Dependent upon presumed scale of potential impacts......You nailed it. That's the problem with those studies and how predictions of extinction by statisticians like Krkosek are suspect at best. Feel free to post these specific papers that outline how we can quantify this mortality. I will look at them. However, many of these papers were presented as evidence during Cohen. We know the findings and recommendations. As far as I know there was no quantitative method of determining how many wild salmon were killed by sea lice. Just like we don't know how many wild salmon are killed by Victoria sewage. It's extremely difficult to obtain dead wild salmon samples. It's equally difficult to determine how and why a fish has died in the wild because not all pathogens cause immediate mortality. Impacts may be more chronic in nature where it's a combination of factors that cause mortality. Some wild salmon could already be in a compromised condition already - need to account for that and that's one of the problems with some past studies. Those are just some of the challenges faced by researchers like Miller or the team of other UBC researchers.
Thanks for the rational and respectful post, Shuswap.
It would be quite a bit of work to repost all the peer-reviewed and grey literature on all of the potential and realized impacts from the open net-cage technology. There are literally hundreds of articles out there.
Instead, I encourage those interested to do their own investigation - including doing a search on these forums where many posters besides myself (e.g. WitW, GLG, Englishman, and many others) - as well as googling for a specific impact using key search words like "sea lice", "aquaculture", "fish disease" - among others.
There are assumptions inherent in all modelling - and largely - those assumptions are valid - when using a certain set of impacting and interacting variables as stated in the modelling methodologies. We are often blindly oblivious of how dependent we have become on modelling in our lives - whether it be engineering models that design and operate most of our infrastructure, weather models, or many other examples.
Some of the variables that Krkosek used in his modelling were later changed (thankfully) and that later changed his dated predictions. I agree (with hindsight available today) that it would have been better precaution for Krkosek to not leave himself open for the inevitable critique of his future prediction of extinction for when those impacting and interacting variables changed.
That does not mean that there is no utility in using models - nor that open net-cage operations have no impact on wild stocks.
Yes - there are of course many interacting impacts of various scopes wrt wild salmon populations and stock trajectories - and as I have stated numerous times on these forums - that does not mean we ignore our responsibilities for our future generations by walking away from our stewardship duties. There are some impacts that we can easily influence (e.g. closed verses open containment) - while others can be more challenging (e.g. climate change).
We can and should do a better job wrt protecting wild stocks from open net-pen operations - and that includes applying defensible, science-based siting criteria and appropriate environmental risk assessment while transitioning to closed containment wrt impacts from the open net-cage industry.
Above all - we need open and transparent data and info to base decisions on - something that has been lacking from the open net-cage industry due to it's incestuous relationship with the regulators - which is unfortunately not unique to only the open net-cage industry.
While there are other impacts to wild stocks - that does not mean we should ignore impacts from the open net-cage industry. That suggestion is - to me - is irresponsible, unprofessional and unacceptable.