alexandra morton

Another Episode of Concern DFO Aquaculture

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. 

1. DFO required industry to study the effectiveness of H₂0₂ on sea lice control
2. DFO did the study for industry
3. Industry sent the study back to DFO
4. 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

Dear Dr. Jones

Dr. Simon Jones:

Jan 24, 2023, the BC Salmon Farmers Association released the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat Science Response (CSAS) titled Sea lice on Atlantic Salmon farms and wild Pacific Salmon in British Columbia. This report communicated that sea lice on salmon farms are an insignificant risk to young wild salmon

The advisory’s conclusion states:

“No statistically significant association was observed between infestation pressure attributable to Atlantic salmon farms and the probability of L. salmonis [salmon louse] infestations on wild juvenile Chum and Pink salmon in Clayoquot Sound, Quatsino Sound, Discovery Islands and Broughton Archipelago.” P-23

Issues aside with the clumsy design ignoring the proven unreliability of fish farm industry data* and whether the young wild salmon examined had even been exposed to salmon farms, your name appears on an earlier version of this paper which states the opposite result. 

March 9, 2022 a draft paper was attached to an internal DFO email sent to you titled “Modeling The Association of Sea Louse Infections Between Farmed Atlantic Salmon and Juvenile Pacific Salmon in Coastal British Columbia”. It states:

“The models suggested that in Clayoquot Sound between 2016 and 2021, both the occurrence and prevalence of L. salmonis infection on wild migrating juvenile chum salmon is influenced by sufficiently high copepodid [larval stage lice] infection pressures derived from farmed Atlantic salmon.”

May 19, 2022 another draft paper with the same title was sent to you with edits, including edits by you and Jay Parsons, where all reference to impact by salmon farms is removed to read:

“The analysis suggests that the occurrence of L. salmonis infection on wild migrating juvenile pink and chum salmon could not be explained by infection pressure of farm-sourced copepodids.

You claim in your comment that you do not understand the following sentence:

“is influenced by sufficiently high copepodid infection pressure derived from farmed Atlantic salmon…”

And someone crossed out this sentence giving the paper the opposite conclusion that salmon farms are not responsible for the devastating sea lice outbreaks reported on by major Canadian universities, BC research stations and in my own publications.

Senior DFO official, Jay Parsons, also provided comment on this edited manuscript making it clear he understood the original results - that high lice infection in salmon farms were linked to lice infection in wild salmon.  He asks:

“Do we want to say anything about management implications… these findings support efforts to reduce sea lice numbers during the outmigration period to minimise risk to wild salmon”

I also found the table sent to you with highly significant p-values indicating a significant link exists between farm and wild sea louse infections.  This means the phrase No statistically significant association which appears in the CSAS released by the BC Salmon Farmers cannot be true.

And yet you, Jay Parsons and senior DFO Aquaculture Management and “Regulatory Science” staff signed off on both versions under the authority of the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat.   

The public version of this work, done in your lab, shields the salmon farming industry from responsibility for the infection and harm done to young wild salmon that are exposed to salmon farms.

I have attached the March 9 and the May 19 versions, the final CSAS version can be found on the BC Salmon Farmers Association website: https://bcsalmonfarmers.ca/news/government-of-canada-science-report-confirms-no-statistically-relevant-association-regarding-sea-lice-and-the-production-of-farmed-salmon/

I view the edits to this CSAS as  scientific misconduct and breach of scientific ethics of the highest order. 

Alexandra Morton

 

*http://seangodwin.org/Godwinetal_2021_EA.pdf

Letter to lone DFO virologist downplaying virus risk

Hello Dr. Kyle Garver,

Over the past 6 years you have become the lead DFO Science virologist propping up the assertion that the foreign virus PRV is not causing any disease in salmon in BC.  As I uncover the record, your statements appear at every turn to discredit reports by other scientists that PRV is causing disease and significant harm to wild salmon. I hope that you will reconsider.

The spring of 2016 was highly problematic for the salmon farming industry as information on the disease risk from PRV surfaced amid a lawsuit arguing it was illegal to transfer PRV-infected farm salmon from hatcheries into net pens. 

In April 2016 a Norwegian lab informed you that the PRV samples you sent to them caused the fish disease HSMI.  At the same time other DFO scientists (Miller/Di Cicco) reported the disease HSMI was in a Cermaq farm, Venture Point,  in the Discovery Islands.  

In response to the Cermaq results, the Department of Justice requested an adjournment of their appeal against the legal decision I won that required the Minister to reconsider whether or not PRV infected fish should be allowed to be transferred from hatcheries into salmon farms.  If PRV was a "disease agent" this would be illegal.  

DFO staff including Jay Parsons, Carmel Lowe and Wayne Moore were struggling to massage the news that a highly infectious disease was in at least one farm on the Fraser sockeye migration route in Okisollo Channel.  A heated argument raged in the comments of documents that DFO planned to post on their website.  In the end,  despite the strength of the science that the virus PRV was causing the salmon disease HSMI in BC salmon farms,  the Miller/DiCicco findings were buried under layers of uncertainty that you helped to manufacture.

On June 2, 2016 you contributed an edit stating:

“Utilizing laboratory studies, … PRV can reach high levels…without causing disease… suggesting PRV in British Columbia is of low virulence…” (See email)

You did not reveal that the study the Rimstad laboratory did for you found that PRV from BC is causing the disease HSMI, a finding that strongly supported the Miller/DiCicco findings.

Even if you did not believe Rimstad, Miller or DiCicco, your position as senior virologist for the Government of Canada, should have required you to provide thorough reasoning as to why you did not believe these scientists.  Allowing a foreign virus to spread is a very serious issue.

The January 19, 2017 a document signed by Chris Watson, legal council for Marine Harvest, provided to the Federal Court of Canada in Morton vs the Minister of Fisheries provides context. He said  Marine Harvest had been testing for PRV in its hatcheries since 2010 and that "PRV has been found in all but one of Marine Harvest's hatcheries".  Watson went on to state that prohibiting transfer of PRV-infected fish into the company's farms along the BC coast "... would severely impact Marine Harvest." (see pages 81, 82, 192)

Without your contradictory statements, as DFO Science's senior virologist, I believe the Rimstad/Miller/DiCicco findings would have been accepted by the Minister and all those infected farm salmon since 2016 would not have been transferred into ocean pens on BC's wild salmon migration routes.

                                    ^{Atlantic salmon in Mowi Midsummer farm exhibit highly distinctive HSMI-type behaviour in 2017}

 

Your ongoing participation in the construction of the alternate reality that PRV in salmon farms is not a risk to wild salmon continues.

In July 2022, you partnered with Cermaq (ACRDP 18-P-01) on PRV transmission in salmon farms. You report that 51/64 of the farms you tested were infected with PRV, but you don't offer test results for the hatcheries where those fish came from. You conclude: 

"This study confirmed PRV-1 infections of commercially produced Atlantic salmon in Western Canada are acquired at sea." (page 13 of PDF)

How can you "confirm" the PRV in farm salmon is coming from the ocean, when you don't provide results for the other possible source - the hatcheries?  To definitively show that the virus was coming from the ocean, shouldn't you have reported test results for those fish while they were still in the hatcheries?  With Cermaq as a partner, access to these hatcheries was possible?

I hear statements that PRV no longer exists in farm salmon hatcheries, however, this is not the case in Norway.  If PRV was so easy to eradicate from BC hatcheries, why did the industry fight the Namgis and myself in court for the right to continue transferring PRV-infected fish into BC waters?  And when they lost those lawsuits, the Minister of Fisheries reaffirmed PRV was not causing disease and the transfers were never stopped, in part, I believe, because you were willing to advise DFO that PRV does not cause disease in salmon in BC.

This virus is now in the Skeena, the Fraser, the Columbia, all along the BC coast and in farm salmon in supermarkets throughout BC. (See paper)

Earlier this spring you found 'live' PRV is still escaping into the ocean via the blood water from farm salmon processing plants and that it is highly infectious.  Your lab injected it and bathed young salmon in it and saw that they became infected.  Did you brief the minister's involved - George Heyman and Joyce Murray?  Or did you terminate further work on this, shelve these explosive results and quietly allow this infectious virus to continue to flow?  Certainly Minister Heyman's staff seem unaware of these results.

Dr. Kyle Garver, I believe it is wrong to provide guidance to federal and First Nation leadership that the foreign virus PRV is not a risk to wild salmon. Work by many scientists continues measuring just how widespread and damaging this virus is to wild salmon that are exposed to salmon farms.  As people with experience depart from the DFO Aquaculture Management Division, you are increasingly a lone voice repeating - PRV is low risk to wild salmon.  It is not.

I can only hope you will either reconsider your position on PRV risk to wild salmon based on the strength of the science, or step aside and allow the scientists brave enough to report what this virus is doing to this coast to be heard by the leadership we are depending on to rescue wild salmon from the brink of extinction.

 Thank you for considering these words, I will be following up on this.

Alexandra Morton