Aquaculture; improving????

I can well understand that FF pundits wish to minimize any potential or realized impacts to wild stocks by open net-pen operations by pointing out other potential and realized impacts.

AGAIN - this illustrates to me how unfamiliar pundits are with environmental assessments - since the open net-pen industry has been immune to these assessments since their inception due to political interference/collusion/corruption - unlike other industries.

Here's a somewhat dated (2011) peer-reviewed article from Norway that fairly well describes those risks and potential or realized impacts to wild stocks:
https://www.researchgate.net/public..._populations_with_special_reference_to_Norway

Some notable quotes:
"To our knowledge no study has addressed changes in pathogen prevalence and intensity in wildfish before and after establishment of intensive aquaculture, and in the case of salmonid farming in Norway, this would be too late."

"... increasing efforts are put into hydrodynamic modelling along the Norwegian coast. Hydrodynamic models used to estimate reciprocal relative water contact between local salmon farm sites, have also been integrated with statistical models on disease spread (Viljugrein et al., 2009). The integration of hydrodynamic models and disease spread models may contribute to quantify the risk of disease spread through passive drift of pathogens in the water current, as well as estimating the degree of potential infectious contact between sites. When disease spread models reasonably portray historic disease incidents, such models can be used as objective tools to simulate effects of intervention strategies. "

And DFO and CFIA hide the disease outbreaks in Canada - and refuse to use the available Hydrodynamic models for siting farms...
 
Ah, Norway again.
Here in BC we don't know what Fraser River sockeye stocks, if any, are impacted by salmon farms but we sure know what stocks have been decimated by the BB slide.
A question for you agent-with all the publicity and money from donors (everyone here, right?), why don't we know this? Have any sockeye juveniles been sampled showing high numbers of sea lice? If so, why wasn't DNA analysis done?
 
Well - there has been numerous studies done on the sea lice question in BC, Dave. Some of those studies were summarized on that graphic I posted on the previous page (post #1208, p. 61) of this thread. There were also a series of weblinks that included peer-reviewed articles on juvenile migration in that post. You may find your questions already answered.
 
Dave, why don’t you defend your claim that sea lice are not an issue for out migrating smolts when they go past the Salmon Farms. Show us all the peer reviewed studies that prove your point?
I’d love to see the studies completed to prove your point.
 
Didn’t say they weren’t an issue ... I simply want to know what stocks are being endangered.
I would bet there are no documented samples of sockeye smolts infected to the point of mortalities from sea lice. Prove me wrong and I will admit it on this forum.
 
I too would bet there are none. Is would be pretty hard to collect and document samples of sockeye smolts infected with sea lice to the point of mortality unless they are collected from the stomach of some predator, which there are many, or from the ocean floor - even more unlikely - IMHO.

As for genetic identification, I don’t understand why the onus is put on sea lice samplers and researchers other than DFO or salmon farming industry to do the DNA testing. I don’t see any requirement to do so in the sampling protocols put out by DFO in this paper by Johnson and Jones; https://waves-vagues.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/360202.pdf. I do however see at the bottom of page 19 the following quote, “It is now widely acknowledged that juvenile salmon, regardless of species, are at greater risk due to sea lice infestations shortly after migrating to the ocean.” DFO’s words, not mine.

I also do not see any attempt by salmon farmers to include genetic identification of the wild juvenile salmon they collect and document to achieve certification under the Aquaculture Stewardship Council’s requirements. Surely, the farmers would have the funds to do so.
 
Nothing will ever prove to you PFF guys. This is all a big joke to you. You guys ask for proof and then you don’t read it. Clearly you are here for 1 reason only.
You prove to me that the farms do minimal harm. Show me the evidence, and I will gladly join you as soon as I am convinced that there is nothing to worry about..
I won’t be engaging in this child hood playground you have created.
 
Left just enough posts here to show, yet again, that this is not a debate that can be won. Even in the scientific world, where there are studies to counter other studies, everyone claims they have the right answers and another stalemate is created. The deflections and personal calling out posts, or just general drivel, have been removed. The last line in Sino's post above might be the best advice in this entire thread.
 
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A few tabs back there is mention that the minister of fisheries is meant to make a decision on fish farms by Sept 30 .. her name is Bernadette Jordan, and her contact nbrs appear below
It would be prudent for those against fish farms to flood this ministers voice mail with phone calls ..
upload_2020-9-6_12-32-0.png
 
Conservation groups pressure feds over Discovery Islands salmon farms
https://vancouversun.com/news/local...rms/wcm/a1e32674-0459-45d4-9a29-ccd57345ce6e/

Data/science on juvies and interactions w FFs in Discovery Islands & associated material:
https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0375894
https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0390996
https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0375894
https://goose.hakai.org/shiny/JSP/1788Canada.pdf
https://goose.hakai.org/shiny/JSP/1790Canada.pdf

I think the declaration by FF pundits that: "We are not having an effect - prove it to us" illustrates to me how uninformed and inexperienced they are with environmental assessments; and how untrustworthy and illogical it is to depend on them for honesty and stewardship over the wild salmon stocks.
 
Always appreciate your search for the truth, Whitebuck. Good questions, again.
https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0390996
p. 6: "...However, Healy et al. (2017) wereable to examine this for > 240 acoustically tagged steelhead smoltstracked through the Discovery Island region. They found that survival was nearly two times greater for smolts migrating through the western-most route of the several routes that were available. These studies highlight the importance of spatiotemporal variability in smolt migrations within the early coastal marine life-history."
 
Thanks, SS - this line kinda sums it up for me: "But, Godwin said, "The most obvious option would be to shift to independent third-party monitoring instead of letting the salmon farms count the sea lice themselves.""

DFO has independent 3-rd party validators for other commercial fisheries (which is what FFing is classed as) - but *NOT* open net-pen salmon farming. It is instead "voluntary", and absolutely NO CONSEQUENCES for being out of compliance with licence conditions - again - unlike other commercial "fisheries". Now why is that? What would "improve" FFing - sticking to the focus of this thread??
 
Because net pen fish farming is a polluting, disease spreading, unsustainable industry run by foreign owned multinational corporations supported by corrupt politicians and their "do as you are told lackeys" in DFO. Disgusting and shameful is the word for it!!!
 
Shocking/Not Shocking:
New research just published suggests B.C. salmon farms are under-reporting parasite numbers on their farms, further jeopardizing our wild salmon
Factory fish farms regularly count the number of parasitic lice on their fish, and if these counts are high enough, the farms are required to perform costly delousing treatments.
These policies are in place to prevent the parasites from spreading to vulnerable juvenile wild salmon.
Take note, it wasn’t the federal agency that’s responsible for factory farm oversight (DFO) that let us know about this.
This research was published by independent academics from Simon Fraser University.
 
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