Westcoaster.ca

Clayoquot Sound Has Sea Lice

2008/3/27
By Alexandra Morton
Opinion
(Editors note: The following piece is a response to Robert Wagers story, No Matter How You Sea Lice It, which ran on the Westcoaster.ca earlier this week.)

Why are so few Chinook returning to some Clayoquot Sound rivers? The pattern is starkly simple. Show me a South Coast river that has collapsed unexpectedly and I will show you a sea lice epidemic.

Somethings going on in Clayoquot Sound, said Wilf Luedke, South Coast area director for DFO. Somethings wrong. We dont know what it is. (Westcoaster.ca 2008/3/21).

In mid-January I received a call from a commercial fisherman reporting a heavy sea lice infestation on the farm fish at Dixon Point. I have learned the only response to these calls is to have a look. So I called several dedicated colleagues, arranged a plankton net, and they towed it near and distant to the Mainstream fish farm at Dixon Point and sent the samples to me for analysis.

There were more larval free-swimming stage sea lice in the sample taken near the farm than I have ever collected in a single plankton tow in the Broughton Archipelago.

The research I, and others, have published suggests sea lice numbers, such as I recorded in the waters near the Dixon Point fish farm, would result in heavy lice infestation of the Megin River salmon as they first entered saltwater. While most of the sea lice research has been done on pink and chum salmon, sockeye, steelhead, Chinook and Coho are also badly infected.

Since 2001, when I first identified the Broughton Archipelago sea lice epidemic, fish farmers have increasingly used drugs to reduce their sea lice. At the Dixon Point farm near Megin River, it would appear the fish farmers are failing to show similar concern. The Dixon Bay farm is owned by Mainstream, which also operates in Broughton where they make an effort to reduce their sea lice. Perhaps Mainstream noticed the plankton net towing around their farm and has moved to treat their fish.

Drugs, however, are not the answer.

Anti-pest drugs, such as the Slice fish farmers feed their fish, are an escalating arms race we humans lose every time as resistance develops and more potent drugs are required. Of immediate concern is the status of Slice. Even though the B.C. fish farming industry now depends on this drug to bring their lice under control, Slice is not approved for use in our marine environment. Schering-Plough is a big company with the resources to take their drugs through the approval process and yet Slice remains unapproved. Slice is a neurotoxin that takes 60 days to purge from farm fish to levels acceptable for human consumption and yet there are no signs posted to warn the public not to fish near farms under treatment.

With Broughton as a warning, I cannot understand why Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and the Provincial government are not checking for sea lice issues around every fish farm and if they are?where are the results? What is happening, for example in Muchalat Inlet? Sea lice are a serious problem around fish farms around the world. What is going on between DFO and the province to allow this debacle to continue?

The problem is painfully evident.

Why would our provincial and federal governments site multiple fish farms on every wild salmon migration route through Clayoquot Sound? All Broughton, East Coast Vancouver Island, South Coast Mainland and northbound Fraser River salmon also migrate through farm water to reach the ocean. Knowing what we know today this type of siting is going to destroy BCs wild salmon (Ford and Myers 2008).

In Broughton, commercial salmon fishing has remained closed since the lice epidemic began in 2001 and sport fishing is very, very poor. Juvenile sockeye were heavily infected with sea lice near Campbell River fish farms in 2005 and when that age-class returned last summer the entire south coast had to be closed to sockeye fishing. Farm fish and their lice were delivered live to the Englewood Packing plant near the Nimpkish River estuary for years and last fall there were zero Nimpkish chums.

Folks this is getting very serious.

We all know sea lice are not the only problem out there for wild salmon, but they do appear capable of pushing stressed stocks into oblivion. Unlike many issues sea lice are easily dealt with. Get fish farms away from our wild salmon rivers. In desperation I have applied to DFO to medevac wild Ahta River salmon fry past the Broughton fish farms in hopes of saving the run ( www.adopt-a-fry.org <http://www.adopt-a-fry.org> ). I cannot watch another generation be eaten by lice. Here in Broughton the fish farmers are treating their fish with Slice, but as water temperature rises every spring and the farmers detox their fish for market the lice numbers build and young wild salmon get heavily infected.

There is no way around this. If we want wild salmon we will have to respect their natural laws. Nature never allows the youngest salmon to mingle with the older salmon. Mature salmon and their lice die every fall. When young salmon enter saltwater in spring they are given a chance to grow a coat of armored scales and toughen up before meeting adult salmon, and their sea lice and other pathogens. This is a very elaborate natural process that would not exist without good reason. Fish farms cause fatal collision between salmon age-classes. Fish farms cannot be near wild salmon rivers anywhere in the world.

It is that simple.

With the Megin River salmon stocks in desperate decline, it is unconscionable to expose them to further risk from sea lice from Dixon Bay farm. This farm will have to be removed.

Friends of Clayoquot Sound, who participated in the plankton tows, is calling for immediate public reporting of sea lice data from Mainstream, Creative Salmon and First Nations that have been collected since 2003 in order to assess the risk of all the fish farms in Clayoquot Sound to wild salmon.