Handee – it is tiring going over the same points, again and again because it seems either you don’t understand the issues or don’t want to.
To answer your complaints about Morton’s credentials:
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The main point is that Morton markets herself as a poor small time objective scientist. In fact she is an American billionaire and a rabid anti fish farmer with a mere BSc (so she says, has not been verified) in whale music, before she ever thought of sea lice.”
Who friggen cares if she listens to whale music or Creedence Clearwater Revival?
Is her science sound enough to get published in scientific journals?
Obviously a resounding yes.
Where’s your publications, Handee?
If she doesn’t have a PhD (only a lowly BSc), and is outpublishing the pro-industry hired guns and DFO – what does that say about their competence?
You then go onto try and defend the DFO pro-industry scientists; attempting to paint them as some poor unsupported entity by stating:
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Say all you like about DFO scientists, none of them marketted themselves as pro fish farming or hosted pro salmon farming websites, videos or published pro fish farming books before, during or after their research was published.”
AND
”
they have nothing to gain from showing sea lice have no impact.”
AND
“
DFO scientists have nothing to gain from supporting fish farming and no history of campaigning for it- all they do is science.”
AND
“…
Their credibility and objectivity was impeccable long before salmon farming became a hot topic...”
DFO researchers gobble-up hundred of thousands of research dollars each year from industry directly, or through partnerships with industry or through the industry-partner prerequisite of the available funding sources.
To deny this reality only demonstrates your lack of understanding or inability to acknowledge the deep collusion and incestuous relationship between DFO and the industry. Even sockeyefry has openly admitted that DFO should not be promoting this industry. Seems you are the only one incapable of understanding this, Handee.
You go on:
”
In fact there are many, many other human activities that are still ongoing that are clearly, clearly impacting wild stocks eg fishing, logging, development etc- that NO ONE denies are impacting wild stock that it seems ludicrous to me to even suggest limiting salmon farming- which intuitively helps the wild stock by relieving the pressure to fish-until at least a negative correlation is discovered. Even then we would have to ask ourselves if the benefits do not outweigh the gains (as we do with the other activities).”
Krkosek and Ford already demonstrated the comparisons between watersheds affected by all of these other negative impacts (as you correctly pointed-out) but no salmon farms; and those with salmon farms and all of these other impacts. Salmon farms contribute from 50-90% of the population-level impacts onto adjacent wild salmon stocks. Your only defense is to try and deny the peer-reviewed science. You’re only fooling yourself on this forum, Handee.
So your assumption that salmon farming: “
intuitively helps the wild stock by relieving the pressure” is complete bunk.
Again, you go on:
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>>there is no issue because it appears that the sea lice on farms is a drop in the bucket and that Pacifics are resistant to lice by the time they reach the farm. Plus wild stocks near farms are performing just as well as wild stocks away from farms.”
BS Handee. I don’t know how many times we need to go over the peer-reviewed science to prove to you that this assumption is incorrect. I guess if you want to act like a little kid and stick your fingers in your ears every time Krkosek, Ford or Morton’s names are mentioned – there is little that any of us can do to educate you, Handee.
You actually stunned me with this comment:
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>> keep in mind that most lice counted by researchers is in the chalimus stage and species cannot be determined. So Most of the infections could be by harmless old caligus.”
Where the h*** are you getting this information, Handee? Mary-Ellen Walling?
ALL competent sea lice researchers can and do tell the differences between sea lice stages by species under magnification by a microscope. It’s trickier and less accurate if one is only using a hand lens – so you need to preserve a sub-sample to run through a microscope if you are only using a hand lens.
gimp, you write:
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My parents were out last month just plunking around over by one of the fish farms just east of shawl bay. The got with in 100 yards of the farm and a boat headed out to stop them from coming any closer. ther are now signs on the farms that state no one can come with in 100 yards of a farm. This is utter BS. I hope some on e can show me the law that allows them to extend their lease foot print in federal water out 100 yards from the actual fish farm.”
And then cuttlefish answers:
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Here is an excerpt from a provincial document entitled, Riparian Rights and Public Foreshore Use In the Administration of Aquatic Crown Land.
“The right of navigation in tidal waters is a right of way thereover for all the public for all purposes of navigation, trade and intercourse. It is a right given by common law, and is paramount to any right that the Crown or a subject may have in tidal waters, except where such rights are created or allowed by an Act of Parliament. Consequently every grant by the Crown in relation to tidal waters must be construed as being subject to the public rights of navigation. It is not a right of property; it is merely the right to pass and repass and to remain for a reasonable time.”
You can find the whole document at;
http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/clad/tenure_programs/cabinet/riparian.pdf
By the way, those ffs have been out in the Broughton for over twenty years, sometimes abandoned for extended periods, and they have never reported vandalism or even grafitti. So you can tell your father to just ignore those pushy ff’ers when he is navigating our tidal waters”.
EXCELLENT response, Cuttlefish.
To add a little – as long as you do not anchor within the boundaries on the tenured site, or interfere with the farming operations, or tie-up to (or trespass) on the site facilities – you have every bit the same right to navigate on and around the fish farm site as do the fish farmer themselves. The farmers only lease the bottom from us (the public) – and have no property rights to the water column itself, including the surface - only the right that we all have to safe navigation.
Navigation is protected by various regulations, such as posted in the Canada Shipping Act:
(
http://www.tc.gc.ca/acts-regulations/GENERAL/C/csa2001/menu.htm) – and you can have people charged under this act if they interfere with the safe navigation of your vessel, and do not comply with the rules of the road. Check-out Rules 1 through 8 of the Collision Regulations (
http://www.tc.gc.ca/acts-regulations/GENERAL/C/csa/regulations/010/csa014/csa14.html).
If the fish farmers threaten you, or block your safe passage - call the RCMP and arrest them.
cuttlefish, you ask:
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I would be interested to read the Trudel(2006) paper in full but couldn't find it through a Google search. Brooks and Jones referenced it in their Krkosek criticism. It's the one about 25% rates of lice infestations on juvenile pinks in the Eastern Bering Sea. Not sure what size fish he studied. Not sure that area bears much resemblance to the channels and inlets in the Broughton. If you have a link to that paper, Agentaqua, please send it around.”
Sorry, Cuttlefish – no I couldn’t find it either. It’s listed in the Brooks and Jones paper as:
Trudel, M., S. R. M. Jones, M. E. Thiess, J. F. T. Morris, D. W. Welch, R. M. Sweeting, J. H. Moss, B. L. Wing, E. V. Farley, Jr., J. M. Murphy, R. E. Baldwin, and K. C. Jacobson. Infestations of motile salmon lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis) on Pacific salmon along the west coast of North America. Am. Fish. Soc. Symp. Ser., 57: 157 (2006).
I couldn’t find the 2006 reference, but found an identical write-up for a 2002 paper entitled: “Prevalence and Intensity of Sea Lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis) Infection on Juvenile Pink Salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) in the Bering Sea – September 2002.
It is a Canadian Data Report of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (No. 1107) and states exactly the same sample numbers (284) and sea lice prevalences (25%) that Brooks and Jones quote for the 2006 publishing. I’m not sure that Books and Jones got the dates right, or maybe that Trudel republished the study later in 2006.
In this study, juvenile pink salmon length averaged 214.5 mm while their weights averaged 100.2 g. This means that these offshore juveniles would be ~400 times larger than the early juvenile pink salmon outmigrating from the creeks around the fish farms - which only average 0.25 grams.
Since sea lice mortality is size (or weight) dependent – these larger fish would be expected to be able to withstand some 400 times more lice than the earliest migrating pink fry.
It’s interesting to note that for the infected pink juveniles, the mean intensity of lice infection was only 1.5 sea lice per infected fish, or approximately 0.015 lice per gram of fish (if they average 100.2 g each).
That’s way, way below (50-100 times below) the assumed mortality limits of 0.75 to 1.5 lice per gram of fish for other salmonids.
So, ya – you can have 25% of the fish infected with a very low level of lice infection in the Pacific. These results are not at all surprising, except that the level of lice seems very low.
Brooks and Jones then use Trudel’s findings to suggest that: “
lice on salmon that overwinter in coastal waters will contribute to the infestation of salmon smolts migrating to sea in the spring through the release of lice nauplii in the water column.”
Yet, Brooks and Jones completely fail (deliberately or through ignorance – either is unacceptable) to mention that Trudel’s work was carried-out in the Eastern Bering Sea between the latitudes of 60°N-62°N. This area is way offshore and North of the inshore rearing areas of small juvenile pink salmon in the Broughton by some 4000 km. Quite an oversight wouldn’t everyone agree?
Not sure how they want to suggest that juvenile pink salmon in the Bering Sea can infect juvenile salmon in the Broughton. Even the timing is all wrong. Trudel’s work was done in September, not when the newest pinks would outmigrate in March/April.
Brooks and Jones then go onto state: “
The point in this discussion is that we do not know what the relative contributions of L. salmonis or C. clemensi larvae are from farmed salmon in comparison with wild sources, and it is misleading to assume that sea lice infections are associated primarily with nauplii released at salmon farms”.
Misleading? Why?
Because they are the only plausible source? We already debunked this DFO-propagated myth at:
http://www.sportfishingbc.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8847&whichpage=5
where the farms would be expected to supply at least 86% of the lice available to infect the outmigrating pink juveniles.
Who’s “misleading” who here?
I’m really sick of the lies from people in DFO defending the open net-cage industry - who should instead be looking after the wild stocks – as is their mandate.
