Comments of geographer Neil Fraser on Atlantic Salmon Breeding
in the wild in BC

Where now are the expert industry spokesmen and hack scientists who assured us for years that this would never happen? The lesson here, as if we needed another, is that one should never believe an expert in the pay of an interested party, no matter what his or her credentials may be.

The other lesson, which again we didn't need, is that fisheries science is still more art than science, and that the best fisheries science is that which shows the most humility, and the most respect for the Precautionary Principle. The Back to the Future Project at UBC Fisheries Centre is a fine example.

Why is humility so important in fisheries science?
As recently as a century ago many experts still believed that salmon didn't care what stream they used to spawn.
This was used to justify netting every returning fish out of many streams. Fifty years ago the experts told us that we could clearcut our rivers because hatcheries would replace natural runs. More recently the conventional wisdom has been that surplus spawners in a stream did more harm than good. All of these beliefs, held with such certainty by the experts paid to promote them at the time, were subsequently shown to be dead wrong.

Open netcage salmon aquaculture violates the precautionary principle in every possible way. Experiments in Europe on a huge scale have shown us the horrible consequences, and those same consequences are now becoming obvious in BC.
My impression, listening to experts (e.g., DFO's Don Noakes) attempting to defend this industry, is that they have convinced themselves that wild salmon are now of such little economic importance that the pernicious effects of netcages simply don't matter. On this basis, they abandon the larger scientific question of whether netcages should be allowed at all, and turn their attention to the minor scientific issues needed to help netcages make a profit. They deserve our sympathy, but not our belief.


2:19/12. ATLANTIC SALMON CONFIRMED AS BREEDING IN NORTHWEST STREAMS: Atlantic salmon escaping from aquaculture pens have now been unquestionably documented as successfully breeding in at least one Pacific Northwest stream (Tsitika R., BC). Twelve juvenile salmon from two different year classes were genetically analyzed to confirm the observation. If Atlantics are now breeding in the Tsitika River., they are likely to be breeding in a number of other coastal watersheds. Breeding populations of exotic Atlantic salmon would compete with native populations and may push them closer to extinction. Confirmation of breeding populations will undoubtedly adds a new, confounding dimension to Pacific salmon conservation and restoration. Reference: Volpe, JP, et al., 2000. "Evidence of natural reproduction of aquaculture-escaped Atlantic salmon in a coastal British Columbia stream." Conservation Biology 14(3): 899-903.



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David Ellis
davidellis@lightspeed.bc.ca

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