Dear Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray,
Before bringing forward another episode of concern regarding the integrity of your aquaculture staff here’s a recap:
- Your senior virologist Dr. Kyle Garver continues to state the virus PRV from Norway does not cause disease, even though he has test results from Norway reporting the opposite.
- When Garver found “live” PRV virus is still being dumped into the Fraser sockeye migration route from farm salmon processing plants in 2022, he terminated this study and apparently no report was sent to the minister in charge, George Heyman, or you.
- In a project with Cermaq, Garver reports that while this virus is in virtually all salmon farms, it is not coming from the farm hatcheries… but provides no test results for the hatcheries to support this.
- Your Director of Aquaculture Management Division, Brenda McCorquodale, has refused for 30 days to say which version of licence was used to excuse Cermaq for a significant breach of licence March 2022. Within two weeks of this incident, DFO staff built a loophole into the new licence, which was issued in June and then Cermaq was found to be incompliance and was granted nearly double the production at that site.
- Your senior parasitologist, Dr. Simon Jones, authored a report for the Canadian Science Advice Secretariat that appears to have reversed the results produced by a junior scientist in his lab, to conclude salmon farms are not responsible for the heavy lice infestations harming young wild salmon for the past 22 years.
Now…
The Aquaculture licence issued in 2020 required testing on the effect of H202 (hydrogen peroxide) de-lousing bath treatments on sea lice (s6.13). Experiments were conducted in Dr. Simon Jones’ lab with industry collaboration - ACRDP 21-P-01, “Fitness consequences of bath exposure to hydrogen peroxide in salmon lice”.
April 1, 2022, Dr. Jones received the results from the technician hired to perform the experiments. Adult female sea lice were exposed to concentrations of H202 ranging from 0 - 1500ppm (parts per million), then put in tanks with young salmon and the fish were examined daily to count how many of the lice had managed to attach to them. There were 2000 sea lice, 294 fish, 15 trials, over 2 experiments.
Results
- the lice recovered from H202 exposure in 18-24 hours
- the treated lice were capable of infecting salmon
- The number of lice on the salmon declined daily, whether they had been exposed to H202 or not
- Experiment #1 - the number of lice per fish was not significantly different across all the H202 concentrations, i.e., the drug appeared to have no effect
- Experiment #2 - there were significantly fewer lice per fish for the weaker drug concentration (500ppm) but “no other differences were significant. (see document)
“Conclusions”
“Laboratory treatment with 500 or 1500 mg/L of H202 caused … significant reduction in infectivity of adult female L. salmonis”
This is not true.
Just like the recent Sea Lice CSAS and public reporting on virulence of PRV, these conclusions are not supported by DFO’s own evidence.
May 31, 2022, one day before it was due, Mowi and Cermaq sent these conclusions back to DFO stating “We trust this satisfies condition of licence 6.13”…treatment with 500 and 1500ppm H202 caused significant reduction in infectivity of adult female L. salmonis.” [See document]
Condition of Licence 6.13 stated the report must meet “the satisfaction of the Department”. The circular path of this work ensured this outcome.
- DFO required industry to study the effectiveness of H202 on sea lice control
- DFO did the study for industry
- Industry sent the study back to DFO
- DFO accepted the result
Minister Murray, in my investigations it appears that without Dr. Kyle Garver and Dr. Simon Jones there is no DFO science to support the conclusion that salmon farms are low risk to wild salmon. Furthermore, if your Aquaculture Management Division had properly investigated the March 2, 2022 breach of licence by Cermaq (reported by the DFO veterinarian), it would have been simple to answer – which licence was used to find Cermaq was in compliance – the one in effect at the time of the sea lice incident, or the one that came into effect 3 months later that had been edited coincidentally to specifically to protect industry from this violation?
I feel I should give you a few days to absorb this new information on the behaviour of your staff, before I provide the next report. Meanwhile, you are deciding whether to reinstate salmon farms in the Discovery Islands and reissue licences coastwide, based on the conclusions of Drs. Jones and Garver.
All the best,
Alexandra Morton
Aqua Tromoy docked at salmon farm. This is one of the boats doing the H202 bath treatments. Farm salmon are pumped into the boat, soaked in the drug and returned to the farm, releasing the hydrogen peroxide into the ocean