Hansard, 12th April 2010
Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans
EVIDENCE number 07,
UNEDITED COPY -
Monday, April 12, 2010
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[English]
The Chair (Mr. Rodney Weston (Saint John, CPC)): I'll call this meeting to order. We have with us by teleconference today Ms. Alexandra Morton. I'd like to thank you for joining us today via teleconference, Ms. Morton.
Ms. Alexandra Morton (As an Individual): Thank you.
The Chair: My name's Rodney Weston. I'm the chair of the committee.
Before we start, I'll go through just a couple of housekeeping items. We generally about a 10-minute opportunity for presentations from our guests, if you have some opening remarks. You'll probably hear a beeping noise throughout, Ms. Morton. Those are some time constraints that our members are limited to for questions and answers as we proceed throughout the afternoon. If you hear a beep, then don't be alarmed. It's a signal that the time has expired for certain exchanges, and we'll move on to the next one shortly.
I generally don't cut our guests off. If you could come close to wrapping up your remarks or bringing them to a conclusion shortly after hearing the beeping noise--finish your thoughts, I should say. The members know what it is and they know the signal, and they're usually pretty good at adhering to it as best as possible--usually pretty good.
Once again, I'd like to say thank you very much for joining us today. I know the members have lots of questions for you and look forward to the discussion that ensues.
If you don't have any questions, Ms. Morton, I'd ask you to please proceed with your opening comments.
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Okay. Can you hear me all right?
The Chair: Yes, we can hear you fine.
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Excellent. I really appreciate this opportunity and I appreciate you making it so easy for me to appear before all of you.
I just wanted to say a little bit about sea lice. I'm a killer whale researcher, but sea lice are actually very easy to study, and the reason I say that is because they change their body shape every few days for the first month. So when you see a fish you can see how long it has had each of those lice and that's how we've been able to study them. We watch the little fish come out of the rivers and we check them at intervals to see how many lice they have and typically they have no lice and then they get to the fish farms and they have baby lice. Then, as they go past the farms, the sea lice just mature and then when they get to the next farm, they get more juvenile lice. So that's why it has been easy for us to figure out where the lice are getting on the fish.
Now the reason I and many of my colleagues have such a strong opinion about the sea lice coming from the fish farms is because we've done experiments, not with the fish farmers really coming onside, but we work with them. So, for example, in an area where there are no farm fish one year, we'll count the number of lice on young fish, and then when they put the farm fish back, we count the lice on the young fish, and the pattern is really clear. If you take the farm fish out, the lice go away. If you drug the farm fish--so you're killing the lice on the farm fish--the lice go away on the wild fish. When you put the farm fish back, the lice come back. If you look at two areas in the same year and one area has no fish farms and the other has lots of fish farms, you find lice where there are farms and no lice where there are no farms.
So we've done a lot of work for 10 years. There was a little bit of a disturbing comment by Trevor Swerdfager saying that this work had been seriously debunked. I would like to say they tried to debunk it, but we were allowed to publish our responses in the Journal of Science which is arguably one of the two top journals in the world and very hard to get into. They published DFO and they published our response so I think it's questionable whether it was debunked at all.
Now the question about drug resistance in lice...it's inevitable. As soon as you have a monoculture, the parasites increase because there are no predators and because all the hosts are packed together. So in the wild, sea lice have a very difficult life when they're young. They hatch and then they have to swim for a period of days before they even have the ability to grab a fish. So this means they never get on their mother's fish. That fish is long gone, and they're lucky to find a fish at all. But when you take a salmon farm and you hold the fish stationary, and you crowd them together and you put them in the inshore waters, you're breaking three very fundamental biological natural laws that govern wild salmon. Wild salmon are supposed to move. They're not supposed to be beside the rivers when the young ones come out, and they're not supposed to be crowded together.
So what's happening now is the wild fish come in and for sure, lice are natural and they have lice. They pass them to the farm fish and then all the wild fish go into the rivers and they die. This really brings down the lice population to nearly zero but what happens now is that as the wild fish go by the farms, the lice are passing to the farm fish. The wild ones go and die but the farm fish don't, and they have lights on...so the fish are crowded and stationary and as the baby lice hatch, they find fish to attach to and the lice numbers come up and when you've got 600,000 to a million farm salmon in a school, it doesn't take very many lice on them to make billions of larval lice. Lice, like most parasites, reproduce rapidly. They're a very fecund animal.
So this means that there are many generations of lice and when you treat them with the drug you never kill all the lice. You talk to fish farmers and they all realize you can't kill them all, and so the ones that survive are a little bit resistant to the drug and they produce babies. Then as more drugs are used, of course, the resistance builds. This is a very serious problem in Norway. The lice are becoming resistant to all the drugs, both in the feed and bath treatments. On the east coast of Canada...Mr. Swerdfager was debating whether DFO really recognized drug resistance there, but the fish farmers certainly recognize it. They now have three more drugs to use and the trouble with these further drugs is the one we're using now is in a pellet form which the fish eat. It does come out through the fish waste, but the other treatments are bath treatments. They drop tarps and they pour the drug in, and it affects the outside of the fish, but then they lift the tarps and this goes into the water.
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In the areas where there is salmon farming in British Columbia we have very, very viable prawn, crab, shrimp, other fisheries that are fishing for animals with a shell and all these drugs that they use on the lice attack animals with a shell.
So I'm really happy to answer all your questions. I also just want to point out that sea lice are just the easy pathogen to study, but the same dynamic is occurring with bacteria and viruses. They get in, they intensify like they do in all feedlots and then they challenge wild fish at a higher level than they are designed to take.
That's all I have to say and I'm really happy to answer questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Morton.
We're going to start off with Mr. Byrne.
Hon. Gerry Byrne (Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, Lib.): Thank you Mr. Chair and Ms. Morton. Thanks for appearing before us via teleconference.
We've had some discussions in the past regarding the use of the lights and it's impact on salmon aquaculture, cage culture, rearing facilities. You made reference to it in your opening remarks about the use of high intensity lighting systems as part of farm infrastructure. Could you elaborate a little on what your feelings are in terms of the consequence to indigenous stocks, populations and the salmon runs?
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Yes, you bet.
First of all it is an enormous concern for commercial fishermen because lights were banned from commercial fishing in British Columbia some decades ago because they are so known to attract everything. Herring fishermen used to use them to get herring but they were also catching octopus and other species of fish. The lights cause lice to reproduce more rapidly because they think it is summer, but they also attract plankton. When I do plankton tows near fish farms with lights I get far more plankton organisms then I do compared to the farms with no lights. They also attract fish, so there is a growing concern with the number of wild fish that are in these pens. I actually laid a charge against Marine Harvest for having wild pink salmon in the pens and the lights are partly responsible for attracting the fish to them so they're a very serious problem. Of course this is a problem that's easily dealt with as they could just turn them off.
Hon. Gerry Byrne: And so the consequence is that it's magnifying or intensifying the actual outbreak of lice populations, if you could acknowledge whether or not I am hearing correctly. Could you describe, in your opinion, the specific impact this lice population outbreak would be having on local wild salmon populations?
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Regarding the lights, yes you are correct. They cause the lice to reproduce and they also attract fish to the problem area so they are a big problem.
When I first discovered the sea lice problem in 2001 it was infecting 99% of the juvenile salmon in the area. Overtime, slowly the salmon farming industry has gotten on the case and they are now treating their fish with the drug slice. However, they are treating their fish every single spring which is certainly going to make drug resistance happen but they have to do that to reduce the lice. In the last two years there has been a concerted effort by the fish farmers to treat at the right time and the proper farms and they brought the lice down to a level that we got a couple of generations through.
All the pink salmon that were turned last year, we had a look at them from Campbell River to the area where I live, Broughton, they looked really clean. The fish farmers were treating with the drugs. What this tells you is this Norwegian salmon farming industry has become the gatekeepers to our fish. If they clean up their lice problem, we get fish back. Of course we don't know what their bacterial and viral problems are but they have to also be considered. It bothers me that industry and in some cases government have used last winter's pink salmon returns to argue that wild fish can survive with these salmon farms. That is not the case at all.
What that actually tells us, is that the salmon farms are the bottleneck our fish are going through and as soon as they deal with their lice, boom, we get fish back. The problem is the drug is a temporary solution.
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Hon. Gerry Byrne: Would you be able to categorize for us the opinions expressed by other groups other than yourself, for example the Canadian Veterinary Association, have they expressed an opinion? I know veterinarians are involved in aquaculture so obviously the Canadian Veterinary Association would necessarily be involved in the aquaculture industry. Have they expressed any opinion about this whatsoever? We're dealing with a very technical science here, drug resistance, what has been their opinion in your mind?
Ms. Alexandra Morton: I haven't heard their opinion on sea lice in general, but I am dealing with Dr. Mark Sheppard at the province. He is a veterinarian who's in charge of this, and he is saying there is no evidence of drug resistance anywhere in British Columbia. I keep writing him back, saying the graphs on your website, on the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands website, for the area of concern, for a scientist they're a neon sign warning drug resistance.
The reason I say that is because they had very high lice levels in this area on those Grieg farms. They treated it in October and the lice levels came down to three times the provincial limit, nine, an average of nine per fish, and then they bounced right back up. So I've asked him, what is your explanation for that behaviour in the lice after the treatment? They won't answer. They just keep saying, “We're looking into it”, or, “It's a concern”, or, “We don't see any evidence”. He won't tell me why that happened.
Now, there's actually an audio clip on CBC from Dr. Larry Hammell from the University of P.E.I. He describes what drug resistance looks like in sea lice, and he describes exactly what's on those charts in the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands website.
So quite frankly, they're not answering the question. I don't see how you can look at those graphs and not see drug resistance.
Hon. Gerry Byrne: I think we all recognize there are probably a number of different causes or sources of population decline or disappearance in terms of Fraser River sockeye. Would you characterize an explosion in sea lice population in key transit areas as being the critical cause for wild salmon population decline?
Ms. Alexandra Morton: I would expand that to pathogen explosion because a lot of fish farm herders now come to me directly, and talk to me, and tell me what goes on in these farms. I, unfortunately, can't do much with that information because they don't want to be revealed, they won't tell me the exact site sometimes. The impression I have very clearly is that there are large bacterial and viral outbreaks on these salmon farms.
There was a paper written by Dr. Sonja Saksida that described a massive outbreak of the virus IHN from 2001-03, which infected 12 million farm salmon. The Fraser sockeye swam through that, and that was the 2005 generation that crashed so badly.
Now the really key thing about those Fraser sockeye, there's a pattern we should be reading. All of the stocks that have been genetically observed going north past Campbell River and the 60 salmon farms from there to the open ocean, they are in steep decline. The one stock that is observed genetically going out the bottom of Vancouver Island--they're called the Harrison--they're actually increasing. If you pull back your focus, the Somass River coming out of Alberni Inlet on the west coast of Vancouver Island goes by no salmon farms, goes straight into the Pacific Ocean. That run of sockeye came back at more than twice what DFO forecast. As well, the Columbia River to the south, and the Okanagan River, which feeds into the Columbia, those sockeye go straight into the Pacific Ocean. They're in the same latitude and they did extremely well: they passed no fish farms.
That pattern, to me, says (a) there was a serious problem in the eastern coast of Vancouver Island, and (b) that's where all the salmon farms are. We absolutely need to know what pathogens were on those farms or we will never answer this question.
There are also processing plants spewing bloodwater into these areas. Some kids went down and videoed the Walcan one on Quadra Island. They put my plankton net right over the end of the pipe, and like it or not, they bottled it all up, put it in a cooler for me to check. Coming out of that pipe were sea lice hatching: they were actually alive. It's the first time I'd actually seen sea lice hatch. So that suggests viruses and bacteria are coming out that pipe, too.
All of that is so incredibly risky to our Fraser sockeye. The fact that only those stocks that are going through that area are in decline is a huge warning sign. If we really want to protect those fish, we need to pull those farms out right now and just test and see what happens. At the very least, we need to know exactly what was going on in them.
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Hon. Gerry Byrne: With the shift in certain aspects of jurisdiction from the province to the federal government in December of this year, what specifically would you ask for or anticipate the federal government could do in response to some of your concerns?
Ms. Alexandra Morton: First of all I would say the federal government needs to take over the health of these fish. I understand that is going to remain with the province and that office in my estimation is a big part of the problem we're in today because everything I bring to them never seems to come out the other end to the politicians.
Second, they have been run as provincial farms so when the province says they're highly regulated they're talking about what happens inside the leases. But now that it's going to become federal and you are responsible for the fish outside the farms the measurement of impact of salmon farms has to be taken outside the farms on the wild fish to see where the waste is going. It's not good enough to say it's clean under those farms. A ton of food is coming out of those fish every single day and we know it's going somewhere. So find it. We need to measure the lice numbers of the wild fish. That's the indicator of whether it's okay inside the farms. We need to measure the disease. We need complete transparency on bacteria and viruses.
If there is one thing I could beg you to do it would be to please check every single Atlantic salmon facility in British Columbia for infectious salmon anemia just as soon as you can. Minister Shea has taken an extraordinarily risky position on that. She says there is no strong evidence that this virus comes in the eggs. But the scientists who are studying this out at the University of Bergen and they're saying that's how it got to Chile. Now certainly these Norwegian companies did not want that virus to go to Chile and somehow it slipped through the cracks and I'm not hearing how we're protected. So this scientist, Dr. R. Neelan said British Columbia is guaranteed to get this virus and it's the last thing we want with our five species of salmon. He also said we probably already had it.
That would be at the top of my list of requests.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Blais.
[Français]
M. Raynald Blais (Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, BQ): Merci, monsieur le président. Bonjour, madame.
Êtes-vous relativement optimiste ou pessimiste dû au fait que dans les prochains mois, soit d'ici décembre 2010, le fait de pouvoir travailler dans le dossier de l'aquaculture en Colombie-Britannique sera une responsabilité fédérale?
On parle d'une gestion provinciale à une gestion maintenant fédérale. De quelle façon voyez-vous cela dans l'avenir?
[English]
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Well I'm optimistic because now for once the people who are responsible for the wild fish will also be responsible for the farmed fish. In my experience I've been like a ping-pong ball. I go to the province and say there's this problem. They tell me DFO said it was okay. So then I go to DFO and they tell me the province is managing it. So it's just been back and forth. Now it will all be in one house.
I also feel we need to clean that house up because the people of British Columbia are saying they want wild salmon as the top priority. What I see is that every time there is conflict the farm salmon win. We are told that our concerns are not valid. That's why I did 10 years of sea lice research because DFO told me to prove it because it was anecdotal. They told me they wanted made-in-B.C.-science. So I turned my home into a research station and now we've done over 20 scientific papers on this.
It's time to accept the science and to move forward. This era of denial has got to end because I think British Columbia is just not going to take it any more.
[Français]
M. Raynald Blais: Je ne veux pas briser votre optimisme, mais à la limite, le fédéral y était auparavant, le ministère des Pêches et Océans y était déjà. Il pouvait intervenir d'une certaine façon et, possiblement qu'il est intervenu, mais le problème demeure. Comment cela se fait-il que, par magie, parce qu'on change de gestionnaire, tous les problèmes vont disparaître et les solutions vont apparaître?
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[English]
Ms. Alexandra Morton: I accept it will not be a magical change. I see enormous work ahead. But we do have the Fisheries Act, which is a powerful toolbox. In 1993 provincially licensed aquaculture was exempted from all the regulations surrounding fishing in Canada. They got protected from using those lakes. They got protected from having wild fish in their pens, from destroying habitat. Somebody put up a shield between this industry and the federal government. Well, I'm hoping that shield will come down. And honestly, I don't think the Norwegian industry can survive this. I think they will leave.
But there's a Canadian industry that is trying to grow here. I just learned in December that the provincial government would not even meet with these people who are farming salmon and other species on land in fresh water. They have a website called “aquaculturebc.com”. And they're trying to grow.
So for me, the solution is to apply the Fisheries Act full bore on this industry, and if it can't survive, I think the Norwegians, frankly, should go home because they've just been bullies, and let the Canadian industry grow. For people whose jobs are going to be damaged when these Norwegians leave, give them an opportunity to do what they know how to do, which is grow fish, and work with this Canadian industry. So now you will have an industry that's in the towns. The money will stay here. It will not go to shareholders. There will be some real salaries, instead of the low wages that are on these farms. And you will get your wild salmon, too. This is what will work for these little towns.
The government told me fish farming was good for my town. We've got 29 big Norwegian salmon farm sites. Our school is closed now. There are nine people left in my town. It was not good for us. They don't want to hire local people. They're very secretive. The first nation chiefs and the tourism operators in my area.... All they ever said to the industry was to please move over, don't go on the major migration routes. But the provincial government allowed them onto the major migration routes, and that's why we're in the mess we are today.
[Français]
M. Raynald Blais: Je considère que votre implication est citoyenne. Dans ce sens, on ne peut que la saluer, parce que toutes les implications possibles de différents intervenants sont à souhaiter, dans des problématiques de ce genre. Toutefois, j'aimerais vous demander si vous ne pensez pas qu'éventuellement, ce n'est pas nécessairement une solution gouvernementale qui permettra d'arriver aux solutions, et qu'il faudra que tous les intervenants — non seulement l'industrie, mais aussi les gens et la communauté — prennent part à un plan de solution. Car si on se fie uniquement au gouvernement pour tout régler, il risque d'y avoir certains problèmes.
[English]
Ms. Alexandra Morton: I could not agree with you more. You're absolutely right. Let these towns figure out some solutions here. The heavy hand of government and these industries that will not respond.... We have been trying to work with this industry. The environmental groups of Canada have made an amazing effort. They've tried to negotiate with them, tried to protect these fish and allow the salmon-farming industry to continue. But it gets out of control every time.
So you're absolutely right. There are enormous solutions. People have been very patient. But the response I'm getting from people, because they think I can fix this, is now overwhelming. I have never had so many angry people coming to me hoping that somebody would fix this situation.
[Français]
M. Raynald Blais: Merci beaucoup.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Now Mr. Donnelly.
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Thank you.
Mr. Fin Donnelly (New Westminster—Coquitlam, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Ms. Morton, for coming to the committee and providing your information and testimony. I have a couple of questions for you.
I want to read a comment that we heard at this committee. As you know, aquaculture is one of the possible causes of the decline of the Fraser River sockeye run last year. It was devastated. At a recent hearing, the committee heard that DFO did not “have information that suggests that the presence of fish farms is causing a decline in the wild salmon populations in British Columbia right now”. I'm wondering if you could comment on that statement as well as on, turning to sea lice specifically, sea lice outbreaks, two other things.
Apparently a while back, there was a fish farm on the west coast that was about to be charged for a violation. I'm wondering if you know anything about this case, and if so, if you could comment on it.
And finally, sea lice outbreaks have occurred elsewhere in the world. I'm wondering if you could comment on the link between these sea lice outbreaks around the world, and infestations, and our wild salmon populations or other fish populations.
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Ms. Alexandra Morton: Yes. DFO is a bit schizophrenic at this point. I would say the guys on the grounds are seeing evidence, but that information never seems to get to the top. So the fact that DFO has no evidence, that's in my mind irrelevant.
First of all they don't know what diseases are on these farms. Second of all, they had a front seat on the sea lice epidemics of the Broughton . There was enormous evidence that it was the fish farms because in 2003 they took all the farms off the migration route and the number of pink salmon that survived and came back from that generation was greater than it has ever been recorded in the history of studying pink salmon. And that's a paper actually by Dr. Dick Beamish. But what Beamish took from that study was that fish farms and wild salmon can survive together. Well that was a very flawed jump in reasoning because in fact what had happened that year was the fish farms had been removed.
So there's a lot of evidence that the farms are affecting the wild salmon and there's a tremendous number of holes in our knowledge about what is going on on these farms for viruses and bacteria.
I don't know which farm was going to be charged. I certainly hope it was the Esperanza site in the Naneut Sound area because they had over 40 lice per fish average, and they treated it with a drug and they got down to nine which is still over the provincial limit, and they immediately started killing their fish. So they got most of them out in time, but I have a crew out there right now and we're finding that lineage of drug resistant lice on small fish.
Now Mr. Swerdfager says it's very difficult to test for residence in sea lice and that's not true. It's actually extremely simple. I don't have the budget or capacity to do it myself. I tried but was unable to do that.
Now in terms of what is happening globally, let me just say when I first found sea lice on salmon in 2001, I wrote to scientists in Norway and they taught me how to study them. I just wrote them and I said we had sea lice all over our young salmon. And the first thing the guy wrote back was “do you have fish farms?” So it's very well recognized over there.
But I would also point you to a recent release by the United Kingdom Trout and Salmon Association. One of their patrons is Prince Charles. They have a great condemnation of fish farms. They say that they are responsible for destroying wild salmon and trout stocks. It's interesting because the relationship between salmon farms and governments everywhere has been extremely tight and some people are calling it collusion. And it seems to be the way they operate. But if you talk to the scientists and the fishery people like the fishermen or in case in Europe where they own fisheries, they're all seeing a very, very strong link. As soon as you put these farms in, you've got a decline in the wild fish. Soon as you take them out, it's coming back. And it's such a simple biological reason. Salmon farms break natural laws that wild salmon have to obey. They have to move, they have to have the predators getting the sick fish. It cannot be crowded near the rivers. I mean imagine this. All these salmon come home every fall and they die. Why would nature kill a fish that went all the way out into the open Pacific and made its way all back to its spawning grounds, this is a successful animal. Nature should preserve that fish and send it out again. But instead, it's dead. And the reason is to break the cycle of disease. And so you can't just go along now and break these laws and expect there not to be a problem. So we have the problem. We just need to follow the natural laws of the salmon.
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The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Calkins.
Mr. Blaine Calkins (Wetaskiwin, CPC): Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you Alexandra for being here. We've met before. I'm not sure if you recall, but I'm certainly interested in asking you a few questions.
Ms. Alexandra Morton: I did.
Mr. Blaine Calkins: I'm very interested in the issue.
My background just to let you know is I have a zoology degree in fisheries and aquatic sciences from the University of Alberta. I've worked as a fisheries technician for Alberta Fish and Wildlife and a conservation officer in the Province of Alberta. And I've also been a fishing guide. So I've got a lot of interest in particularly a fish that have a sport fishing value which of course our Pacific salmon do. And I know that you've got a great set of credentials, but if you wouldn't mind just sharing that for the sake of the committee so that we can have it as a matter of record.
Ms. Alexandra Morton: You bet.
I don't have a great set of credentials. I have been doing this a long time. I'm a registered professional biologist, but I've now written 17 scientific papers that have published. And, as result, Simon Fraser University is giving me a honorary Doctorate of Science in June.
I've often apologized for my credentials, but Dr. Daniel Pauly, who is one of the best-known scientists in the world and a fishery scientist, said don't do that because if you are doing science and it is being published, it has undergone peer review, and people with credentials are examining and picking apart your work, particularly controversial work, as in the case of the science paper where we actually predicted an extinction. That was an uncomfortable thing for the Journal to consider and so they took our data and they sent us a Dr. Ray Hillborn who's also one of the more illustrious scientists on fisheries in the world. He ran the data and got the same results as us.
This is how people attack me, is with my credentials, but the science stands. And it has now been replicated around the world by my colleagues from many universities, including the University of Alberta.
Mr. Blaine Calkins: I appreciate that. I appreciate your honesty there. If you're a registered professional biologist, I know that has some meaning.
How many journals have you been published in and how many periodical have you had? You said 17, is that correct?
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Seventeen. I would take a minute to list all the journals, but the American Journal of Fisheries Science, Alaskan journals, the Journal of Science, the ICES Journal of Marine Science in Europe, and many different journals.
Mr. Blaine Calkins: Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences?
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, yes.
Mr. Blaine Calkins: That's good.
As a person who obviously takes a science-based approach to this, as somebody who thinks probably along the same lines, it's a very analytical type of process, I think you've stumbled across this lice issue as a part of your whale research, if I can be so bold as to make that statement. You mentioned that you have a bunch of colleagues who work with you on various studies, could you just tell the committee what you collaborate with? Do you simply study the issue from the perspective of lice? Do you take into consideration other environmental factors?
The Pacific Ocean is a big experimental jar, it's a big lab, if I could put it that way. There's been lots of information that's come to me. For example, I've read reports, I've heard information suggesting that it's water temperature which also might be affecting some of the runs, and I've got an article here today that says that there's some research going on that says some astounding numbers here, that seals in some of these rivers have killed up to 10,000 adult chum salmon per seal, and that on the way salmon fry were basically eaten like popcorn by seals, that they take 60 to 70 fry in a particular minute.
Could you tell us how some of this other information coincides because your perspective seems to be solely focused on sea lice. I respect the fact that that's the issue that you're working on, but can you elaborate on how some of your research and how some of your colleagues might be looking at some of these other issues as well?
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Yes, you bet. First of all, I'd like to say I'm not just fixated on sea lice. It's all the pathogens from salmon farms. We really do have to consider the bacteria and viruses.
Water temperature and salinity are two of the big factors in a sea lice's life. He can't survive; he dies in fresh water; and survives better and better as the water becomes more salty. So the saltier years, yes, you get a higher rate. In the colder years, it slows growth down, but they're still out there.
It's like a corn field. If you have bad conditions and you have no corn in that dirt, you will not get corn plants. But if you put your corn seeds in and you have a great year, you're going to have a beautiful corn crop. If you have a frozen year or flash floods, your corn crop is going to be poor. It's the same with the sea lice. Those other variables affect it, but they're not supposed to be there. They're not supposed to be in the inshore waters. Now, people have argued that they bury in the mud as adults when the Pacific fish go in, but nobody can find them in the mud.
So we do what we do. Obviously, when those journals review us, they are looking for every other reason, and they pick up apart, and those variables are important.
I think you jumped a little bit to the Fraser sockeye and temperature. I've had the privilege of attending two meetings organized by Simon Fraser University where the Pacific Salmon Commission scientists, the Simon Fraser University scientists--DFO can't be there because of the inquiry--but other than that, every one whose life is figuring out how many sockeye are going to come back, have been there. They say that in-river temperature is not a variable, particularly in 2009. Ocean temperature was good in 2009. Plankton was good in some areas in 2009. They had all these things, and that green, yellow, red, and for 2009, it was green, green, green. They actually saw the fish leave the river, and they were bigger than normal, and more abundant than normal because this certain lake is not glaciating as much, and it's more productive. That's another issue. In any case, lots of them went out.
They say that something has happened in the last decade and a bit, that it made the modelling process of how many sockeye are going to come back, they have made it not work. There's some new variable they say that they can't explain. So when I went in front of them, the first thing they said to me was, “Oh, Alex, you've got to get off your sea lice agenda”, and I was like, “Yes, I understand that, but just hear me out for 10 minutes”. I talked about the biological laws of these fish and the diseases that are happening. Imagine, in 2003, 12 million Atlantic salmon are infected with IHN virus, and it was jumping farm to farm to farm. This paper showed that. When they brought their smolt boats through just sucking water up, they got infected, and they brought it to my home in the Broughton, and put it in Simoom Sound, and seven more farms got infected. We would be unrealistic to imagine that our wild fish are swimming through that and not getting infected as well. IHN is deadly to salmon and to herring.
º (1610)
Mr. Blaine Calkins: If that's the case, and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know of any differentiation...I don't know if a sea lice differentiates between a sockeye and a pink. I don't think they do, but I could be wrong. If that was the case, then some of the things that we're seeing...because you do have base line data that you can look at where migratory runs go nowhere near a particular fish farm and we're seeing low sockeye returns or different variances on returns in those as well, for example, the Skeena. How would it be that, is it something in the life cycle that I'm missing that the pinks can come back in record numbers, and yet the sockeye don't, and yet they're still sharing the same Pacific Ocean roughly in the same timeframe?
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Well, you've got a couple of things going on there. First of all, the pinks that came back last year went out in a different year so we have yet to see the result on the sockeye. Those pinks went out in 2008, so that's a different story with the pinks all together. The fish farmers drugged their fish from Campbell River to Port Hardy and we got the pinks through and they came back.
Now, about the Skeena River. That river, as I understand, dropped by about 50%, which is very different situation, biologically, than a 98% drop, which is what we saw in some of the runs of sockeye--and it was the big runs--which is why it brought the whole thing down.
But think, for a minute, what happens. When our sockeye leave the Fraser River most of them go up through Campbell River and then they leave Vancouver Island and they keep on going. And they run through the river's inlet sockeye, and they mingle with the Skeena sockeye, and then they arc around the Pacific Ocean and they do a couple of loop-de-loops and then they come back down.
I'm not saying I'm right, but if you went with the theory that it's disease, you have all these sockeye that potentially have disease and they're moving through the farms, and they go up the coast, and they're carrying the disease with them. That's maybe why there is a diminishing effect as you get farther up the coast.
My point really is that until we know what is going on in those farms and coming out those effluent pipes, people like me can come up with any theory we want. But there is a way around this. If we get the fish farmers to tell us what has gone on in those farms for 10 years and we compare that to what's gone on in our enhancement hatcheries--because those are fish we handle and we really know what's going on--you can track strains of disease. We do it with H1N1. We can do it with fish but we're not doing it. There is this veil of secrecy and try as we might, we are not allowed to know what's going on inside those farms. We're just starting to get a little bit of sea lice information but it's packaged in a way that's very difficult to use.
So until they come forward with their information, my theory is really about the strongest one out there, unfortunately.
º (1615)
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Byrne.
Hon. Gerry Byrne: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, again, Ms. Morton.
On the issue of finding the truth, are you confident from what you know to date about the terms of reference and the mandate of the Cohen commission and the Fraser River sockeye salmon inquiry, would you be able to describe for the committee anything positive you feel about the nature of that inquiry and any concerns you may have? And specifically, is it your feeling that the Cohen commission has the capacity, the jurisdiction, and the legal opportunity to actually investigate the conduct of salmon aquaculture farms, and to reveal that information that you have just described which needs to be revealed, or not?
Ms. Alexandra Morton: I take great hope with the Cohen inquiry. Unfortunately, I've seen many, many government studies get sidelined so I'm not confident. But they do have the power, as I understand it, to get these disease records and to question some DFO scientists who I think need to be questioned.
I am concerned that they chose a biologist who has already published a report where he gives his own theory as to what happened to the sockeye salmon. I think they should have picked a biologist who was neutral.
But that said, British Columbia has put a lot of faith in this. There are a lot of people eager to get to work on it. Judge Cohen seems to be a very thorough and excellent choice. So I am optimistic, but their choice of biologist is a concern to me.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Monsieur Lévesque.
[Français]
M. Yvon Lévesque (Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, BQ): Merci, monsieur le président. Bonjour, madame Morton.
À la suite de la décision récente de la Cour suprême de la Colombie-Britannique, un nouveau régime doit être mis en place pour régir l'aquaculture d'ici décembre 2010. Je vais poser mes questions en rafale, parce que je n'ai que cinq minutes, et ce n'est pas long.
Selon vous, le gouvernement fédéral sera-t-il prêt pour cet échéance? Deuxièmement, avez-vous participé à la consultation tenue en préparation des nouveaux règlements fédéraux sur l'aquaculture? Ensuite, le gouvernement fédéral n'avait-il comme autre choix que de procéder dans ce dossier? Par exemple, une seule autre application aurait pu changer la décision du gouvernement fédéral de procéder dans le dossier. Je vous laisse la parole.
[English]
Ms. Alexandra Morton: I'm not confident that they'll be ready, particularly since first nations seem to have opposed the most recent draft. I have participated, just as a member of the public, in those consultations.
I have said to Mr. Swerdfaeger again and again, he has to consider that it might not be possible to have this industry in the ocean and also have wild fish. There might not actually be a way to manage it as long as they use the net pens.
I'm sorry, I didn't really grasp the third question.
º (1620)
[Français]
M. Yvon Lévesque: Le gouvernement fédéral avait-il seulement un autre choix que de passer à l'action dans ce dossier?
[English]
Ms. Alexandra Morton: As I understand it, the federal government can do whatever they want with this industry. I personally would really like to see the Fisheries Act applied and if they don't meet that bar, if they simply need to get out of the ocean, I think the support that would have would be enormous. But at the same time, take care of those families, because government, as I see it, made a big mistake here. We were warning them.
I personally was warning them since 1989, don't put them on the migration route. If you want to gamble with this industry, fine, but you've got to have your ace in the hole. You want to have the wild fish coming and going undisturbed. But because government did not listen to anybody, and we've gotten to this point, there are now families who have mortgages and they're very dependent on the industry, so, please take care of them.
But I think the federal government does have a broad range of choices and one of them is simply that there is no right way to do the wrong thing and holding these things in net pens, Atlantic salmon on top of it, is incredibly risky in what we know in the world of biology today.
[Français]
M. Yvon Lévesque: Merci, madame Morton.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Donnelly.
Mr. Fin Donnelly: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Morton, I'm going to ask you three or four questions. I have a short amount of time, so you will only have a short amount of time to respond.
Ms. Alexandra Morton: I'll try to remember them.
Mr. Fin Donnelly: Okay.
You commented earlier about SLICE and you said it was a temporary solution. I'm wondering what, in your mind, is a permanent solution?
A second part of that question is in working with the fish farm companies or the aquaculture companies, I'm wondering how available they're making critical information that you feel is important that the public should know? How available are they making that to you and to the public? That's a couple of questions and I have two others.
The committee is considering initiating both the study on aquaculture across Canada and a study on the Pacific salmon in B.C. I'm wondering what advice you would give the committee before it proceeds with these studies.
Finally, in terms of turning to the inquiry, over a 12-year period from '92 to 2004 there were four post-sockeye fishery season reviews, in other words, the number of inquiries that were called previously and a total of 96 recommendations were generated. In the Williams inquiry, they acknowledge that DFO had largely responded to the recommendations of earlier reviews. I'm wondering if you could comment on that and what your evaluation or assessment of the federal government's response to these recommendations in past inquiries have been.
Ms. Alexandra Morton: The permanent solution to preventing lice from becoming resistant to drugs and therefore killing our wild salmon is to put a complete barrier between the wild and farmed fish. That's the only thing that needs to happen here on all of the issues of waste and disease and impact. We just need a solid barrier. Just separate the two.
The salmon farms have been extraordinarily resistant in providing information, which I find appalling because they are operating in public waters and the public should know. My community is never told when they are applying drugs. There are all kinds of warnings on these drug bags about handling and yet people are eating food--clams for first nations, prawns and crabs in commercial fisheries and sport fisheries.
You should talk to Dr. Larry Dill from Simon Fraser University. He was heading up the B.C. Pacific Salmon Forum, a big study that went on in British Columbia with John Fraser. He quit because of the salmon farms' complete uncooperative nature. They do release a little sea lice information now, but to do scientific tests you have to have individual farms and dates and the way they clump things makes it impossible for scientists to use the data in their models.
I hope that you will look at salmon aquaculture or what is happening with our Pacific salmon on the west coast. People feel it is the same treatment that the East coast got with their cod where you lost an enormous industry with hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs.
My advice would be to go to the senior scientists in this province who have dealt with this and to retired government employees who have dealt with this. People have sent me memos, written for the last 20 years. The provincial Ministry of Environment fought hard to keep Atlantic salmon farming out. They did not want Atlantic salmon in this province. Even Pat Chamut, as director general of fisheries and oceans for the Pacific region, tried to prevent egg imports and gradually you can see how he was eroded and in the end allowed a lot of eggs to come in. I would go back in history a little bit and look at it.
In terms of the four reviews and the recommendations, I see the same thing in farming where there are all these recommendations made, lots of money spent studying and very little done, but I would argue those reviews did not include salmon aquaculture or the disease epidemics that were occurring there, and if that is indeed our problem, none of the recommendations that were taken will be fixing the problem. For example, reducing the commercial fishery has been tried. There was no commercial fishery last year and it has been very low for years now. If commercial fishing were the problem, that should be allowing the salmon to return.
º (1625)
Mr. Fin Donnelly: Ms. Morton, could you provide that list that you mentioned of retired DFO officials and senior scientists to the committee?
Ms. Alexandra Morton: I will.
Mr. Fin Donnelly: --and non-retired ones.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Weston.
Mr. John Weston (West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, CPC): Alexander, it's nice to see you here, having kayaked in your backyard before and met you and certainly admiring your perseverance. I understand you have been at this for some 30 years. I thought it would be good for you to know it was unanimous in this committee that we hear from you and we're all very grateful for your being here today.
You must be a person who looks at the glass as being half full rather than half empty or you would have given up long ago. You're at least joined by MPs from all sides of the House in the commitment for the sustainability of the salmon. We applaud you in that goal.
I'd like to go back to the question of the inquiry. It's something that you called for, and certainly that I called for on behalf of people in the riding I represent and other British Columbians. I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister and my voice was one of many, including yours and, of course, an inquiry was called for.
You mentioned it is a government inquiry, but I just want to emphasize that it's an independent judicial inquiry and Judge Cohen has been armed with sweeping subpoena powers to ask anybody anything related to the Fraser salmon.
I want to make sure we get on the record that this was a courageous act and that we are at least in position to get the kind of answers that we need. You even said in your testimony that we don't know everything and you are modest and honest in saying that. Wouldn't you agree there are some really good things about this inquiry in that it is a judicial one? It is independent. It does have sweeping subpoena powers.
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Yes, and I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear.
British Columbia is very happy that this inquiry is happening. They are trying to take some faith in it because they're so frightened at this point. The issue of the Fraser sockeye has brought together warring factions from all sides--it's quite remarkable to see--because they simply want these fish.
I've had very good experience in the courts because when I brought the jurisdictional issue before Judge Hinkson nobody thought it was possible to win that, but it was so clear to Justice Hinkson and I now have charges against a salmon farm for having wild fish in the pens. This judge is allowing us to go forward as much as he is able to, so I think that the judicial system can see this issue for what it is. They can lay it bare a bit more. They're not politicians so they don't deal with those constraints. So yes, I'm very hopeful.
In terms of seeing the glass half full, really I'm just a woman cleaning house. They're in the place that I love and I just want to see wild salmon survive. I want to make it very clear, aquaculture is not the problem, it's just the way this form of aquaculture is being run. So yes, I feel very hopeful and hope to be a part of that process.
º (1630)
Mr. John Weston: Thank you.
Let me share my time with another woman who's also committed to the sustainability of the salmon.
Mrs. Tilly O'Neill-Gordon (Miramichi, CPC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, it's great to have you here. I listened with interest to the great presentation that you did. I first of all have to say that our government is working hard and is very much aware of this concern, mainly because of the fact that we have two great representatives on this committee in the name of Randy Kamp and John Weston who certainly put your cares forth to make sure that we all know the concerns of the British Columbia people.
I was looking at the fact that the Pacific Salmon Forum has made several statements and I'm wondering about such things as the number of sea lice on wild juvenile salmon has been decreasing in the Broughton region since 2004. I'm wondering if you agree with the forum.
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Absolutely. There were some great recommendations out of that, and I agree, the number of lice has been reduced. It's due to the drug, which is unfortunately a temporary situation. That's the concern. But the most profound recommendation that they made was, the way the limit on lice right now is they have to stay less than three motile lice per farm fish, but what the forum said is the wild fish outside the pens have to have natural levels of sea lice on them. That's a step in the right direction because if you have three motile lice per farm fish and you have two million farm fish, that's going to be too many. So the way they suggested measuring it on the wild fish, that is a true and valid measurement that could actually save wild fish. Unfortunately it has not been implemented.
Mrs. Tilly O'Neill-Gordon: Thank you.
The Chair: Mr. Blais.
[Français]
M. Raynald Blais: Merci beaucoup, monsieur le président.
Tout à l'heure, lorsque je suis intervenu pour la première fois, je vous ai posé ma série de question. L'une me trottait dans la tête. Elle concernait le loup marin. Je viens de retrouver un article publié aujourd'hui dans le Globe and Mail, qui identifiait le phoque comme un prédateur assez important, relativement au saumon dans l'Ouest.
Je voulais seulement vérifier avec vous si vous aviez une opinion là-dessus. Est-il considéré comme un prédateur? On sait très bien qu'il est beaucoup plus nombreux qu'il ne l'était auparavant. Je suis du Québec. On connaît davantage le loup marin chez-nous, sauf que, de ce que je peux en apprendre, il y a aussi expansion du troupeau de phoques dans le Pacifique. En ce sens, j'aimerais vous entendre sur la prédation du phoque, relativement à la ressource du saumon.
[English]
Ms. Alexandra Morton: That's a very good question. Fortunately, I just attended a presentation from Dr. Andrew Trites on this exact subject, in terms of the Fraser sockeye.
What he said was twofold. One is they pick up the scat from seals and they analyze what these seals have been eating. In general, the harbour seals of British Columbia are eating 3%, 3% of their diet is salmon, which is very small, but there are specific locations and river mouths.
Seals are like dogs, they're very smart, and if they get onto something, they'll stick with it. In some instances, there are seals that have learned to target certain populations of salmon, in which case, as I understand it, they are doing enormous damage, but these are very localized situations that would need to be addressed individually. But if you were to go out and kill all the seals today, you would not be protecting salmon, because what they are actually eating is different fish.
One thing he brought up is one of the fish they prey heavily on, hake, is actually a predator of juvenile salmon. So the seals are helping reduce another predator. Now, you have to be very careful with these natural systems, but, no, seals are simply not responsible for what's happened to the Fraser sockeye.
º (1635)
[Français]
M. Raynald Blais: En terminant, dans l'article du Globe & Mail en question, on fait état d'une étude en Écosse — je me permets de le lire sans nécessairement l'avoir regardé d'avance — qui a démontré que d'enlever un seul phoque de la rivière Morriston — je ne sais pas si j'ai la bonne prononciation, mais c'est écrit comme cela — avait permis d'augmenter la pêche sportive de 17 p. 100. Dans d'autres rivières, les résultats variaient d'une augmentation de 1 à 33 p. 100 pour le saumon.
J'aimerais vous indiquer que sur la côte Est, le phoque gris, qui est autre que le phoque du Groenland étant donné que la chasse est contrôlée sur ce dernier, très bien contrôlée d'ailleurs et peut-être trop au goût de certains, est vu davantage dans nos rivières. On le voit par rapport à l'espèce du homard et de plus en plus par rapport à celle du saumon.
Dans l'article en question, il est fait état de cette observation. Qu'en pensez-vous?
[English]
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Like I said, these are localized effects—and I have no doubt of that study—but you have to talk to the scientists who've been following these animals around. Dr. Trites' whole life is studying pinniped, which is seals and sea lions, and he is telling us, from looking at their scat, which is a nasty business, but they do it, 3% of their diet is salmon. So if you were to take the seals out and allow the hake to rise in population, it's very likely that you would cause more damage than if you left the seals there, which is natural. But that said, there are specific rivers where I understand there's problems, and I would say that would require individual management, but overall they are not the problem we're having with our Pacific salmon.
[Français]
M. Raynald Blais: En terminant, j'aimerais indiquer qu'il faut faire attention — vous le savez très bien — aux chiffres, aux statistiques. Comme vous le dites, trois pour cent de la consommation du phoque en question, c'est le saumon. On a parlé de la même chose par rapport à la morue.
Cependant, il ne faut pas oublier que le phoque, notamment le phoque du Groenland, lorsqu'il mange une morue, il ne mange pas toute la morue au complet, mais une petite partie uniquement. C'est pourquoi le faible pourcentage de consommation du phoque par rapport à la morue n'illustre pas nécessairement très bien la corrélation qu'il peut y avoir entre le phoque prédateur de morue et la quantité exacte qu'il mange.
En tous cas, cela est à relativiser.
Merci beaucoup, madame.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Donnelly.
Mr. Fin Donnelly: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Morton, just one last question.
The B.C. sockeye salmon fishery is currently being assessed to be certified as a sustainable fishery by the Marine Stewardship Council, MSC, and there's been objections to this certification that have been filed with the accreditation body in the past little while, and it's based on the sockeye collapse of the summer of 2009. I'm wondering if you can provide any comment on this. I know this is different from the sea lice topic and the fish farm topic, but it's potentially related to this collapse. But, overall, the problem of certifying a fishery, I'm wondering if you could comment at all on this.
Ms. Alexandra Morton: If they certify a fishery that's been in decline for 10 years with virtually no commercial fishing for the last three years, we could take from that that this certification is invalid.
Because if you look to Alaska, they're actually having record runs of sockeye and that's where you might want to go certify a fishery. Or the western Pacific, Russia, they are seeing huge runs of wild salmon so the certification process is--
I don't know how they could possibly certify the Fraser sockeye in the state that it's in right now. It's near extinction.
º (1640)
Mr. Fin Donnelly: Thank you.
I guess if I have a little time remaining, I'm wondering if there is any last messages that you wanted--I know that we're running short on time--the committee to hear, if you have any final thoughts that you could leave us with.
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Thank you. You read my mind.
I've been out and about in Archipelago, a beautiful remote area for 26 years and I just want to tell you that the oceans are not dying.
When I arrived there, there was no humpback whales. There's now 27 whales that use the area. The sandlance population, which is a very, very energy-rich fish, is bigger than it's ever been. Nobody's seen it this big. We got pilchard back who were gone for 90 years. The Pacific white-sided dolphin is in the thousands.
A lot is going right in our oceans, and the fact that our salmon are declining when the western Pacific and the Alaskan ones are not is an indication that we can fix this.
I so hope you let us do this because if fishery management became more localized and DFO became an organization that worked with people, and you took the scientists out of the political body of DFO and you let them be what they were as the Fisheries Research Board. They were cutting edge. They were the leading fishery scientists of the world.
If we just took a few simple steps here, Canada could be an example around the world of how we could have our fish and our communities could thrive. Your committee, having me here today, thank you so much. I see a lot of movement happening and I'm hoping we can all follow through and solve this because it's not about anybody losing. We all win. The Norwegians, if they've got to go home, they'll still fish farm. Those European shareholders will be fine. It's the communities of British Columbia we need to be concerned about, so thank you so much all of you.
The Chair: Thank.
Mr. Allen.
Mr. Mike Allen (Tobique—Mactaquac, CPC): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and Ms. Morton, thank you for being here.
I just have a couple of questions.
One is related to the theory and the reasons for the changes in the salmon runs. The second one is your opinion on regulation.
I guess the first thing is there was an article in the North Island Gazette where it talked about the record pink returns. One of the things it points to, and I'll just refer to the article--because I'm sure you're aware of it--that predicted the demise of the pinks by 2011 and pointed at fish farms for increasing numbers of sea lice that, in turn, threatened juvenile salmon. The study concluded that that sea lice typically kill over 80% of the fish in each salmon run, and if sea lice infestations continue, affected pink salmon populations will collapse by 99%. Obviously the article goes on to say that didn't happen because of the positive returns.
One of the things that was commented that the extinction forecast hasn't materialized because fish farms are doing a better job of managing their farms and the extinction prediction is based on nothing changing. However, Ian Roberts, spokesman for Marine Harvest that operates the majority of the farms, said that they hadn't changed their process in years with respect to what they were doing on sea lice. He said they'd been consistent. They're still operating and treating for sea lice in the same way and are consistent. There's obviously another factor in place.
I'm just asking is there, on that basis, other theories behind this? My second question is based on the fact that you do disagree with the aquaculture management regime, what in your opinion is the best jurisdiction in the world in terms of regulation?
Ms. Alexandra Morton: Ian Roberts needs to go under oath.
There's an alliance of environmental organizations in British Columbia called the Coastal Lines for Aquaculture Reform. They have spent millions negotiating with Marine Harvest. This includes the David Suzuki Foundation, Living Oceans, Georgia Strait Alliance--large organizations. They, I would say, arm wrestled—people may use other terms—Marine Harvest into a stringent drug treatment program. When I first found the sea lice infestation in 2001, that was not the case. Now Ian Roberts would need to check his words carefully to assure you that the drug treatment regime on Marine Harvest was the same in 2001 as it is today. I think he should really be careful with what he has said there.
In terms of what jurisdiction this has worked in: none, zero. It's really an interesting phenomenon. Norway is very different from British Columbia because they actually want people on every single kilometre of their coastline, on every island, and the public don't seem as attached to wild salmon so there hasn't been the economic issues with salmon farming. There are actually farms everywhere and they seem a little bit more accepting of it. Except now, because the lice are becoming resistant to all the drugs, there is a lot of conflict going on. I don't know. They're trying to pick at this moment between wild and farmed fish.
Interestingly enough, John Fredriksen, the wealthiest man in Norway, also the largest shareholder of Marine Harvest, for some reason did a press conference on a river mouth where he says to get this fish farm away from his river. Well, of course, we're all wondering about our river. Georg Rieber-Mohn, the ex-Attorney General of Norway, said “get them away from the rivers”.
In 1991 there's a record in the Hansard where John Lilletun from the Norwegian parliamentary Committee on the Environment spoke before some federal committee and he said that they had very strict laws in Norway. Fish farmers said “we will d
