Fewer salmon farms = more wild salmon

After nearly two decades of steep decline, the Fraser sockeye are returning in good numbers again this year.  This is very good news and if we value these fish we need to know what changed, what reversed their decline? What has stopped killing them?

Clearly, something good for salmon occurred the Pacific Ocean as runs throughout the entire Pacific Ocean thrived.

Washington State, June 2104

Alaska, July 2014

Russia, July 2014

Now, finally, BC has rejoined the ranks and is enjoying pretty strong runs of wild salmon too.  Small towns the length of the province and breadth of the Fraser River watershed, which covers most of BC, are benefiting from the food, commerce, money, and happiness returning salmon bring!

I am pleased to see a rebounding wild salmon population in the Fraser River. The past 20 years have really been tough on them.

This year's premium run is to be celebrated.  I postulate the reason for their success is the large reduction of open-net pen salmon farms and their threat of disease and sea lice on the migration route of Fraser sockeye.  The weight of evidence suggests the presence of salmon farms on the migration routes in and out of the Fraser River determines whether the sockeye will return.

The Decline

The Fraser sockeye became 'unpredictable' starting in the mid-1990s when something began killing them. The forecast for this year's run, made a few months ago illustrates just how unpredictable these fish have become. Government could only say that between 7 - 70 million sockeye would return.  Seventy million is the number that should have returned given the large number left the river and the enormous number of jacks observed last summer.  Jacks are males that mature a year early and so provide a sneak preview of  the size of their generation still feeding out in the open ocean. Seven million was given as the low end, because something has been killing that many Fraser sockeye in previous years and government scientists did not know if it might strike again. 

What we know

Page 100 of the Cohen Commission Final Report vol. 2 illustrates the situation. The steep decline since 1992 is why Canada spent $23 million on an inquiry into Canada's biggest wild salmon run, called the Cohen Commission.

After taking a long hard look at the situation, the Cohen Commission directed 11 out of its 75 recommendations at salmon farms.  Specifically, Justice Bruce Cohen recommended that Canada consider removing salmon farms from the Discovery Islands off Campbell River because those channels are so narrow they force close contact between farmed Atlantic salmon and wild Pacific salmon. 

Recommendation #18 - If at any time between now and September 30, 2020, the minister of fisheries and oceans determines that net-pen salmon farms in the Discovery Islands (fish health sub-zone 3-2) pose more than a minimal risk of serious harm to the health of migrating Fraser River sockeye salmon, he or she should promptly order that those salmon farms cease operations.

Recommendation #19 - On September 30, 2020, the minister of fisheries and oceans should prohibit net-pen salmon farming in the Discovery Islands (fish health sub-zone 3-2) unless he or she is satisfied that such farms pose at most a minimal risk of serious harm to the health of migrating Fraser River sockeye salmon. The minister’s decision should summarize the information relied on and include detailed reasons. The decision should be published on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ website.

For reasons we may never fully know, this is exactly what happened. Salmon farms were not removed from the Discovery Islands, but they were drastically reduced in recent years.

In the first map below, you see the 26 salmon farm sites licenced by the Province of BC in the Discovery Islands.  The worst place on the BC coast to put salmon farms because 1/3 of all BC's wild salmon swim through those channels.

 

Below, we see that 14 of those salmon farms were operating in 2007 when the disasterous 2009 Fraser sockeye passed through this area and 10 million went 'missing'. 

In this map, we see only 8 salmon farms were operating when the 2014 Fraser sockeye went to sea (PCWSS survey) in 2012.  Marine Harvest, biggest salmon farmer in the world, made several public statements about why they reduced the number of salmon farms.

Note:  The sockeye salmon that returned in 2014 were eggs in fall of 2010, hatched in spring of 2011, reared for one year in lakes, went to sea in 2012 and returned in 2014.

There is no denying salmon farms have impact on young wild salmon. Cyrus Rocks salmon farm is the red dot closest to the bottom of the third map.

Note: sea lice not only eat young wild salmon to death, they can spread disease

 

Why did Marine Harvest reduce number of farm salmon in Discovery Islands?

In the fall of 2011, Marine Harvest went on TV to say they were reducing farm salmon production in the Discovery Islands for financial reasons.

 

In 2012, Marine Harvest's Annual General Report states the down-sizing was due to a parasite called Kudoa which liquifies salmon flesh a few days after harvest causing "customer claims" to get their money back.

"Kudoa is a typical customer claim. At 4Q11, Marine Harvest continued to report Kudoa challenges linked to the Campbell River area.... The company will concentrate production at the best sites, while other sites will be closed down in order to improve biological performance.” 

Whatever the real reason, a Times Colonist article confirmed "three million fewer Atlantic salmon smolts will be stocked this winter and the next season at six to seven farms in the Campbell River-Sayward area off the Island’s east coast." So there were fewer farms and fewer fish in those farms. 

Does fewer farm salmon = more wild salmon?

We know farming salmon with disease is done in BC, because I took Canada and Marine Harvest to court to try to stop this practice and they argued against me. I await the court's decision.

Sick fish generally release infectious pathogens.  More fish will release more disease particles and less fish will release less.  So fewer salmon farms can mean less exposure to disease for our wild salmon.  This is a significant point given that DFO scientist Dr. Miller found the dying Fraser sockeye were fighting a virus, while the ones that lived to spawn were not.

The pattern is so painfully clear it is hard to believe it continues to be ignored.

No matter how you slice it, the evidence suggests fewer salmon farms = more wild salmon. 

1. Wild salmon decline everywhere in the world when salmon farms appear.

2. The Fraser sockeye decline began with the arrival of salmon farms.

3. The Fraser sockeye run that does not swim through the farms, did not decline (see blog below).

4. DFO published several papers naming and reporting a new disease in most of the salmon farms in the Discovery Islands.  They found it could infect sockeye, but did nothing about it.

5. When a DFO scientist studying the dying Fraser sockeye found evidence of a virus matching the disease in the salmon farms her project was terminated and she was muzzled.

6. Since salmon farms have been reduced in the Discovery Islands, Fraser sockeye returns have increased.

7. The same thing happened when salmon farms were emptied to reduce sea lice on the Area 12 mainland pink salmon. The number of lice fell and the number of pink salmon rebounded (see blog below).

 

Only an agency fatally entrenched in protecting salmon farms would remain blind to this clear and consistent pattern.  Justice Cohen was wise to this: 

Recommendation #3 - The Government of Canada should remove from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ mandate the promotion of salmon farming as an industry and farmed salmon as a product.“when one government department (in this case DFO) has mandates both to conserve wild stocks and to promote the salmon-farming industry, there are circumstances in which it may find itself in a conflict of interest because of divided loyalties”

What now?

If we want big wild salmon runs to continue we need to know what went wrong for 18 years and what is going right now.  DFO needs to reassign Dr. Kristi Miller to read the immune systems of the Fraser sockeye.  Is the 2014 run fighting the same virus as previous runs, or are they free of it like their parents, which were the big run in 2010? 

Putting feedlots among wild animals is a bad idea, we know this from Avian flu.  It is time to stop this dirty, high-risk activity in our ocean if we are serious about wanting wild salmon. The evidence strongly suggests salmon farms are what have made the Fraser sockeye unpredictable.  Government has not considered disease on salmon farms when they run their models to predict how many Fraser sockeye will return.

Thank you Marine Harvest for getting your farm salmon out of  the Discovery Islands. I hope we can keep it this way.

Dear Premier of British Columbia,

Please do not issue Licences of Occupation to the salmon farms trying to expand in British Columbia. Wild salmon are much too important to the world to risk for a dirty industry that refuses to contain its waste and pollutes our oceans.

Sincerely,

YOU CAN SIGN HERE

 

Comments

[NEVILLE BRADLEY]

THE NEWS IS GREAT FOR THE COMMERCIAL FISHERY !! ,BUT THE SPORT FISHERY IS DEFINITELY ON THE SHORT END, AS DFO RESTRICTIONS CURTAIL THEIR CATCH LIMITS (1- ONE FISH) AS WELL AS THEIR TIMES. SPORT FISHERMEN USE DIFFERENT METHODS, BY CHOICE EG., FLY, SPOONS AND BAIT AND THERE SHOULD NOT BE ANY SPECIAL TREATMENT FOR THE CHOICE ONE MAKES ! EG -- AREAS AND TIMES DESIGNATED FOR "FLY FISHING ONLY !!!

[Andrew Eisenberg]

As a scientist, don't you think it is premature to state (or even imply) that the shutting down of salmon farms is the direct cause of increased salmon runs? Certainly, salmon runs in Alaska and Russia are not affected by farming in the Fraser river.

I support your work and I think you are a great advocate for ensuring the longterm health of our rivers, but I don't think you are doing justice for the cause by making links that are not yet substantiated.

I'm happy to see sockeye numbers rebound, but we don't yet know why. There are any number of plausible explanations for this: declining bear population, climate change causing warmer ocean temperatures or more runoff from glaciers. Let's find out the real answers before we claim victory.

[Alexandra Morton]

Andrew

Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. Salmon farms are a strong correlate with elevated prespawn mortality, lower productivity and higher unpredictability in fraser sockeye, but the even stronger factor that cannot be ignored is the mortality related signature found by DFO scientist, Dr. Miller. Millions of sockeye were dying in the Fraser just before spawning. No one could figure out why until Miller began reading their immune system via genomic profiling. Suddenly there was a pattern. The sockeye that were dying were fighting a virus, the ones that were surviving were not. While her work was terminated before the virus could be found and reported on, the response by the fish's immune system suggested a retrovirus, tumors, Leukemia. In the 1990s DFO discovered, named and reported on Salmon Leukemia virus in most, if not all the salmon farms in the Discovery Islands. They exposed sockeye to it and found it infected the sockeye. These are facts, but there has been no follow work done.

How this work has remained unnoticed, despite it's appearance at the Cohen Commission hearings is beyond me. However, I read about it extensively through the Cohen process and it deserves attention and response.

This is not a casual correlation I am making. I am stating the timing, geography and biology of the Fraser sockeye decline strongly suggest linkage to salmon farms. I think the salmon farms on the Fraser sockeye migration route have taken an enormous toll on the Fraser sockeye and many salmon stocks. Please know I have done 10 years of extensive field work examining juvenile salmon as they approach and swim past salmon farms. I have co-published over 20 papers on this. There is nothing off-the-cuff about my views.

Canada is a tough place for science these days.

Please don't take anger in my tone, I welcome the opportunity to express the substance of my observations.

[Oli Cosgrove]

With all the scientific evidence showing how salmon farms decrease the population of wild salmon, and by extension the livelihoods of our fishermen, I simply cannot understand the short-sighted obstinacy of our politicians in allowing these farms to operate in the ocean, and for the benefit of foreign operators at that! Common sense alone suggests these farms should operate on land where their operators can still profit and wild salmon continue to thrive. The cost of setting up on land is minimal compared to the cost of killing off our wild salmon. The politicians' backing of foreign-owned fish farms operating in our oceans to the detriment of our fish and our livelihoods is a crime against Canadians and against the environment. You have to wonder what's in it for them. Maybe they, too, have been infected with the farmed fish lice and viruses, but I think there's more to it than that.

I have yet to hear an explanation from any of them for allowing this carnage to continue.

[Doug Nash]

Alexandra, can you expand on why salmon returns in Washington, Alaska and Russia have improved? Do they also have fish farms in decline or is there some other reason for the solid wild salmon returns?

[Alexandra Morton]

Doug - As stated in this blog, clearly something very good went on in the open Pacific. This generation of salmon found enough food to sustain themselves. For 18 - years British Columbia salmon returning to the Fraser River could not survive, even when runs from other countries were thriving. This suggests something was hitting them that was not hitting sockeye from the US and Russia. This year BC joined the ranks of countries enjoying good salmon runs. Whatever was suppressing BC wild salmon appears to have been lifted. We know the salmon farming industry uses salmon infected with pathogens, because they argued in favour of being allowed to continue doing this court in June. So this raises the question; does fewer farmed salmon on the Fraser sockeye migration route mean less exposure to farm diseases and has this reduced mortality in wild salmon? Sadly, government is not interested in answering this, as they terminated a project that found the massive death of Fraser sockeye just before spawning was linked to a virus that matched Salmon Leukemia virus, which DFO wrote numerous papers on reporting that most if not all the salmon farms in the Discovery Islands were infected with it through the 1990s and that it infected sockeye... and then they just left those farms on the Fraser sockeye migration route through Discovery Islands. By 2008 all the farms with history of this virus were no longer farming Chinook salmon and these were the sockeye that became the legendary 2010 run. Then the industry began removing salmon farms from the area and the sockeye decline ended. If this pattern is not given the utmost consideration by Canada, we can know Canada is not interested in wild salmon.

[Colleen]

As a student, scientist in training, and fish lover I find this very hard to believe. How can you exactly pinpoint that less salmon farms= more wild salmon. There are other factors that need to be considered here. Was there more food in the ocean for the sockeye this year? Maybe the number of predators have gone down. Were there fewer/more algae blooms this spring and summer? Was the temperature more ideal for the salmon? There are many things to consider before you go jumping the gun and saying that less salmon farms=more wild salmon.

I feel as though you are quick to make accusations without any proper data to back up your findings. You also extremely misinform the public. You claim that salmon farms dye the flesh pink.. however they do not at all. There is a certain carotenoid in their food, astaxanthin, which naturally causes the flesh to turn pink.

Salmon farms do not use hormones, but I know you have told the public otherwise... salmon farming is the most regulated industry in Canada.

I also wonder why you ignore Alaska's salmon ranching. Alaska pumps out millions of pinks and chums every year into the Pacific ocean to compete with our wild salmon. Alaska boasts about how it doesn't believe in salmon farming, however they just use a different word and are in direct contact with Pacific salmon. How can Alaska guarantee that their ranched salmon are not spawning with wild salmon? After all a ranched salmon is born in a hatchery.. and if that hatchery fish spawns with a wild fish it is messing with the wild salmon genetics.

Your claims are bogus and should be looked upon as void.

[Alexandra Morton]

Dear Colleen;

You are right - maybe a lot of things happened, but why would a pattern as stark as this one continually be ignored? Why would you move right past this to other variables, such as temperature, which have been examined against the 18 - sockeye decline and exhibited no pattern? Why would you look for things that the Cohen Commission examined and discarded as responsible for the Fraser sockeye decline? I do not understand why no one seems to care that a DFO scientist found the Fraser sockeye dying by the millions were fighting virus. Why would the obvious be ignored for maybes? I would like very much to debate the salmon farming industry on their impact on wild salmon, in public. I think salmon farming has had a devastating impact on BC and I would like to debate this. Let's just get it out in the open.