At a hearing Wednesday a fisheries biologist seen as a potential hero by anti-fish farming advocates said she may have found “the smoking gun” that is killing salmon in the Fraser River.
At the same time, during highly anticipated testimony, geneticist Dr. Kristi Miller downplayed reports that she was muzzled by the federal government because of her controversial research that suggests a new virus may be killing salmon.
Miller and her colleagues have concluded that many sockeye are entering the Fraser in a weakened state, possibly because of viral infections, which may be caused by salmon leukemia, or a contagious virus.
The scientists haven’t concluded whether a suspected “novel virus” (a virus never found before in fish which is suggested by the discovery of a “genomic signature”) is infectious, or what may cause it.
There is hope among some environmentalists that fish farms will be fingered as the culprit.
Miller’s study caused a big buzz after it was published in January in Science, one of the world’s top research journals.
Following months of speculation that Miller is being kept from the media because top federal bureaucrats don’t like the direction of her research, she testified for the first time Wednesday at the Cohen Commission in downtown Vancouver, a hearing into the collapse in the Fraser River sockeye population.
Under questioning by Commission counsel and a federal lawyer, Miller said she was told not to speak to the public during her study and was told not to go to one Simon Fraser University “think-tank” in 2009 – yet she went out of her way to stress that the “integrity” of Department of Fisheries and Oceans science “is strong” and she was never told not to publish her research.
She said management at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans asked scientists not to attend the SFU discussion in 2009 because “they decided they would limit exposure of scientists to any meeting that would attract public and media,” because evidence must be heard at the Cohen Commission hearing “before it becomes part of the public debate.”
Miller suggested that she wasn’t exactly sure what the rationale was behind the directive “from Ottawa” – however, a colleague who was also cross-examined said he took the order at face value.
But Vancouver Liberal MP Joyce Murray, who attended the hearing on Wednesday said the federal goverment’s position is “a specious argument.”
“Why are they trying to muzzle scientists?” Murray said, in an interview outside the federal court room.
In the afternoon session a provincial lawyer challenged whether the “genomic sequence” identified by Miller even exists, and whether it can really predict “mortality” in salmon.
Miller stood by her conclusions, saying fish with the “genomic sequence” are generally more susceptible to death in rivers, and are clearly “ill effected” before reaching fresh water rivers.
Murray said it seemed the line of questions by B.C. government lawyer Tara Callan were “clearly trying to reduce confidence in Dr. Miller’s conclusions,” perhaps because Miller’s research threatens the fish farming industry in B.C.
Under questioning from a Commission lawyer in the morning session Miller backed away from some of her earlier conclusions in 2009 about finding tumours in thousands of fish brains that she studied, which she believed at the time pointed towards leukemia in salmon. She conceded that she should have called the “pink mass growths” lesions.
Testimony finished with a question on whether Miller was pressured to retract a conclusion that fish farms could be linked to the “smoking gun” virus.
Miller conceded that some in government were concerned with the fish farm “speculation”. The line of questioning will continue Thursday morning.
On Tuesday at the hearing four scientists testified there is no clear evidence of a link between farmed fish spreading disease to wild stocks
Read more:
http://www.theprovince.com/health/Geneticist+connects+possible+novel+virus+weakened+salmon+entering+Fraser+River/5302651/story.html#ixzz1W0UcwzNc
Author
Topic: Salmon farming on the hot seat at Cohen Commission (Read 3634 times)