Life on the canning lines through a fish eye lens…

For those that have ever spent a few days of employment in a salmon cannery, the Tyee has discovered a short film that is a must see for anyone that ever had a cannery number.

The short feature created by a Vancouver Island film maker has been making the rounds on You Tube these days, providing an interesting take on the decline of the wild salmon industry and the controversy over the rise of fish farming in the province.

It’s done in a newsreel format and offers up some humour with its message during the course of the three and half minutes running time.



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The story posted last week provides a bit of a review of the short film, as well as some background on the stare of the aquaculture industry in the province , as well as some links to further information for those looking for a better understanding of the issue.
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Or, just watch the short film, it's well worth the three and a half minutes invested..

The mystery of Malachite green and other fish stories

Sampled farm fish bound for the USA turned up a positive result for a potentially carcinogenic chemical called malachite green, making for a potentially serious problem for the province’s aquaculture industry and one which puzzles the operators who insist that they don’t use the controversial chemicals in their processing of farmed salmon.

With the 80 per cent of BC Farmed Salmon bound for the USA, the possible financial impact is quite serious. And with that reality now a growing concern, the two Canadian firms that have been affected are anxious to come to some answers as to how the chemical appeared in samples taken by the United States Food and Drug Association in December.

Creative Salmon Co. and Marine Harvest Canada are two of the main players on the southern and central B. C. coast where farmed salmon is still an ongoing, if rather controversial industry, so any incident or surprising development always seems to shine a spot light on the industry.

So far the best that the two companies can come up with for an answer is that perhaps a change in testing policies at the FDA might be a cause of the sudden positive results, but until they learn more from the Americans they’re as much in the dark as anyone.

For it's part Marine Harvest Canada issued a press release outlining its understanding of the situation so far, and suggesting that any introduction of Malchite green into their salmon products must have taken place after it had left the Marine Harvest processing site, as well as advising that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has given them a clean bill of health as far as any trace of the questionable chemical is concerned.

It all makes for an interesting bit of drama for an industry that seems to be living on the edge of all sorts of drama owing to its controversial nature.

The Daily News examined the latest developments in a front page story in Monday’s paper.

FISH FARMS STILL PUZZLED BY SOURCE OF CONTAMINATION

By Kris Schumacher
The Daily News
Thursday, January 24, 2008

Pages one and two

Canadian aquaculture companies are still baffled as to how their salmon ended up testing positive for the potentially carcinogenic chemical malachite green, but say new U.S. testing procedures may be the reason.

On Dec. 4, the United States Food and Drug Administration pulled over two different trucks, each containing salmon from different aquaculture companies. In both instances, the sampled fish tested positive for the presence of malachite green, and since then, both Creative Salmon Co. and Marine Harvest Canada have gone on record saying they absolutely do not use the chemical.

"Creative Salmon grow chinook salmon in Tofino that go through a different plant and use different truckers than us, and our fish came from Port McNeill through our plant in Port Hardy. The first place they came together was as the border," said Clair Bachman.

"For both of us, who are very sensitized to this product, having it show up in our products was very stunning. We've both been comparing notes and neither one of us can figure out where the positive results could have come from, and we're both trying to find out more from the FDA."

Bachman said that the FDA is a fairly quiet and closed group, so he is not surprised they have yet to communicate back with the companies as to whether any further action will be taken and whether or not they will get access to a portion of the samples that were taken in December.

He noted the FDA switched their testing methods last year, which may account for the irregularly high levels of malachite green they reported.

"If malachite green gets into fish, it's metabolized by them into another form, not in the initial malachite green form. But if you find it in the malachite green form, it's evidence of a new application of the fungicide," said Bachman. "In Canada, they test for both forms, and allow for a maximum of one part per billion in either form. Last summer, in the U.S., they changed their procedure, where they chemically revert the metabolized form back into malachite green form, and measure that total against the one part per billion standard."

"That new testing procedure could be one of the possible reasons for these new positive tests," said Bachman.

With 80 per cent of all Canada's farmed salmon, some 85,000 tonnes, being shipped to and sold in the U.S., there's no doubt that the quality of the fish being traded needs to be monitored and live up to FDA standards. However, the concern that Canadian aquaculture companies have is that this one incident will overshadow their compliance and dedication to quality farm-grown fish, he said.

"Ever since 2005, we've been testing our own fish quite frequently, at the hatchery and just before they go to harvest, as well as testing our food," he said. "We've amassed quite a bit of data and put it all together for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which amount to over 1,500 tests in the last three years, all negative."

He also said that after providing their accumulative test results, the CFIA was still compelled by the FDA results to treat the case with a full investigation. Samples from both Creative Salmon's site in Tofino and Marine Harvest's Port McNeill farm were taken by the CFIA and sent to Darmouth University for testing, while Marine Harvest took their own samples that were sent to the University of Geulph. All samples came back negative.

"Now we're all kind of at a standstill as to where to go from here," said Bachman. "They found 1.56 parts per billion in our fish which is trace of course, and the cut-off for CFIA is one part per billion. Nearly all of those 1,500 samples we've taken have been non-detectable, or at most once in a while we find levels of 0.3, indicative for me of background industrial activity. But we haven't even seen 0.3 in the last two years."

What the companies are particularly concerned with is that their reputations will suffer as news of the "tainted" fish sits in the public eye, without mention of their nearly unblemished record in the past

"It makes it look like it somehow got into our animals at our farm sites, and even with me going into details about all the negative testing, how do we get this taken off the record?" asked Bachman.

"What's also concerning for us is whether we've now tripped off a process that will cause us to be stopped at the border for a period of time before we go through some further form of testing. We just don't know, and we're waiting to find those things out."

As a report gathers dust, the Opposition calls for action on aquaculture

Governments of all stripes are famous for commissioning studies, reports and royal commissions and then promptly forgetting all about them. Usually this happens when the report that is issued after all that hard work, tends to not reflect the thoughts of the government of the day on the project under consideration.

Six months ago, the Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture released a final report into the thorny issues facing the aquaculture industry, providing some 55 recommendations, the most contentious of which called for a ban on salmon farms on the North Coast.

Since that final draft was handed off, there’s been little in the way of action or acknowledgment that any of the recommendations will be acted upon by the government of the day.

The NDP, tired of what they call the Liberal’s stalling on the issue have issued a call for the government to get moving on the file.

They no doubt would like the Liberals to take the report off that dusty shelf somewhere in the backrooms of the Legislature and introduce some of the key measures of which they have long been advocating for.

The NDP’s concerns over the lack of movement on this file were presented in Thursday’s Daily News, as the front page story of the day.

NDP DEMANDS AQUACULTURE ACTION, QUESTION LONG DELAY
By Kris Schumacher
The Daily News
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Pages one and three

Six months after the Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture released its final report, the New Democrats say they are still waiting for the Government of British Columbia to act on its recommendations.

On Monday, Skeena MLA and NDP Fisheries Critic Robin Austin stated that the B.C. Liberals have stalled long enough on addressing the committee's 55 recommendations, the most pressing of which called for a ban on salmon farming on the North Coast.

"Coastal communities and First Nations have made it clear to the Legislative Committee that change was needed to build a more sustainable and innovative aquaculture industry in B.C.," said Austin.

"Agriculture Minister Pat Bell has had the report long enough. It's time to see some action."

In addition to recommending an end to fish farms in the North, two other key steps outlined in the report were an aggressive and achievable transition to ocean-based closed-containment systems to protect wild stocks, and an expanded shellfish aquaculture sector to help First Nations and coastal communities drive new economic development.

“We have waited long enough to move forward protecting our wild stocks, we need a ban on fish farms on the North Coast immediately,” said North Coast MLA Gary Coons yesterday.

“This government and the federal government must put resources into our wild salmon industry to protect it, not allow the destruction of migratory routes, spawning grounds and vital watersheds.:

The latest NDP criticism coincided with a week of demonstrations by the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, which continued to protest the retail industry’s support of open net-cage salmon farming.

On Tuesday morning at 10 a. m., CAAR deployed a giant floating banner in San Francisco Bay that claimed stores were “Selling Extinction.”

Shauna MacKinnon of the Living Oceans Society, a CAAR member group, said stores “cling to the profits from a very marginal portion of overall sales rather than using buying power to pressure farmed salmon suppliers to clean up their industry.”

CAAR has been campaigning to have grocery chains change their purchasing policies. Living Oceans Society representative Catherine Stewart has been talking with store officials on the issue.

“During the spring out migration we took (store officials) to a fish farm, they went to a research station and saw the work being done on seal lice infesting juvenile salmon, and met with First Nations,” said Stewart.

“So they are fully briefed on what the issues and concerns are, at this point they are just unwilling to change their purchasing policy until the entire retail sector changes theirs. They’re not willing to go out and be a leader unfortunately.”

Stewart said Living Oceans Society is also waiting for government to respond to the Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture report.

After receiving the committee report in May, the government said the response could be expected in roughly two months, but nearly six have now elapsed with no response.

Austin and Coons both believe if key recommendations put forward in the report are followed, they would place British Columbia at the forefront of environmental protection and industry innovation, and give the province a chance to become a global leader in the developing a more sustainable product.

“Minister Bell and B. C. Liberals need to get on board,” said Austin.

“It’s time to act in the interests of wild salmon and make the industry more sustainable. Anything less will be a let down for B. C.’s coastal communities and environment.

Pacific salmon are tougher than their Atlantic cousins!

The Daily News came across a study from the Fraser Institute that shows that Pacific Salmon that seems to show that the Pacific species of the fish is less vulnerable and more resistant to sea lice than those frisky little Atlantic interlopers.

The study will serve to add to the debate over the status of fish farms along the west coast and whether they should be allowed to grow or be shut down. It’s a debate that has had the aqua culture industry and fisherman’s unions squaring off over the impact of the farmed salmon industry on the wild stocks.

The paper published the study on the front page of Tuesday’s edition.

PACIFIC SALMON ‘RESISTANT’ TO SEA LICE – STUDY
The Daily news
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Pages one and two

Pacific salmon may be more resistant to sea lice than their Atlantic counterparts and more research is needed to determine if sea lice found in fish farms are impacting wild salmon, says a new study, released today by The Fraser Institute.

“Large gaps remain in our understanding of the impact of sea lice on Pacific salmon and whether or not fish farms contribute to the problem,” said Dr. Kevin Butterworth, co-author of Sea Lice: The Science Behind the Hype, and a Research Associate at the Centre for Aquaculture and Environmental Research at the University of British Columbia.

“Through our research, we have found that Pacific salmon appear to be less susceptible and more resilient to sea lice than Atlantic salmon. Much of the information available on the impact of sea lice is from Atlantic salmon, not Pacific salmon.”

The international study, co-written with Dr. K. Fiona Cubitt, Dr. Bengt Finstad, Professor Felicity Huntingford, and Dr. R. Scott McKinley, points out that in B.C. waters, 14 different species of sea lice exist, but only two species pose a potential threat to wild and farmed salmon.

Butterworth said the difficulties in distinguishing between sea lice species can contribute significantly to the public perception of the impact of sea lice on both wild and farmed salmon. If these species are not correctly identified, the inferences that fishermen and the general public make about the origin of the sea lice on juvenile Pacific salmon can be incorrect.

The study shows that wild salmon vastly outnumber farmed salmon in BC, with 128 salmon farm tenures in BC, compared to more than 9,600 distinct stocks of wild Pacific salmon. Additionally, over-wintering wild coho and chinook salmon and schools of wild sticklebacks in coastal waters provide ideal, potential hosts upon which the sea lice can over-winter, ready to infect out-migrating wild smolts in the spring.

As a result, there is potentially a larger reservoir of sea lice associated with wild fish than with farmed salmon. This is the opposite of the North Atlantic, where due to the severe depletion of wild fish stocks, it is primarily the salmon farms that contain the largest pool of potential hosts upon which sea lice can over-winter. Researchers also determined that sea lice are native and prevalent in the North Pacific Ocean and are found on 90 per cent of salmon.

“There is no doubt that sea lice transfer from wild salmon to farmed salmon. There are no sea lice on farmed salmon when they are transferred from freshwater hatcheries to the sea farms to be grown through to market size.”

But he points out that many questions remain about the movement of sea lice from farmed salmon in net-pens to wild Pacific salmon, two of which have never been answered by definitively by any study. Namely, whether or not the number of sea lice transferred from farmed salmon to wild Pacific stocks are enough to have an impact; and what is the minimum number of sea lice on an individual salmon required to harm it.

“It remains important that sea lice are monitored on farmed and wild salmon until the relationship is better understood,” said Butterworth.

“But until these questions are answered, we can not conclude that sea lice found in salmon farms are significantly impacting wild Pacific salmon.”