Salmon forum calls for reduction of farm salmon production

The British Columbia Pacific Salmon Forum has done it's best for the forest industry with a lengthy and all encompassing report on the path ahead for the Wild Salmon of the province.

At 95 pages, the Forum has provided a detailed document that explores the various concerns of the salmon industry and relays a welcome suggestion to proponents of the Wild variety, that being a decrease in production of farmed salmon in the province. Environmentally friendly supporters can read the report from this link to the Forum's website.

The Daily News outlined some of the details from the report with a front page, headline story in Friday's paper.

THINK TANK SUGGESTS BEST WAY AHEAD FOR WILD SALMON

Fish-farm-free North Coast still way to go says B.C.'s influential Pacific Salmon Forum
BY Kris Schumacher

The Daily News
Friday, February 6, 2009

Pages one and two

A hefty report from the British Columbia Pacific Salmon Forum is recommending that the provincial government makes significant changes to the way salmon farming is conducted in British Columbia in order to protect wild salmon stocks.

Charged with the task of tineling the best way forward after four years of research, the government-appointed PSF has drafted a final report, which was publicly released yesterday.

While the 95-page document does encompass a great deal and conclude with 16 recommendations, perhaps the most controversial is a drastic decrease in the amount of farmed salmon produced in the Broughton Archipelago.

The PSF report calls for an initial limit on annual production to 18,500 tonnes of farmed fish, equal to the average annual production between 1999 and 2007. It also requires that less than three per cent of juvenile wild pink and chum salmon weighing less than 0.5 grams have more than one sea lice attached to them between March 1 and May 31, to reduce the negative impacts on wild migrating populations.

"The forum invested a significant amount of its research into wild and farmed fish interactions with a focus on sea lice in the Broughton Archipelago, because we saw this area as the heart of the salmon farming/sea lice controversy," said John Fraser, chair of the Pacific Salmon Forum.

"Thanks to this research, we have been able to determine the ecosystem indicator threSnOlQS tor sea lice in this area. This is a reflection of what we believe the natural lice background levels would have been prior to fish farming.

"This is an industry specific ecosystem-based approach and it's something that needs to be put in place immediately this year."

Speaking yesterday to media, Fraser and other PSF members were clear that salmon aquaculture is just one of many human impacts on wild salmon populations that are also addressed in the report.

However, the forum took the issue seriously and reached the conclusion that in addition to the Broughton Archipelago Production limitation, all other farming operations in British Columbia should be kept at current production levels until appropriate performance indicators are set and in place.

Asked whether the forum supported the licencing of salmon farms in the North Coast area in the future, Fraser said aquacultre sites should only be where they are welcome.

"We are not suggesting any fish farms in the North unless the people in the North want them. We reported to the provincial government that the oPposition to fish farms in the Skeena watershed, up through the Bulkley and beyond, was very intense," said Fraser.

"In our document, right from the very start, our position has been that the wild salmon not only must be preserved but that they be enhanced and that they come first."

In response to the Special Committee for Sustainable Aquaculture's 2007 report and primary recommendation for an entire industry switch from open net-cage pens to closed-containment, the PSF said they could not find one example of a commercially viable closed-containment operation.

"The forum concluded that the committee's recommendation is impracticable at this time, [but] we also believed we couldn't just lea.e

I this issue alone," said Fraser. "So we are recommending that the province lead a commercial-scale trial of a closed-containment system for raising farmed salmon.

We're calling for an independent technical committee to develop the specifications for a closed-containment pilot project that would be carried out in cOoperation with industry, and that would also be supported by the federal government and the conservation sector. And because this is such a controversial issue, we believe all aspects of this pilot project must be conducted openly and transparently so the public is kept fully informed."

See Monday's edition of The Daily News for more on the Pacific Salmon Forum's recommendations for supporting wild salmon.

Warmer winters and drier summers don't bode well for the salmon.

A warming trend on the province's rivers and streams is proving to be a troublesome sign for one of B. C.' s best known symbols. And it very well may have a huge impact on not only a valuable resource but on the economic well being of one of the former pillars of B. C.'s economy.

The Globe and Mail's Mark Hume has an article posted on the papers website today that outlines the findings of a pair of reports from the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council.

In the reports, the prospect of warmer temperatures in the province could render the southern waterways uninhabitable to the cold water fish stocks. Recent trends in B. C.'s climate have researchers concerned that the result will be for warmer rivers in the summer, affecting migration timing, and winter floods, which will scour spawning beds.

They urge British Columbia to come to the aid of the salmon, suggesting that without our help the stocks will be in great peril.
.
Considering the fine work we've done so far with the resource, you have to think that the salmon are probably hoping for divine intervention, rather than a little help from their human friends.

Report 1: Helping Pacific Salmon survive the impact of climate change on freshwater habitats

Report 2: Helping Pacific Salmon survive the impact of climate change on freshwater habitats

Salmon need help to survive climate change
MARK HUME
From Friday's Globe and Mail
October 4, 2007 at 8:54 PM EDT

VANCOUVER — Salmon in British Columbia will need human help to adapt to changes being brought on by global warming, but some streams may simply become uninhabitable to the cold-water fish, a government advisory body declared Thursday.

“Big changes are happening, creeping forward inexorably,” Paul LeBlond, chairman of the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, said as he released two new reports.
He called on the provincial and federal governments to do more to help salmon survive climate change.

“Our lakes and rivers are warming up. The freshwater flows are changing in rivers. The rain and snowfall patterns are changing. Salmon have to adapt to this. Every one of their life phases is affected,” Mr. LeBlond said.

“The adults face warmer rivers when they are swimming upstream. What's comfortable for us for swimming is lethal to the salmon. The fry and the juvenile salmon live in warmer waters and face the direct impact of climate change. They face changing conditions of warming oceans, more acidic oceans, different predators and food shortages. The whole nine yards of problems.”

He described salmon as “a valuable gift from the sea” that need protective action now, not after stocks have collapsed.

Mark Angelo, vice-chairman of the council and an environmental instructor at the B.C. Institute of Technology, said climate-change impacts are different across the wide sweep of the province, but the overall trend is for warmer winters and drier summers. He said that will result in warmer rivers in the summer, affecting migration timing, and winter floods, which will scour spawning beds.

“As a result of these changes, some dislocation of salmon stocks may be unavoidable,” he said.
The reports suggest some watersheds at the southern range of salmon habitat in British Columbia may lose the ability to support the fish. Scientific studies several years ago identified the Adams River – one of B.C.'s most important sockeye streams, with runs of millions of salmon in some years – as a watershed that could lose its stocks if temperatures increase just a few degrees.

Mr. Angelo said he hopes the reports generate public discussion on the problem and stir government to launch pro-active strategies. The reports identify two possible kinds of actions – called hard and soft solutions – to help salmon adapt.

The hard solutions involve changing dams and other structures to improve flow rates, modify temperatures and store more water in reservoirs.

The soft solutions call for policy changes to “make sure the rules are favourable to salmon survival.”

The reports say changes are needed to the provincial Water Act to specifically recognize the environmental needs of salmon and to bring under control the use of groundwater, which is currently unregulated.

Mr. Angelo said that in addition to such changes, government needs to look to warmer regions, specifically California, Australia and South Africa, to learn how best to respond when temperatures go up and fish stocks go down.

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.”