followup interviews to a research report published in the journal Science.
"[The coming hearings] seem to be important to the public because the overwhelming public input [to the commission] has been concerns around aquaculture," said Craig Orr, executive director of the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, which is a member of one of the participant groups at the Cohen Commission.
Cohen, in 2009, was tasked with holding the commission to make findings of fact, though without laying blame, about the long-term decline of Fraser River sockeye salmon stocks and make recommendations for a sustainable future for the sockeye fishery.
Orr, a biologist who has done research on sockeye salmon, said participants will come to the next set of hearing days with a lot of questions and lingering concerns about the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' role in monitoring salmon farming while also promoting the industry.
Orr himself is set to appear as a witness on Sept. 6 to discuss his research on sea lice around salmon farms.
"A lot of what we're going to see too is [questions about] 'we've got a problem here, and what's DFO's ability to figure out what the problem is without having biased involved in the results," Orr said.
And the salmon farming industry will be at the hearings to present the data it has gathered, Mary Ellen Walling, executive director of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association said, though she would like to see the public take a wider view of the reasons for declining Fraser River sockeye salmon stocks.
"I think it's more important for the people of British Columbia to understand that salmon farmers are responsible, careful managers," Walling said, and it is the industry's position that it is "not having an affect on wild salmon."
"We weren't responsible for that massive return [of Fraser River sockeye] in 2010, and we don't feel we were responsible for the decline in 2009."
And the huge swing between 2009's dismal run of 1.7 million Fraser sockeye, the lowest return on record, and 2010 when 33 million sockeye, the best return in 100 years, highlights for her the complexity of the commission's task.
"From my point of view, the changes in ocean conditions and some of the stresses on sockeye are some of the key factors," Walling said.
She added that the industry is hopeful that the data it has collected around water conditions and disease around farms will prove helpful.
"What we understand is there is not a lot of wild fish disease management," Walling said, "so diseases in wild fish are not as well monitored."
Brian Wallace, senior counsel for the commission, said Justice Cohen is heading into the final stage of the hearings, which are set wrap up with 25 more days of evidentiary hearings in August and September and then five days worth of final oral submissions from its 21 official participant groups in early November.
To date, the commission has commissioned some 15 technical reports, mostly on scientific related subjects ranging from marine habitat and contaminants to aquaculture and disease, Wallace said.
And by the end, he added that Cohen will have held hearings on all the topics with opportunities for cross examination of testimony.
"It's been an incredibly interesting and all-encompassing [task]," Wallace said.
