Salmon farmer eyes Pacific coho growth in Chile, not B.C.

[soxy]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...acific-coho-growth-in-chile-not-b-c-1.2446541

One of the world's largest aquaculture companies is turning its farming focus in South America to a Pacific salmon subspecies — yet the company will continue to raise Atlantic salmon on the B.C. coast.

Cermaq, an international fish farming group based in Oslo, raises salmon in Norway, Chile and Canada — under recently under the Mainstream banner. In B.C., the company operates on both the east and west sides of Vancouver Island and has 27 ocean and three freshwater fish farms.

Cermaq's economic growth plan for its South American operation indicates that Pacific coho salmon will become a key component of future growth.

It says coho are robust, less susceptible to disease and sea lice than either trout or Atlantic salmon species, and as a result coho salmon cost less to farm.

Atlantic salmon farming has become controversial in B.C. because of concerns about diseases spreading to wild salmon populations and because of fears over the potential for the Atlantic salmon to escape into Pacific salmon territory.

Cermaq Canada spokesman Grant Warkentin, based in Campbell River, said the company is licensed to grow Atlantic salmon in B.C., customers want the product, and its head office has not directed employees to change direction in the province.

Karen Wristen, with Living Oceans Society, says she believes Atlantic salmon have become resistant to sea lice infection and changing to farming Pacific salmon will fix the problem temporarily, until the sea lice begin to attack the coho


Any thougts on this?

 

[Cuba Libre]

This is incorrect "Atlantic salmon have become resistant to sea lice infection " they have not-- but the sealice HAVE become resistance to attempts to control them.

 

[cuttlefish]

I agree it's incorrect to say Atlantic salmon have become resistant to sea lice infection but when I went to the link I couldn't find the quote in question.

 

[soxy]

I don't see the Karen Wristen comment either?? It was there when I posted the link. Strange.

 

[ClayoquotKid]

Karen Wristen: http://www.livingoceans.org/about/team/karen-wristen

It might not make sense because there is a distinct possibility she has no idea what she is talking about.

 

[Englishman]

Karen Wristen: http://www.livingoceans.org/about/team/karen-wristen

It might not make sense because there is a distinct possibility she has no idea what she is talking about.

Continuing with the discrediting attack ploy's eh CK?
Well you're wrong as always CK. It is much more likely the journalist who actually wrote the article got it wrong and misquoted Karen Wristen completely. That is why the quote has been removed as has been pointed out by the poster above yours.

 

[cuttlefish]

This looks like another version of the same story; http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/large-...antic-salmon-despite-economic-shift-1.1568412. Different quote. Same author anyway.
Keven Drews, The Canadian Press
Published Saturday, November 30, 2013 4:50PM EST
VANCOUVER -- One of the world's largest aquaculture companies is betting future economic growth in Chile on a "robust" species of salmon native to the Pacific but will continue to raise the controversial Atlantic salmon on its British Columbia farms.
Norwegian-based Cermaq has released plans for its economic growth in the South American country, saying coho salmon will become a key component of future growth.
The Chilean industry's Atlantic salmon farms have suffered significant losses due to a strain of infectious salmon anaemia in recent years, and the company said in a news release that coho are robust, less affected by disease and sea lice than their Atlantic cousins or trout, and as a result cost less to farm.

But the company's farms along B.C.'s West Coast will continue to raise Atlantic salmon despite criticism -- from environmentalists and in a report on the collapse of the Fraser River sockeye fishery -- about the negative impact the Atlantic salmon farms have on wild Pacific fish.
"We're licensed to grow Atlantic salmon," said Grant Warkentin, a spokesman for Cermaq Canada. "That's what the customers want and that's what the company will keep doing."
Cermaq operates 27 ocean and three fresh-water sites in B.C. waters.
Statistics published by the Environment Ministry in B.C. say the province exported $291 million of farmed Atlantic salmon in 2012, down from $320 million in 2010 and nearly $314 million in 2011.
In comparison, the ministry said B.C. exported $11.2 million of farmed chinook in 2012, and $1.1 million of farmed coho that year.
Mary Ellen Walling, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association, said the United States is the main market for Atlantic salmon, although the domestic market remains strong and is growing, and companies are selling fish to China, Japan and Korea.
"It's got a milder flavour, so it has broad appeal in the marketplace," she said.
Karen Wristen, executive director of the Living Oceans Society, said she suspects the problem Cermaq is experiencing worldwide is that Atlantic salmon have been treated for sea lice infection for so long that the lice are now resistant to treatment.
"So if they can find fish that are resistant to sea lice then they escape the problem for a period of time, until the sea lice begin to attack the coho as well."
Wristen said the society's focus remains on protecting wild salmon, and that closed-containment systems are the only way to effectively isolate wastes and parasites produced on the farms.
Jay Ritchlin, a spokesman for the David Suzuki Foundation, said sea lice and Atlantic salmon have been a problem in B.C.
He said the concern is that farms amplify sea lice in places where young juvenile wild salmon don't normally find them, the lice are too much for the young salmon and, as a result, impact their populations.
Ritchlin said while the farms have become a little better at managing lice lately, companies are also more dependent on chemicals to contain the problem.
Justice Bruce Cohen found in his report on the collapse of the Fraser River sockeye run in 2009 that the fish faced a "likelihood of harm" from disease and pathogens on farms, especially in the Discovery Islands northeast of Campbell River, between Vancouver Island and the province's mainland.
The BC Salmon Farmers Association, however, has provided regular updates on sea lice numbers for the Okisollo/Hoskyn channels in the Discovery Islands.
The association said in June that of the nine farm sites in the two channels, three were operational the previous month, and one site owned by Marine Harvest Canada at Cyrus Rocks was harvested.
The "treatment threshold" was three lice per fish, and at Cyrus Rocks the count was less than one per fish, the association said.




Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/large-...espite-economic-shift-1.1568412#ixzz2mQE4H3l1

 

[cuttlefish]

Here's a synopsis of recent sea lice research in Canada;http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/enviro/aquaculture/rd2013/rdsealice-pou-eng.html

In one of these projects researchers were looking at sea lice resistance in Atlantic salmon with an eye towards breeding for it. In another they were looking at a vaccine which would imply improved resistance in vaccinated fish.

 

[agentaqua]

I emailed karen Winsten. She claimed she was misquoted twice by the same reporter. Maybe that's why the quote no longer appears. She had it removed.

Having said that - many people (incl. maybe Karen) are not well read on sea lice and other issues. It's complex, and it's tough to remain current.

So CK - as I hope you will see - I do want this to be an open and transparent debate on the available science.

In that vein - coho are more resistant to lice than Atlantics, and it makes sense to me that if you have a run-away lice problem with slice-resistant leps - then you would want to restock with a more lice-resistant farmed fish. Coho have advantages over Atlantics in that regard about lice (but not wrt escapees in the Pacific, and potential for breeding with native stocks and allelle introgression and decreases in genetic fitness which has happened with escaped Atlantics and native wild stocks in NB and elsewhere).

http://www.researchgate.net/publica...htheirus_salmonis/file/79e4150c78d1aa102f.pdf
>"This suggests there may be innate factors in coho salmon mucus that provide protection against ectoparasitic copepods in general"

http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/2/188.full.pdf
>"Coho salmon were shown to produce a cell-based reaction, which killed many attached chalimus larvae, making these fish relatively more resistant to infection than the other two host species examined"

Slice is what protected Atlantics until lice have become resistant to it. Slice is NOT what protects wild coho, nor is it responsible for coho's innate resistance. Coho physiology is.

I believe that's what people see and report as "bumps" on the outside of returning coho. It's where they swan into a cloud of infective copepodities that attached, and coho physiology took over and their skin enveloped the developing chalmus stage, thereby killing it. I believe that's why leps is more successful on salmonids too - their anchor is deciduous and falls off between molts and they get a chance to move about and find another attachment site, leaving the skin reaction behind. Caligus on the other hand - stays in one spot (as far as science can tell). Maybe that's why herring (which have lots of Caligus) scales fall-off so readily too - venturing farther into unproven suggestions, but relying upon experience - it's a mechanism for the fish to rid themselves of lice.

 

[soxy]

Thanks for clearing up that Karen Wristen quote non-quote, aa.