Sea Lice and Fish Farms

[agentaqua]

So...... Fish farms deliver or bring smolts to open water lice free, correct? So in truth the wild salmon are inflicting damage to the fish farms. Lol

Ya - that's right Bones - it starts with caged fish getting lice from wild sources - and/or from adjacent farm operations if they have mixed age classes. Lice on their fish is - to the fish farmers - often a production loss.

However - it's the next stage that is the concern to the wild stocks - when the lice on the farm fish - after a month or more - get eggs - and release those now magnified numbers of free-swimming lice onto the small, outmigrating juvenile salmon.

Lice mortality/morbidity is dependent upon the number of (largely) motile (sub and adult and feeding) lice per gram of host weight. So larger fish can withstand higher overall lice loads. Small, juvenile salmon cannot - esp. the chums and pinks - which are very small at outmigration. They die and/or in poor enough condition to be unable to swim away fast from predators and are eaten. I'm not "LOL"ing over this.

 

[fogged in]

[QUOTE="Fishmyster, Maybe the lice came before the farm and not the other way around? Just nobody was paying attention or around to acknowledge it.
I'm not a believer that farms have caused the demise in salmon stalks. They are natural and will always be a part of salmon.[/QUOTE]
Hey Fishmyster...Glad you believe in Global Warming.
did you catch this info from a year or so ago....Even the Fish Farms know their Sea Lice impact wild salmon....

"The researchers found that outbreaks in the wild populations were significantly lower when farmed fish were treated with Slice late in winter, before wild juvenile pink salmon had begun to migrate past the net pens.
Sea lice outbreaks in the Broughton Archipelago were blamed after some runs of wild pink salmon were virtually wiped out in 2002. In response, some farms along the salmon migration route were left fallow and regulations were set requiring farmed salmon to be treated with pesticides when there were signs of sea lice outbreaks.
Mr. Proboszcz said that, as farms have adopted the use of Slice over the past decade, the mortality rate for wild salmon has fallen.
“Our results indicate positive conservation outcomes due to adaptive changes in management of parasites in salmon aquaculture facilities,” the paper states. “These results provide an example of how management of sea lice on farm salmon can be improved, with relevance to management of sea lice on farm salmon in Canada, Europe and other areas of the world.”
However, Mr. Proboszcz said he fears Slice could lose its effectiveness, as it has in some places in the Atlantic."

 

[Fishmyster]

Just because sea lice were blamed for the lack of returning pinks doesn't mean they were the most contributing factor in pink returns. A similar situation is the blame of felt soled shoes for the spread of dydimo. Dydimo has now retreated even though felt soles have not. When many vocal people are demanding answers, researchers will find some.
Is there any long term stream water quality test records compared with during the same time. Are there any annual records of out migrating fry examined for health and abundance. What other supporting evidence is proving there was a healthy fry population before they swam past any farm?
Maybe you can convince me yet.

 

[bigdogeh]

I guess the tons of the poison Slice used on farms to protect the invasive atlantics, then excreted into the environment is OK also. I hear the crabs and prawns just love it... (yeah, right....)
I guess people that eat atlantic salmon don't mind having their food poisoned either...

http://www.farmedanddangerous.org/s...ironmental-impacts/chemical-treatments-slice/

 

[Fishmyster]

For the record.
I am only engaging into this discussion because I don't think fish farms have caused the demise of our fish stocks. By no means am I implying that farms have no impact or that poison and antibiotics should be freely dumped into the sea. I am neither for or against them.

 

[bigdogeh]

For the record.
I am only engaging into this discussion because I don't think fish farms have caused the demise of our fish stocks. By no means am I implying that farms have no impact or that poison and antibiotics should be freely dumped into the sea. I am neither for or against them.

Everyone here is entitled to their opinion Fishmyster. Nothing wrong with sharing your opinion or engaging in the discussion.. If no-one did that we'd all be lurkers and there would be no forum... hehe. I happen to believe (through the reading I've done of the research) that they do have alot to do with the demise of our wild salmon... as well as crab and prawns in many area's... many seals and sealions, and also now, even the odd whale falls victim to these farms...

 

[Fishmyster]

Everyone here is entitled to their opinion Fishmyster. Nothing wrong with sharing your opinion or engaging in the discussion.. If no-one did that we'd all be lurkers and there would be no forum... hehe. I happen to believe (through the reading I've done of the research) that they do have alot to do with the demise of our wild salmon... as well as crab and prawns in many area's... many seals and sealions, and also now, even the odd whale falls victim to these farms...

For the sake of discussion I will share some field observations with you. I have traveled the central coast fishing steelhead for over twenty years. Over the years we visited many stream estuaries in remote or "pristine" locations. Before accessing every stream we always placed a couple crab traps in the estuary to catch camp food. There was a noticeable correlation with the abundance of seals and the amount of crabs we caught. In the early 2000's the crab population died to nothing! The Nekite river estuary that once produced 16 monster dungees per trap had produced 0 for dinner. There were a few seals living there but nothing like before. Every night you could hear them fighting and splashing at the estuary. The Steelhead and trout population also vanished from the past 30 head days we enjoyed in the past decade down to seven head in three days on average. The fish and crab population had crashed in a location free of fish farms. This includes rivers inlet, and smith inlet. If there are no fish farms causing sea lice and disease what do you think could have caused the loss of all the life there?

 

[bigdogeh]

For the sake of discussion I will share some field observations with you. I have traveled the central coast fishing steelhead for over twenty years. Over the years we visited many stream estuaries in remote or "pristine" locations. Before accessing every stream we always placed a couple crab traps in the estuary to catch camp food. There was a noticeable correlation with the abundance of seals and the amount of crabs we caught. In the early 2000's the crab population died to nothing! The Nekite river estuary that once produced 16 monster dungees per trap had produced 0 for dinner. There were a few seals living there but nothing like before. Every night you could hear them fighting and splashing at the estuary. The Steelhead and trout population also vanished from the past 30 head days we enjoyed in the past decade down to seven head in three days on average. The fish and crab population had crashed in a location free of fish farms. This includes rivers inlet, and smith inlet. If there are no fish farms causing sea lice and disease what do you think could have caused the loss of all the life there?

If I had to take a guess I'd guess the commercial crabbers have probably cleaned that area out. an estuary is a fairly small area in the scheme of things but usually an area with alot of life. It's basically a target for someone looking for crab. Is that area protected from the commercial crabbers? When you see crab boats with hundreds of traps on them it isn't hard to imagine how much damage they can do in an area. I would also think commercial fishing on the scale it's being done up in Alaska is probably having an effect on those runs along our north coast. I don't blame everything on the fish farms but I lay alot of the blame on them. Combined with the commercial overfishing in certain sectors, open net pen fish farms, global warming, the acidification of our oceans, the wild salmon runs are on a path to extinction. fish farms are one thing we could have control over to make a change in the right direction. unfortunately everyone (especially the fish farms) would rather blame the other sector for the problems rather than tackle them. the fish farms don't care. they'll still keep selling fish whether we have wild salmon runs or not...to be honest I think they wouldn't mind if our wild salmon went extinct. just more fish for them to sell. take these open net pen fish farms out of the ocean and put them on land and maybe our salmon will have a chance. or keep going in the direction were going and pay to be happy paying a fish farm for the opportunity of casting your line into one of there pens to have the opportunity to land a farmed fish. that sounds like fun...
Up out of Rupert I've pulled over 30 legal dungies out of one trap. but it wasn't at an estuary...

 

[agentaqua]

I think it is great to be skeptical of all claims until the data comes in. Unfortunately, this is where the open net-cage industry has been allowed to be lax - and as far as I am concerned - it is due to political interference, collusion and/or corruption in the upper echelon of DFO, and the governments. Justice Cohen also commented on the compromised position of DFO.

Consider just these 3 points:

1/ It has never been required of the industry to look at background levels of lice before they started operations, in orer to assess impacts from lice on adjacent wild stocks,
2/ Unlike other industries - they have been completely exempt from the normal environmental assessment - including scoping (determination of boundaries of impacts) and mandatory public input, and
3/ fish disease information on a site-by-site basis is hidden - citing "privacy concerns".

Mum's the word on impacts to the public's' resources, whether we like it or not....

As I have stated numerous times on other threads: I don't believe that for every year, and every site, and every species/stock - that the open net-cage operations necessarily have a noticeable effect on wild stocks. Rather - every year/region/site is it's own "box of chocolates" - with a suite of interacting factors - including capture fisheries, water quality effects, habitat impacts, and the like. I believe that in some years with robust ocean survival - stocks can withstand an additional few percentage of mortality - including any mortality that might be attributed towards negative wild/cultured stock interactions.

However, on years with low ocean survival - like the past 20 years or so for many stocks - the additional few percentage points of mortality could have a dramatic and negative effect.

There has been many peer-reviewed articles that have proven that the open net-cage operations do have a negative effect on wild stocks (and have been posted on numerous threads on this forum besides this one) - but generally - they have had to do these studies w/o having adequate data from the fish farm industry.

 

[Whole in the Water]

Great post AA, your describe well the self serving and corrupt relationship between the foreign owned, net pen salmon feedlot industry and govt. that everyone involved or supporting this industry should be ashamed of and try to change!

Your box of chocolates analogy accurately describes why it is not easy to sometimes to definitively measure the negative impact of salmon feedlots.

 

[Birdsnest]

Great post AA, your describe well the self serving and corrupt relationship between the foreign owned, net pen salmon feedlot industry and govt. that everyone involved or supporting this industry should be ashamed of and try to change IMO!

Your box of chocolates analogy accurately describes why it is not easy to sometimes to definitively measure the negative impact of salmon feedlots.

Fixed it for you.

 

[Birdsnest]

Great post AA, your describe well the self serving and corrupt relationship between the foreign owned, net pen salmon feedlot industry and govt. that everyone involved or supporting this industry should be ashamed of and try to change!

Some what of a personal attack Ill point out. Im fine with it for it shows the character of an individual who can't stick to discussing the topic.

 

[Whole in the Water]

Some what of a personal attack Ill point out. Im fine with it for it shows the character of an individual who can't stick to discussing the topic.

Yup and what you say here is just your opinion too BN. I didn't single anyone person out so why so sensitive? People who work in any industry that is controversial need to accept the fact that they are going to face some questions and criticism - comes with the territory.

 

[Birdsnest]

You singled out a group. I said my bit. Ill let some of the other members of the forum chime in and see what they think.

 

[Fishmyster]

If I had to take a guess I'd guess the commercial crabbers have probably cleaned that area out. an estuary is a fairly small area in the scheme of things but usually an area with alot of life. It's basically a target for someone looking for crab. Is that area protected from the commercial crabbers? When you see crab boats with hundreds of traps on them it isn't hard to imagine how much damage they can do in an area. I would also think commercial fishing on the scale it's being done up in Alaska is probably having an effect on those runs along our north coast. I don't blame everything on the fish farms but I lay alot of the blame on them. Combined with the commercial overfishing in certain sectors, open net pen fish farms, global warming, the acidification of our oceans, the wild salmon runs are on a path to extinction. fish farms are one thing we could have control over to make a change in the right direction. unfortunately everyone (especially the fish farms) would rather blame the other sector for the problems rather than tackle them. the fish farms don't care. they'll still keep selling fish whether we have wild salmon runs or not...to be honest I think they wouldn't mind if our wild salmon went extinct. just more fish for them to sell. take these open net pen fish farms out of the ocean and put them on land and maybe our salmon will have a chance. or keep going in the direction were going and pay to be happy paying a fish farm for the opportunity of casting your line into one of there pens to have the opportunity to land a farmed fish. that sounds like fun...
Up out of Rupert I've pulled over 30 legal dungies out of one trap. but it wasn't at an estuary...

There is some more info you may be missing with you guess as to why the crabs disappeared from the remote inlet estuaries. There was no crabs there! As far as I know there is no market for the sale of female or undersized crab. I fish amongst many commercial crabbers here in ukee. They have not wiped out the young or females here with all their greed. also, the mentioned areas have very little commercial effort because of geographic location. It is not economicaly profitable to fish crab in areas so far from offloading and transportation locations like Port Hardy. Any other guesses? The fish returns there are equaly as depressed as the rest of the coast with no farms to blame what is you guess on that?

 

[agentaqua]

There is some more info you may be missing with you guess as to why the crabs disappeared from the remote inlet estuaries. There was no crabs there! As far as I know there is no market for the sale of female or undersized crab. I fish amongst many commercial crabbers here in ukee. They have not wiped out the young or females here with all their greed. also, the mentioned areas have very little commercial effort because of geographic location. It is not economicaly profitable to fish crab in areas so far from offloading and transportation locations like Port Hardy. Any other guesses? The fish returns there are equaly as depressed as the rest of the coast with no farms to blame what is you guess on that?

Thanks for your post Fishmyster.

Some additional info on the crab situation:
1/ There is no "legal" market for undersized and female crabs. I have been hearing unsubstantiated rumours for years about a black market for undersized and female crabs that bypasses commercial offloading processes. I'll leave it there w/o pointing-out any particular sector/ethnicity of the commercial crab fishery.
2/ Crabs in remote and isolated inlets have quite a different recruitment process and turn-over than other crab stocks. The often lack of available outside pelagic zoelplanktors to repopulate the bay is something that only the past few years has been only acknowledged - but they are all still rolled into large crab areas notwithstanding their population dynamics.

on fish farm impacts - your assertion that "no farms to blame" is both unsupported and unproven. The impacts of a new, novel pathogen - like ISAv and/or PRv - onto naive stocks is only just beginning to be looked at - and disease transfer in the ocean between both migratory and non-migratory resident fish could easily expand a disease vector coast-wide - far beyond the small area occupied by any net-pen sites.

 

[Fishmyster]

I think it is great to be skeptical of all claims until the data comes in. Unfortunately, this is where the open net-cage industry has been allowed to be lax - and as far as I am concerned - it is due to political interference, collusion and/or corruption in the upper echelon of DFO, and the governments. Justice Cohen also commented on the compromised position of DFO.

Consider just these 3 points:

1/ It has never been required of the industry to look at background levels of lice before they started operations, in orer to assess impacts from lice on adjacent wild stocks,
2/ Unlike other industries - they have been completely exempt from the normal environmental assessment - including scoping (determination of boundaries of impacts) and mandatory public input, and
3/ fish disease information on a site-by-site basis is hidden - citing "privacy concerns".

Mum's the word on impacts to the public's' resources, whether we like it or not....

As I have stated numerous times on other threads: I don't believe that for every year, and every site, and every species/stock - that the open net-cage operations necessarily have a noticeable effect on wild stocks. Rather - every year/region/site is it's own "box of chocolates" - with a suite of interacting factors - including capture fisheries, water quality effects, habitat impacts, and the like. I believe that in some years with robust ocean survival - stocks can withstand an additional few percentage of mortality - including any mortality that might be attributed towards negative wild/cultured stock interactions.

However, on years with low ocean survival - like the past 20 years or so for many stocks - the additional few percentage points of mortality could have a dramatic and negative effect.

There has been many peer-reviewed articles that have proven that the open net-cage operations do have a negative effect on wild stocks (and have been posted on numerous threads on this forum besides this one) - but generally - they have had to do these studies w/o having adequate data from the fish farm industry.

I will try again. As you AA seem to be an expert on citing reports can you please direct me to the studies that prove there has been healthy outmigration of juvenile fish swimming past the farms. I am also curios to your take on how rivers and smith inlet salmon crash in the early 1990's. Without fish farms to blame what do you think caused that crash in populations??
My questions are simply analytical. Please try to avoid words like greed and corruption as they are only used to create bias.

 

[agentaqua]

I will soon Fishmyster. It will take a bit of time.

Not avoiding words like greed and corruption - where they fit. Unfortunately - we don't live in a fair nor uncorrupted regulatory/political world/process. That works its' way into fisheries management - which is why I believe the Fisheries Research Board of Canada was disbanded in the early 1980s - so that collusion and corruption could trump fisheries management science.

 

[bones]

Fish farm leases are spread out across the entire coast. Why is there only a problem with sea lice in in one or two areas? If fish farms are the problem them why is there ... Say .... A problem in the sechelt/ jervis inlets?

Is it because the high concentrations of pink salmon that are in that area and the research against pink salmon are indeed true. But people with different motives are using this as a pry bar to remove farms from the coast?

 

[Fishmyster]

Thanks for your post Fishmyster.

Some additional info on the crab situation:
1/ There is no "legal" market for undersized and female crabs. I have been hearing unsubstantiated rumours for years about a black market for undersized and female crabs that bypasses commercial offloading processes. I'll leave it there w/o pointing-out any particular sector/ethnicity of the commercial crab fishery.
2/ Crabs in remote and isolated inlets have quite a different recruitment process and turn-over than other crab stocks. The often lack of available outside pelagic zoelplanktors to repopulate the bay is something that only the past few years has been only acknowledged - but they are all still rolled into large crab areas notwithstanding their population dynamics.

on fish farm impacts - your assertion that "no farms to blame" is both unsupported and unproven. The impacts of a new, novel pathogen - like ISAv and/or PRv - onto naive stocks is only just beginning to be looked at - and disease transfer in the ocean between both migratory and non-migratory resident fish could easily expand a disease vector coast-wide - far beyond the small area occupied by any net-pen sites.

I fully agree with your second point but am curios as to why you think the Zoelplanktors would be lacking in these areas some years but not others?
Your first point is simply finger pointing. No credibility to that statement.
If these pathogens like ISAv and PRv are just started to be looked at do you think that these or other viruses have never effected wild stock historicaly?