They will end up using stronger chemicals to get the darn Sea Lice off the fishes butt.
Governments share sea lice information, but not with public
Stephen Hume
Special to the Sun
Monday, April 21, 2008
Salmon farm sea lice infestations are now a global problem costing industry more than $100 million a year, says a funding application for an information-sharing project by government agencies from Canada, Ireland, Scotland and Norway.
A draft of the project summary, directed to the Norwegian government's science research granting agency in 2007, cites independent studies that in 2004 analysed overall industry spending for sea lice prophylaxis and for removal of the parasites from carcasses during processing.
Cumulative costs ranged as high as 45 cents per kilogram. The summary also acknowledges sea lice from farmed fish have been "implicated in the marked decline of wild salmon and sea trout in areas where salmon farms are located.""In Scotland, farmed Atlantic salmon in their second year in the sea accounted for 98 per cent of the sea lice population," it says. "The dispersal of larvae has been of great concern in the debate concerning appropriate sites of salmon farms with regard to their distance from wild salmonid rivers."
Controversy still rages in British Columbia over the location of salmon farms on migration routes for wild salmon stocks that appear to be in crisis. Critics claim exposure of immature fish to sea lice infestations contributes to dramatic wild stock declines. Aquaculture advocates vehemently deny a connection. Both federal and provincial governments have been strong promoters of fish farms.
Canada's department of fisheries and oceans last week confirmed participation in what seems to be a strangely low-profile plan to coordinate field experiments and hold meetings where scientists share knowledge, methods and experimental results. The environmental organization Pure Salmon obtained the summary from Scotland's government using freedom of information laws and forwarded it and other documents to The Vancouver Sun last week.
The disclosure comes as controversy over salmon farming in South America intensifies. Safeway, one of the largest supermarket chains in the United States, is restricting purchases from Marine Harvest, its main supplier in Chile, because of an outbreak of infectious salmon anemia, which it says adversely affects quality and taste.
B.C.'s salmon farmers announced last week U.S. demand outstrips their supply capacity. The industry produces about 72,000 tonnes of farmed salmon annually from 126 licensed sites, of which about 80 operate at any one time. Industry wants to expand. but the provincial government recently placed a moratorium on new farms in pristine areas of the north coast.
Pure Salmon is an organization advocating aquaculture reform with branches in North America, Europe and South America. It often works with local organizations, such as the David Suzuki Foundation, the Raincoast Conservation Society and the Georgia Strait Alliance.
The environmental group obtained 95 pages of e-mails, letters, drafts of grant applications and reports relating to creation of the scientific information exchange, initially identified as CompareLice but renamed InterLice. Documents indicate that three scientists from Canada's department of fisheries and oceans, one from the University of B.C. and an American scientist from Washington state participated.
The Canadians included a specialist in fish pathogens, immunology and sea lice biology, a physical oceanographer and a numerical modeller. The American, according to one document, appears to be a private laboratory operator who was involved in monitoring salmon farms in Washington and B.C. Others came from Scotland's Fisheries Research Service, Norway's Institute of Marine Research and Ireland's Marine Institute. CompareLice meetings were held at Nanaimo, Campbell River and in the Broughton Archipelago, ground zero for B.C'.s controversy over whether sea lice from salmon farms concentrated there negatively affect immature wild fish.
Further meetings took place in Norway and Scotland, where similar major controversies have also occurred.
The documents obtained by Pure Salmon were censored by the Scottish government's information commissioner. Names of all participating scientists and government officials were blacked out. Several photographs, including one taken at a meeting at Painter's Lodge in Campbell River, were obscured so that individual faces and even clothing can't be recognized.
The cloak-and-dagger routine seems peculiar for a publicly funded information exchange on matters of public concern.
shume@islandnet.com© The Vancouver Sun 2008
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