Fish Farm trouble in BC.

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At least your admitting it is evidence. I heard only 2 visits. Any luck with the data on the increased sockeye returns over the last couple of decades at Chilliwack Lake you were telling us about?
when did i say anything about chilli liake??????
 
Nice overview of fish farming in general, and the overall premise of the global need for aquaculture is not untrue, or even bad. However it doesn't mean every type of aquaculture is right for every location. In BC we also farm oysters, scallops, clams, even some geoducks which I don't think anyone objects to. There are lots of places suitable for farming Atlantic salmon (like in the Atlantic ocean, or places without native anadromous salmonidae populations ) , and even some now very large operations planned for inland non obvious places such as South Florida. This doesn't mean non-native farmed Atlantic Salmon and their diseases should be introduced into an environment already occupied by several native species of the family salmonidae. There are lots of other places it can be farmed, and easily shipped to BC for BC consumers who want to eat it.
o ok
 
That was me who mentioned sockeye populations increasing in Chilliwack Lake. Do some research on this system .. it is unique in that the majority of fish spawn in Washington State, the stock spawn and rear in as near a pristine lake and river environment as is possible to find so close to a large population base, the fish are possibly the earliest run timing of all Fraser River sockeye, and, the kicker, they are not subject to any significant fishing by any user group.

Numbers of returning spawners will be easy to find terrin, if you have the inclination.
 
That was me who mentioned sockeye populations increasing in Chilliwack Lake. Do some research on this system .. it is unique in that the majority of fish spawn in Washington State, the stock spawn and rear in as near a pristine lake and river environment as is possible to find so close to a large population base, the fish are possibly the earliest run timing of all Fraser River sockeye, and, the kicker, they are not subject to any significant fishing by any user group.

Numbers of returning spawners will be easy to find terrin, if you have the inclination.
Sorry Dave I mixed you up with Bones. I found that the Chilliwack Lake run is unique in the way you describe it but I have not been able to confirm the run size to be growing over the last couple of decades. If you have the data or can steer me to it I would appreciate it.
 
That was me who mentioned sockeye populations increasing in Chilliwack Lake. Do some research on this system .. it is unique in that the majority of fish spawn in Washington State, the stock spawn and rear in as near a pristine lake and river environment as is possible to find so close to a large population base, the fish are possibly the earliest run timing of all Fraser River sockeye, and, the kicker, they are not subject to any significant fishing by any user group.

Numbers of returning spawners will be easy to find terrin, if you have the inclination.

Here is what is in the Cohen Comission of Inquiry into the decline of Sockeye in the Fraser River - not parsing words just regurgitating:

Harrison River sockeye salmon population
Contrary to most Fraser River sockeye stocks, the Harrison River population has been increasing in productivity and abundance since the 1990s and, in 2010 and 2011, returned in record numbers. Harrison River sockeye exhibit unique freshwater and marine life history patterns, and they appear to follow migration routes that are distinct from most other Fraser River sockeye populations. While numerous witnesses commented on these different life history patterns, the reasons underlying the Harrison River population’s recent increases in productivity and abundance are not clear. In my view, the success of this population would be a fruitful area of research because it may provide important insights into the production processes of Fraser River sockeye salmon.


I guess the Salmon farmers are helping this batch of Sockeye do even better.....

http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2012/bcp-pco/CP32-93-2012-3-eng.pdf
 
Here is what is in the Cohen Comission of Inquiry into the decline of Sockeye in the Fraser River - not parsing words just regurgitating:

Harrison River sockeye salmon population
Contrary to most Fraser River sockeye stocks, the Harrison River population has been increasing in productivity and abundance since the 1990s and, in 2010 and 2011, returned in record numbers. Harrison River sockeye exhibit unique freshwater and marine life history patterns, and they appear to follow migration routes that are distinct from most other Fraser River sockeye populations. While numerous witnesses commented on these different life history patterns, the reasons underlying the Harrison River population’s recent increases in productivity and abundance are not clear. In my view, the success of this population would be a fruitful area of research because it may provide important insights into the production processes of Fraser River sockeye salmon.
I guess the Salmon farmers are helping this batch of Sockeye do even better.....
http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2012/bcp-pco/CP32-93-2012-3-eng.pdf

The Cohen Report was tabled in 2012
If you are going to start quoting from this 2012 report, you will be doing it until the cows come home
Here is some recent news and 2017 was equally disastrous.
“2016 Worst Fraser sockeye salmon return in history”
 
The Cohen Report was tabled in 2012
If you are going to start quoting from this 2012 report, you will be doing it until the cows come home
Here is some recent news and 2017 was equally disastrous.
“2016 Worst Fraser sockeye salmon return in history”

Not planning on re-engaging but if you are quoting info from before the Cohen report, maybe worth you going and editing all of your previous posts (otherwise you are at best a hypocrite). Since you have the new data, how about sharing what happened to the Harrison River population in the last couple of years?
 
The Cohen Report was tabled in 2012
If you are going to start quoting from this 2012 report, you will be doing it until the cows come home
Here is some recent news and 2017 was equally disastrous.
“2016 Worst Fraser sockeye salmon return in history”
I really like your quote - looked it up - guess what they said:

"Overall, 2016 was a year of extremes, marked by disappointing returns of many salmon populations that went to sea in 2014, and a remarkably strong return of South Coast chum salmon that entered the ocean a year earlier.

Scientists first detected what became popularly known as “the blob”1 in 2013. This vast area of abnormally warm water grew to around nine million square kilometers. It slowly dissipated during 2015, but was followed by a powerful El Niño event lasting from 2015 through much of 2016.

As a result of the abnormal ocean conditions present from 2014 through 2016, warm waters dominated the North Pacific ecosystem, ushering in new predators and unusual zooplankton. Many salmon entering the marine environment in 2014 did not fare well, with some—like some interior Fraser sockeye and stream-type Fraser chinook runs—returning in very low numbers."

Are you blaming fish farms for the headline or are you educating us about the effects of ocean temperatures rising? Same old same old, quick let's post a video!
 
The quote I made was
“2016 Worst Fraser sockeye salmon return in history”
"and 2017 was equally disastrous."

As far as your statement (otherwise you are at best a hypocrite)
Can you please tell me what posts you are referring too that make me a hypocrite?
 
Here is what is in the Cohen Comission of Inquiry into the decline of Sockeye in the Fraser River - not parsing words just regurgitating:

Harrison River sockeye salmon population
Contrary to most Fraser River sockeye stocks, the Harrison River population has been increasing in productivity and abundance since the 1990s and, in 2010 and 2011, returned in record numbers. Harrison River sockeye exhibit unique freshwater and marine life history patterns, and they appear to follow migration routes that are distinct from most other Fraser River sockeye populations. While numerous witnesses commented on these different life history patterns, the reasons underlying the Harrison River population’s recent increases in productivity and abundance are not clear. In my view, the success of this population would be a fruitful area of research because it may provide important insights into the production processes of Fraser River sockeye salmon.


I guess the Salmon farmers are helping this batch of Sockeye do even better.....

http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2012/bcp-pco/CP32-93-2012-3-eng.pdf

How do you know that they pass by FF's? Could they migrate through JDF?
 
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So
The quote I made was
“2016 Worst Fraser sockeye salmon return in history”
"and 2017 was equally disastrous."

As far as your statement (otherwise you are at best a hypocrite)
Can you please tell me what posts you are referring too that make me a hypocrite?
Sorry - probably should have said - FAKE NEWS. You quoted a headline in a thread about Fish Farms - clearly you didn't say - BTW, all the science attributes this reduction to ocean temperatures. Give it a rest, it was a childish attempt to claim that the Cohen report is somehow stale because you have new and more modern headlines that what - actually confirm the most important conclusions in the Cohen report. I will look at all your posts and see if you reference any science before 2012 to help you out.
 
The quote I made was
“2016 Worst Fraser sockeye salmon return in history”
"and 2017 was equally disastrous."

As far as your statement (otherwise you are at best a hypocrite)
Can you please tell me what posts you are referring too that make me a hypocrite?

If we are quoting news as fact might was well post this

"“This river is plugged with salmon,” he said in an interview. “We have the biggest runs we’ve probably seen in 10 years. They put in the closure and didn’t even come up to see what’s happening here. It seriously affects my business. They put on the closure for no reason."

http://vancouversun.com/news/local-...on-to-close-sockeye-fishing-on-the-pitt-river
 
i was always told that lower fraser sockeye are the ones we catch on west coast (big and south bank), and are closed... by previous posts i sure would believe it.. we caught and released many of these fraser sockeye this june. they where big!!
 
update on Victoria Council's motion to have open-pen Fish Farms removed.
"I’m happy to report that the motion passed at our Committee of the Whole meeting yesterday on a vote of 7-1.
Our motion will be up for final approval by Victoria City Council next Thursday and then it will go on to the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities to gather more local government support for this issue.
We received hundreds of emails of support for this motion and your advocacy was key to our success. Together, we will continue to push to protect the precious coastline and the wild salmon which are the lifeline of many communities."
 
What’s destabilizing B.C.’s wild salmon stocks?
Hatcheries, climate might be more to blame than fish farms for declines: researchers




"In 2007, a study published in Science magazine made an ominous prediction: Broughton Archipelago pink salmon stocks faced extinction by 2015, as a result of sea lice from area fish farms infecting wild salmon stocks.

“The louse-induced mortality of pink salmon is commonly over 80% and exceeds previous fishing mortality,” the study, co-authored by Martin Krkošek and Alexandra Morton, concluded. “If outbreaks continue, then local extinction is certain, and a 99% collapse in pink salmon population abundance is expected in four salmon generations.”

And in 2010, the Cohen Commission heard testimony that sea lice and disease transmission from fish farms might have contributed to the 2009 collapse of Fraser River sockeye.

But wild pink salmon stocks in the Broughton Archipelago didn’t collapse – they surged dramatically in 2014. And in 2010, Fraser River sockeye made a stunning comeback, with a return of 28 million fish, followed four years later with a return of 19 million."

"
“As we change the ecosystems, and as we approach the more extreme limits, you’re going to get lots more variability,” Beamish said. “Variability is both ways. It’s exactly what you might expect.

Don Noakes, former head of the Pacific Biological Research Station and current dean of science and technology at Vancouver Island University, said the three most commercially important species of salmon – sockeye, coho and Chinook – have declined “disproportionately” compared to other species in their southern range (B.C.)

And he adds that it is possible that the Fraser River will continue to see even more extremes lows and highs in sockeye returns in the coming years, thanks to climate change.

“If you believe that climate change is having a negative impact on these stocks, which includes most scientists, then we will likely see additional declines in the future,” Noakes said. “Some stocks may even disappear particularly those in the interior of B.C.”"

https://www.biv.com/article/2017/5/whats-destabilizing-bcs-wild-salmon-stocks/
 
What brought sea louse epidemic to BC salmon? U of T researchers explain

“This is a lesson about the importance of better coordinating and timing regional treatment and being aware of warming ocean temperatures"


High ocean temperatures and poor timing of parasite management likely led to an epidemic of sea lice in 2015 throughout salmon farms in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Strait, a University of Toronto-led study has found.
The sea lice spread to migrating juvenile wild salmon, resulting in the highest numbers of sea lice observed on wild salmon in a decade.

In spring of 2015, a team of U of T ecologists led by postdoctoral researchers Andrew Bateman and Stephanie Peacock found that more than 70 per cent of fish the team sampled in the Strait's Broughton Archipelago had at least one sea louse: the highest prevalence of such parasites since 2005.

“It was sort of a perfect storm of environmental conditions and mismanagement of treatment,” says Peacock, a postdoctoral fellow in the U of T’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology when the research was conducted.

“A lot of people talk about how sea lice are natural, but in farms, you have these parasites in larger numbers. Juvenile wild salmon are then exposed as they migrate past these areas.”

Because farmed salmon are in open net pens and share water with nearby wild salmon, the parasites can transmit to young wild salmon who wouldn't normally encounter sea lice until later in life. These young fish are sometimes as small as three centimetres in length, while sea lice themselves can be close to one centimetre in diameter.

“Getting sea lice at such an early age affects young salmons' health and their ability to fend off predators,” says Peacock.
Based on the numbers of lice on juvenile salmon in 2015, researchers predicted an additional 9 - 39 per cent decline in returning pink salmon due to the outbreak.

Explaining an epidemic
In order to determine the cause of this outbreak, the team assessed the evidence for four contributing factors:

  • influx of lice on returning adult pink salmon
  • sea surface temperature
  • the timing of chemical treatments to control sea lice on salmon farms
  • resistance of sea lice to chemical treatment on farms
“Even though parasite treatments on farms were effective, we saw that treatments failed to protect wild salmon, and this happened at a time of unexpected warming in ocean water in these regions,” says Martin Krkosek, assistant professor in U of T’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology. Krkosek was Bateman’s and Peacock's supervisor and study co-author.

The fall of 2014 did have a healthy return of adult pink salmon, bringing sea lice into near-shore waters where they could infect farmed salmon. High ocean temperatures during winter months then likely accelerated sea-louse development, enabling populations to grow quickly and reach higher numbers than they would under normal ocean temperatures.

Also in 2015, individual salmon farms did not coordinate anti-louse treatments, with some farms delaying treatment until just prior to the time when juvenile salmon migrate past farms. As a result, sea lice from those farms could have spread to adjacent farms, hampering area-wide control of the outbreak.

“Furthermore, during the juvenile wild salmon migration, farms are supposed to treat for sea lice within 15 days of when a threshold number of lice are found on adult farmed salmon,” says Peacock. “But in 2015, some farms waited several months before they treated.”

“The strategy might have been 'wait until the migration to treat' but it kind of backfired because the louse populations were allowed to grow in the meantime, and the lice spread to other nearby farms. It likely created a bigger problem down the road.”

Preventing the next outbreak
“We were surprised to see that some farms don’t seem to be following their license conditions,” says Peacock. “We thought maybe there were more infractions in 2015 that may have led to higher numbers of sea lice, but when we looked back over 10 -15 years, the rate of such infractions was about the same. The big difference in 2015 really seems to be the combination of a lack of proactive parasite treatment and higher water temperatures.”

The team suggested the solution to such an outbreak in the future would likely be an earlier, coordinated parasite treatment effort between salmon farms – something the researchers say is lacking in this area and across the country.

“Sea lice used to be a problem a decade or so ago, then parasite management changed and it seemed like the problem had been effectively managed for several years. Then it wasn't managed well all of a sudden,” says Krkosek. “This is a lesson about the importance of better coordinating and timing regional treatment and being aware of warming ocean temperatures."

The results of the team's study appear in a paper published in the July edition of the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.
https://www.utoronto.ca/news/what-brought-sea-louse-epidemic-bc-salmon-u-t-researchers-explain

 
It begs the question..... what is cheaper.... fix the problem or spread disinformation on the internet to confuse the public? It reminds me of this.
"Doubt is our product," a cigarette executive once observed, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubt_Is_Their_Product
 
With all the media reports, opinions and contradicting science, it is not hard to see why Fish Farms are so controversial in British Columbia.

Let’s review what we know about Fish Farms

We know we have over 100 active open net-pens Fish Farms in B.C.

We know that in 2016 B.C. Fish Farms produced 92,800 Metric Tons of salmon, 21,6493,958 pounds @ 10 pounds per fish, over 2 million Atlantic Salmon

We know the majority of those Atlantics have PRV a virus linked to HSMI

We know that Dr. Gary Marty stated 1 – 3 Atlantics per 1,000 have HSMI, (no doubt a conservative estimate) Which indicates, according to Dr. Marty, we have up to 6000 Atlantic Salmon with HSMI virus in a concentrated area where Wild Salmon smolts frequent

We know that HSMI is highly contagious and can be lethal to wild salmon

We know that Fish Farms have a serious sea lice problem.

We know that Fish Farms have stated they try to time the treatment of their Sea Lice to coincide with the passing of wild salmon smolts. One can only assume to reduce the wild salmon mortality rate due to the concentration of their sea lice in the area.

We know that Fish Farms are not the only problem our wild salmon must face and are not the exclusive reason for the wild salmon runs that are in decline.

We know that wild salmon run returns from year to year will vary with or without Fish Farms.

We know that regardless of the evidence and history of Fish Farms world wide, there is no guarantee our politicians have the will to have them removed.

We know that most (not all) wild salmon runs in B.C. are in decline.
In Alaska on the other hand, where there are no Fish Farms, the 2017 harvest was 224 million wild salmon
Forrest Bowers, Deputy Director of the Division of Commercial Fisheries characterized the 2017 Alaska salmon season as a banner year for the industry

What we don’t know is exactly how many B.C. wild salmon die because of Fish Farms in our waters.

The people who work for Fish Farms and or related business who post on this site on a regular basis will go on aggressively defending Fish Farms. This is not hard to understand as their livelihood may depend on it.

Others will decide for themselves whether the number of Wild Salmon that Fish Farms are killing is significant or insignificant and if Fish Farms should be forced to move to dry land or be permitted to continue and expand with more open net-pens in our ocean.
 
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