quote:
Originally posted by cuttlefish
handee and agentaqua both pointed out the problems with my assumptions about separating fish farms and wild juvenile fish. I took the time to go back and read all the info on oceanography that agentaqua posted earlier and agree that my suggestion was simplistic. I did find a map that shows the path of GPS drifters in Knight Inlet deployed by DFO. GPS drifter tracks in Knights Inlet from March 30 to 31, 2007 (found on page 16, BC Pacific Salmon Forum Research Program - 2007 Summary of Interim Findings)
http://www.pacificsalmonforum.ca/pdfs-all-docs/2007InterimFindingsFeb8-08.pdf
Currents in the Broughton can flow landward and not just seaward and the drifters demonstrate that “downstream” does not necessarily mean to seaward. So to assume that sea lice infections that occur before post-emergent pinks and chums reach fish farms must be from the "natural background" may be just as simplistic.
>>Cutlefish, i know this is going to sound mean,but you really dont seem equipped to read scientific studies. The fact that water moves in multiple directions at times doesnt negate the fact that the net water movement is strongly seaward- otherwise the inlets would fill up. The point is that the stupidest assumption one could make is the one repeatedly made by Krkosek and Morton that the lice naupli stay by the farm for the 10 necessary days required to mature enough to infect passing by wild fish. They also do not consider the lice are coming from wild hosts and they do not consider that in many cases where they say they found lice near active fish farms that the farm fish did not carry lice or were virtually zero, while stickle back and salmonids carried 1-2 lice each
handee, you said, “The lice levels on salmon farms are lower than background levels.” Look further in the same BC PSF summary and check out pages 26 through 29. This DFO study clearly states as a key point that occurrence rate and abundance of Lepiophtheirus nauplii and copepodites were significantly higher near active fish farms.
>> some years they are higher some they are lower and could you please fill in the blank? significantly higher than what? Every other area in the Broughton that did not contain an active fish farm? Read it again cuttlefish. The reason lice are more abundant on more fish near the farms rather than nearer the source of their home stream is because...the farms ar emore seaward and the fish have been in the sea longer. this is the only thing Morton found in her study that had any validity. too bad it was old news. she found that the bigger the fish the more lice they had on them and the closer they were to fishfarms which were well downstream of where they emerged from their river. so she found the farms were seaward, the bigger wild fish were seaward and the bigger wild fish had more lice on them. instead of making the obvious correlation that wild fish that have been in the sea longer carry more lice. which is obvios and well documented and intuitive. She concluded that the farms caused the increased lice numbers on the wild fish. She might also, following her line of illogic, concluded that the farms made the fish bigger or that the extra lice made the wild fish bigger.
Now, being a lowly layman, my assumptions may be simplistic at times but I am able to search out and comprehend more in-depth and scientific analyses if pointed in the right direction.
>> Yes your assumptions are simplistic, buts that because you are a layman with an agenda. You are looking in exactly the right places but your bias is proving too thick a filter. I dont want to sound mean, because I appreciate the effort you bring to this debate. Iam a poor typer and it takes me aloong time to debate here. I dont know how providing links would help. The very idea that you think you can comb through a scientific research paper and pull out one or two sentences that support your view and go "Ah ha" is exactly the mentality Morton has- which shows you she is not for real. Trying to find cause and effect in such a complex world is near impossible. Even to do something simple as determine a cause and effect fo the most simplest thing like rainfall and tree growth can require decades of multidisciplinary research. basically you, like Morton, are trying to simplify a very complex dynamic. You have a good story and you are trying to make the facts apear and then fit. No single paper or single sentence within a paper is ever going to do that.
In that way I can learn more with the hope of advancing this dialogue on how to better site open net pen salmon farms and reduce any potential negative impacts from that industry. So, when you reply to my posts and point out errors in my assumptions, it would be most helpful to me if you could include a link or two that support your comments and criticisms. That way I will learn more than what I would otherwise have to assume (again perhaps, erroneously) is just another assumption based on your understanding of the research. My interpretation of the latest Jones study is based on my understanding of the last sentence from his abstract, and I will repeat it here once again for clarity.
"The present results indicate that elevated risk associated with L. salmonis infection among migrating post-emergent pink salmon may occur during a relatively brief period before the fish reaches 0.7 g." So please refrain from interpreting Jones’ results without at least providing some research to back up your assumptions.
>>iam not making any assumptions, iam stating the bleeding obvious. Jones explicitly states his methodolgy. Its not at all natural. Its in a lab. he states the doses of sea lice and how difficult it was to infect the young fry. he doesnt need to add, unless writing for a total layman, "I did this in a lab and the fish were in tanks". Its one piece of the puzzle. Taking your current study information and looking at net flows etc you can see that completely impossible conditions would have to exist to get the water to move upstream far and long enough with a 10x higher concentration than ever witnessed before to infect a .3g smolt in nature.
BTW, handee, I also took your advice and Googled a list of L. Ron Hubbard’s descendants and I don’t see Alexandra Morton (born 1957) in there. Check it out;
http://www.mgtconcepts.com/ronsorg.nl/scientologychurch/LRHfamily.htm
If you have more information to back up your inference that Alexandra Morton is related to L. Ron Hubbard, could you also share that information?
>>I believe L Ron Hibbard might be her step dad. You did find that her Mother, Barbara Marx Hubbard is a billionaire and married to L Ron Hbbard did you not?
And finally handee, both the commercial and recreational fisheries for Fraser River sockeye salmon are closed this summer, and even aboriginal constitutional rights fisheries are slashed. Both recreational and commercial chinook salmon fisheries are closed off the coast of California as well. Commercial chinook harvests and sports bag limits are reduced from Washington to Alaska and a buy-out of WCVI trollers is proposed as part of renewing the Pacific Salmon Treaty. There hasn't been a directed commercial harvest of pinks or chums in the Broughton in over 15 years. So don’t think fish farms are being singled out. We all need to take corrective action when it may result in conserving the resource and the whole point of this thead was to discuss how siting of open net pen farms can be improved to help conserve wild salmon resources. If you have a problem with how wild salmon harvests are managed, I suggest you may have more success if you take it up with DFO. Remember that whenever you point a finger, there are three more pointing back at you.
>>cuttlefish, you are a good guy and if I went to cocktail parties and heard people being disgusted with sport and commercial and FNation fishing along with sea lice then I'd feel better. But i dont, people seem to have forgotten the most obvious threats to wild fish because of a US funded campaign of lies started and lead by a handful of young activists.
