Aquaculture improving?..The Fish Farm Thread

[Salmon Seeker]

B.C. restaurants remove wild salmon from their menus as a political statement about over-fishing

As wild salmon stocks collapse, B.C. restaurateurs remove the beleaguered fish species from their menus to help promote sustainability

www.theglobeandmail.com

I have worked in a few restaurants and can tell you it often is not wild salmon anyway, despite claims on the menu.

 

[Dave]

LOL Fabian Dawson - we can trust this industry mouthpiece to be as objective as CEO of a tobacco company!

You’re shooting the messenger, read the study and explain how it’s wrong.

 

[gone fishin]

You’re shooting the messenger, read the study and explain how it’s wrong.

The messenger as you call him is paid big bucks to promote Fish Farms without any concern for the reality that your Fish Farms kill wild salmon.
As you know other studies have been done on PRV and it's effect on wild salmon and have also said that they could find little short term effects on wild salmon. It is impossible to determine what effect PRV might have over the long term life cycle of wild salmon.
This thread is about Agriculture improving and yes there has been improvement from the early years, but the fact still remains. Fish Farm are killing Wild Salmon!!!
Fish Farm Sea Lice has always been the number one killer and the in the past supporters have arrogantly said "show me the dead salmon"
Impossible to find photo's like this in the open ocean.

 

[Dave]

The messenger as you call him is paid big bucks to promote Fish Farms without any concern for the reality that your Fish Farms kill wild salmon.
As you know other studies have been done on PRV and it's effect on wild salmon and have also said that they could find little short term effects on wild salmon. It is impossible to determine what effect PRV might have over the long term life cycle of wild salmon.
This thread is about Agriculture improving and yes there has been improvement from the early years, but the fact still remains. Fish Farm are killing Wild Salmon!!!
Fish Farm Sea Lice has always been the number one killer and the in the past supporters have arrogantly said "show me the dead salmon"
Impossible to find photo's like this in the open ocean.

You didn’t answer the question.

 

[agentaqua]

I have worked in a few restaurants and can tell you it often is not wild salmon anyway, despite claims on the menu.

I find the lower-end sushi restaurants some of the worst. A quick check on the packaging used to deliver the fish usually dispels any unsupported assertions there.

 

[gone fishin]

You didn’t answer the question.

Not to get into a back and forth private debate, but I did answer your comment. This study and others before it have all stated similar results. PRV does not kill wild salmon in the short term.
Does that mean Fish Farms do not kill wild salmon.
Hell no!!

 

[GLG]

This is why I always take Fabian's claims with a grain of salt.
Matter of fact I tend not to believe anything he says as I cant count how many times he has done this.
There is no need to spin this unless that's the whole point.
GLG

UBC study debunks claims by anti-salmon farming activists​

Apocalyptic fearmongering by anti-salmon farming activists dismantled by new scientific study
By Fabian Dawson
SeaWestNews
A new scientific study has dismantled the bogus claims by anti-aquaculture activists, that the piscine reovirus (PRV) is a salmon killer and will devastate the iconic species in British Columbia.
The study, like the ones before, refutes core apocalyptic fearmongering by the activists who tell their mainly urban followers that PRV, allegedly spread from fish farms, cause diseases in wild salmon stocks...

... The research team ran their experiment on a total of 400 sockeye salmon at the DFO Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, BC.
One group of sockeye salmon was injected with a dose of purified PRV to induce a high-dose infection scenario, another with a saline solution, and a third group was injected with the more virulent infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) in a separate positive-control study.
None of the salmon died while carrying the PRV infection. But researchers noted IHNV triggered 30 per cent mortality and a temporarily reduced maintenance metabolism, although survivors were able to resolve the infection within weeks.

 

[terrin]

This is why I always take Fabian's claims with a grain of salt.
Matter of fact I tend not to believe anything he says as I cant count how many times he has done this.
There is no need to spin this unless that's the whole point.
GLG

UBC study debunks claims by anti-salmon farming activists​

Apocalyptic fearmongering by anti-salmon farming activists dismantled by new scientific study
By Fabian Dawson
SeaWestNews
A new scientific study has dismantled the bogus claims by anti-aquaculture activists, that the piscine reovirus (PRV) is a salmon killer and will devastate the iconic species in British Columbia.
The study, like the ones before, refutes core apocalyptic fearmongering by the activists who tell their mainly urban followers that PRV, allegedly spread from fish farms, cause diseases in wild salmon stocks...

... The research team ran their experiment on a total of 400 sockeye salmon at the DFO Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, BC.
One group of sockeye salmon was injected with a dose of purified PRV to induce a high-dose infection scenario, another with a saline solution, and a third group was injected with the more virulent infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) in a separate positive-control study.
None of the salmon died while carrying the PRV infection. But researchers noted IHNV triggered 30 per cent mortality and a temporarily reduced maintenance metabolism, although survivors were able to resolve the infection within weeks.

One group of sockeye salmon was injected with a dose of purified PRV to induce a high-dose infection scenario, another with a saline solution, and a third group was injected with the more virulent infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) in a separate positive-control study.
None of the salmon died while carrying the PRV infection. But researchers noted IHNV triggered 30 per cent mortality and a temporarily reduced maintenance metabolism, although survivors were able to resolve the infection within weeks. ....... Do they think salmon predators will just leave them alone while they resolve the infection in a few weeks?

 

[agentaqua]

not all as rosy a picture as presented in that news article wrt effects of PRv:

(p.4): "The duration of excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOCdur) following an exhaustive chase was prolonged by 43% (95% CI = 0.1–85%; p = 0.05) only at the early viral persistence phase..."

(p.5): "PRV load was negatively correlated with Hct and Hb concentration in non-IRAP fish and positively correlated with EPOCdur in IRAP fish (Fig. 1e, f). Hb concentration was clearly compromised (beyond one standard deviation of the mean SC Hb value) in most individuals with more than approximately 5 × 106 PRV L1 copies per μg total blood RNA (roughly 109 copies per mL)."

(p.8): "The mechanistic basis for these temporary changes is unclear and they may be related. One possibility, for example, is that host-directed killing of PRV-infected red blood cells (i.e., a consequence of defensive countering by the host) temporarily decreased Hct and Hb, because mature PRV-infected red blood cells being removed contain slightly more Hb than the immature ones replacing them. A prolonged EPOCdur could be a result of increased red blood cell fragility (i.e., a consequence of direct harm by the virus), which is another possible mechanism for mature red blood cell removal."

Another factor not considered in the paper is that they innoculated with low-virulent genotype-1 PRv. Is is well known and well-studied that viruses mutate, and the protected high-density net-cage farm environment encourages the development of more virulent strains of disease-causing organisms:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2009.1659
https://www.int-res.com/articles/aei2010/1/q001p021.pdf
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11692-010-9089-0.pdf
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/eva.12342
https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1139/cjfas-2016-0379
https://imr.brage.unit.no/imr-xmlui.../Aquacult_315_3-4_2011_167-186.pdf?sequence=1
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01567918/document
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128015735000061

In addition to all of the above - they only tested sockeye and noticeably did NOT test coho and Chinook - EVEN THOUGH they well know that PRv causes jaundice/anemia in Chinook. Chinook should have been the focus of this test 1st - and I don't believe that it was an accident that they published on sockeye only. I wouldn't be surprised that they did also tested Chinook but didn't purposely publish the results.

 

[Dave]

not all as rosy a picture as presented in that news article wrt effects of PRv:

(p.4): "The duration of excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOCdur) following an exhaustive chase was prolonged by 43% (95% CI = 0.1–85%; p = 0.05) only at the early viral persistence phase..."

(p.5): "PRV load was negatively correlated with Hct and Hb concentration in non-IRAP fish and positively correlated with EPOCdur in IRAP fish (Fig. 1e, f). Hb concentration was clearly compromised (beyond one standard deviation of the mean SC Hb value) in most individuals with more than approximately 5 × 106 PRV L1 copies per μg total blood RNA (roughly 109 copies per mL)."

(p.8): "The mechanistic basis for these temporary changes is unclear and they may be related. One possibility, for example, is that host-directed killing of PRV-infected red blood cells (i.e., a consequence of defensive countering by the host) temporarily decreased Hct and Hb, because mature PRV-infected red blood cells being removed contain slightly more Hb than the immature ones replacing them. A prolonged EPOCdur could be a result of increased red blood cell fragility (i.e., a consequence of direct harm by the virus), which is another possible mechanism for mature red blood cell removal."

Another factor not considered in the paper is that they innoculated with low-virulent genotype-1 PRv. Is is well known and well-studied that viruses mutate, and the protected high-density net-cage farm environment encourages the development of more virulent strains of disease-causing organisms:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2009.1659
https://www.int-res.com/articles/aei2010/1/q001p021.pdf
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11692-010-9089-0.pdf
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/eva.12342
https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1139/cjfas-2016-0379
https://imr.brage.unit.no/imr-xmlui.../Aquacult_315_3-4_2011_167-186.pdf?sequence=1
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01567918/document
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128015735000061

Here is your opportunity to ask these questions of the authors.

 

[agentaqua]

BC Residents Are Extremely Concerned (86%) About Declining Salmon Stocks As Well As Climate Change (76%) and Single Use Plastics (75%), and Most British Columbians (75%) Believe That Open-Net Salmon Pens Need to Be Transitioned to Land-Based Pens - I

BC residents attribute declining salmon stocks to open-net pens, stream habitat destruction, ocean contamination, overfishing, and climate change. Vancouver, BC — A new poll from Insights West, The Pacific Salmon Foundation, and Wild First shows that the decline of the wild salmon stocks is one...

www.insightswest.com

 

[terrin]

BC Residents Are Extremely Concerned (86%) About Declining Salmon Stocks As Well As Climate Change (76%) and Single Use Plastics (75%), and Most British Columbians (75%) Believe That Open-Net Salmon Pens Need to Be Transitioned to Land-Based Pens - I

BC residents attribute declining salmon stocks to open-net pens, stream habitat destruction, ocean contamination, overfishing, and climate change. Vancouver, BC — A new poll from Insights West, The Pacific Salmon Foundation, and Wild First shows that the decline of the wild salmon stocks is one...

www.insightswest.com

Good to know we are not alone.

 

[agentaqua]

Take Action - Wild Salmon Action Team

wildsalmonaction.ca

 

[GLG]

..

Open-net pen transition plan: initial engagement process​

As was heard report
December 14 to April 13, 2021​

Letter from the Parliamentary Secretary​

With warming waters and declining biodiversity in our oceans, action to support the health of our marine ecosystem is needed now more than ever. This means developing sustainable approaches to the use of ocean resources and spaces that prioritizes conservation and protection while also supporting the many coastal communities that depend on them. In British Columbia (BC), we have clearly heard the need for a more sustainable approach to aquaculture, and the imperative to protect and restore wild Pacific salmon.

The Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard was mandated by the Prime Minister to:

"Work with the province of British Columbia and Indigenous communities to create a responsible plan to transition from open net-pen salmon farming in coastal British Columbia waters by 2025…"

https://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/aquacultu...utm_id=open&utm_term=term&utm_content=English


PDF available here
http://waves-vagues.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/40983778.pdf

 

[agentaqua]

Stan Proboszcz: Unpacking Terry Beech’s Salmon Farming Report | Watershed Watch Salmon Society

Yesterday, the long awaited report from Parliamentary Secretary and Member of Parliament, Terry Beech, was quietly released on the DFO’s twitter account.

watershedwatch.ca

 

[gone fishin]

“Recently, the Canadian government mandated all open-net fish farms be transitioned to closed
Containment pens by 2025, and the vast majority (75%) of BC residents supported this decision"

Moving in the right direction!
AND the Fish Farm owners to their credit are making moves to take their industry to dry land in areas where government and the general public are demanding change.
Fish Farm News And Science

 

[agentaqua]

DFO report suggests alternatives to open-net salmon farms in B.C., but next step unclear

The federal government has pledged to ban open-net pen salmon farms in B.C. by 2025 and transition to a sustainable business model.

vancouversun.com

 

[agentaqua]

Battle over fish farm licencing in the Discovery Islands

Our salmon are in danger. Parasites and diseases from open-net salmon farms are killing off BC’s wild salmon. Help get rid of this infection and defend our salmon before it’s too late.

www.safesalmon.ca

 

[agentaqua]

https://afspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/nafm.10574

 

[agentaqua]

The Other Epidemic: What’s Killing the Wild Salmon? | The Walrus

A virus that flourishes in fish farms is now threatening wild populations. With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, are business interests leading to government inaction?

thewalrus.ca