Our Endangered Coastal Fishery

[jamiemaw]

Devastating reports in last week's papers revealed the very real peril for our coastal fishery. While it may be hard to believe that one of our birthright fish--the sockeye salmon--could disappear entirely from our coast in just a few years, all the evidence points in that direction. It looks like we won't be serving it to our Olympic guests after all.

Other species are imperiled too, including lingcod, rockfish, red snapper, pollock and abalone. So just when we were rediscovering our coastal fishery, the appearance now is that only a dozen and a half species have a (for now) clean bill of health.

While recently interviewing a downtown chef, I was astonished at his ignorance regarding other serious ecological threats: believe it or not he is still serving Chilean sea bass. The point is, that in addition to endangered local species, there are many other global ones that are rapidly approaching, or have already reached, commercial extinction. And as the Atlantic cod fishery proved, commercial extinction is final.

Three questions:

How cognizant are you of the threat to the local fishery? How serious do you think it is? And, finally, what do you think should be done about it?

And below, a roster of local and long distance seafood species divided by red, yellow and green lights. Proceed with caution.

* = possible mercury contamination/ pregnant women should not eat, others in moderation

DO NOT EAT

Caviar (Sturgeon), Chilean sea bass (Patagonian toothfish), Cod (Atlantic)*, Hake/surimi (fake crab meat), Haddock (Atlantic), Halibut (Atlantic)*

Hoki (Atlantic, New Zealand), King Crab, Monkfish, Orange roughy*

Pollock (Alaska, Atlantic)*, Rockfish, including red snapper

Prawns (imported, tiger), Salmon (farmed or Atlantic),

Sharks and skate*, Shrimp (imported), Sturgeon

Swordfish*, Tuna (Bluefin), Turbot (Arrowtooth flounder)

Eulachon, Grouper, Abalone

ECOLOGICAL CONCERNS/BE CAUTIOUS

Dolphin-fish (mahi-mahi)*, Lingcod, Lobster (Atlantic)*, Oysters*, Octopus (Atlantic), Prawns (US farmed or wild), Rainbow trout (farmed), Salmon (wild, Pacific), Scallops, Shrimp (domestic, trawl-caught), Sole, Snow Crab, Squid (Atlantic), Tuna (Yellowfin or skipjack)*

OK FOR NOW

Anchovies, Clams, Catfish (farmed), Dogfish, Dungeness crab, Halibut (Pacific)

Herring (Pacific), Mackeral, Mussels, Octopus (Paciifc), Pacific black cod (sablefish)

Prawns (trap-caught Pacific), Rock lobster (Australian), Sardines,

Squid (Pacific), Tilapia (farmed), Tuna (albacore), Uni (sea urchin)

Edited April 3, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)

[SBonner]

Jamie,

Great read....and to think back in the 70's the ocean was considered an almost unlimited source of protein for future generations. I hope more restaurants and foodie's take note of your lists. I'm curious about oysters and mussels which are on so many restaurant menus here and are they also in danager?

Stephen Bonner

[jamiemaw]

Jamie,

Great read....and to think back in the 70's the ocean was considered an almost unlimited source of protein for future generations. I hope more restaurants and foodie's take note of your lists. I'm curious about oysters and mussels which are on so many restaurant menus here and are they also in danager?

Stephen Bonner

←

Stephen,

Fortunately mussels and oysters are increasingly farmed and not endangered.

Scallops aren't looking as healthy though.

Jamie

[Leonard]

I thought that I would post the following link for the readers:

http://www.vanaqua.org/conservation/oceanwise.html

OCEAN WISE

Ocean Wise is a new Vancouver Aquarium Conservation in Action program dedicated to making environmentally responsible seafood choices easy for consumers and restaurants alike. By committing to, and making, adjustments to the seafood offered on their menus, participating restaurants will be eligible for recognition within the Ocean Wise program. This will entitle them to promotion under the Ocean Wise brand banner in a variety of media and tourism settings.

The Ocean Wise program will encourage restaurants to provide more sustainable seafood dishes and make it easy for diners to choose restaurants and dishes that have as small an impact on the oceans as possible.

John Nightingale, President of the Vancouver Aquarium and Patrick O'Callaghan, VP of Conservation and Education, present the Ocean Wise Plaque to Harry Kambolis, the owner of C Restaurant at the Launch on January 13th.

Using healthy competition between restaurants, existing promotional networks and the net effect of bulk purchasing decisions, Ocean Wise will reward and promote sustainable seafood sales throughout the seafood supply chain.

In order for restaurants to participate in the Ocean Wise program, they must be dedicated to a process of continuous improvement in the seafood they serve, removing unsustainable seafood items from their menu and replacing them with sustainable alternatives wherever possible. Any restaurant that has at least one seafood item on their menu can participate in the program.

Preliminary research will be conducted to identify select species/stocks to target regionally from the “Avoid” list of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch card. The species chosen will be those which coincide with the species that most regularly appear on Vancouver menus. Working with Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch staff, we will establish an intensive research and assessment phase to commence information gathering on local (BC) fish stocks not already examined by the Seafood Watch program.

The Vancouver Aquarium and C Restaurant were pleased to announce their commitment to the Ocean Wise program. The announcement was made on January 13 at C Restaurant, the Ocean Wise program's Founding Restaurant Partner.

Leonard

C GM

[chef koo]

i've always been opposed to serving food that is nearing the extinction. i've talked to many of the chefs i work with about it and they all give me the same speech. market this and market that. if you don't have sea bass on the menu it makes you look unsophisticated. i hope more chefs would be willing to give up that glamorous image of "expensive ingredients" for the sake of the planet. problem being is that we're so rich. take produce for example. rich north american have little to no respect for nature. "i want my tomato now. i don't care if it's winter". so we find a way to make it happend for our rich clientle. no one appreciated seasonal and local ingredients. and more importantly no one understands becasue we're too concerend with making our customers relaxed and worr free. we don't take the inititiative to educate the masses. we jsut want their money. "i want my out of season fish from the other side of the world. i have the money. make it happend"

Edited April 3, 2005 by chef koo (log)

[Kayaksoup]

Interesting list. Some surprises there for me. Is the problem with oysters their mercury levels or their potential to be endangered? Because I am seriously addicted to oysters.

As for the ignorance of people - someone told that we were trying to move away from Red snapper because it was a potentially endangered fish "Oh my god, I better eat as much as I can while it is still around." ??!! Sometimes, people amaze me.

[*Deborah*]

Thanks for the list Jamie...I had no idea it was so bad.

Now the question will be "where did that fish/those prawns come from?" and hope they answer truthfully.

Thanks, Leonard, too...I will look for more about that Ocean Wise program.

Edited April 3, 2005 by *Deborah* (log)

[jamiemaw]

Interesting list. Some surprises there for me. Is the problem with oysters their mercury levels or their potential to be endangered? Because I am seriously addicted to oysters.

As for the ignorance of people - someone told that we were trying to move away from Red snapper because it was a potentially endangered fish "Oh my god, I better eat as much as I can while it is still around."  ??!! Sometimes, people amaze me.

←

Yeah--great attitude. The same one that has made the Russian caviar trade as dangerous as cocaine.

I think oysters are just fine for the time being, ks.--I think the mercury problem is quite exaggerated--it's a warning for pregnant women. If it's true I ate enough of them last week to turn into a thermometer and still managed to find my way home. But if one were to look at A.J. Liebling's famous list (when decrying Proust's feeble appetite for madelines) . . .

"In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world's loss that he did not have a heartier appetite. On a dozen Gardiner's Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sauteed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island Duck, he might have written a masterpiece." --A.J. Liebling

. . . one would have to shorten it markedly. Gone are the scallops and the swordfish and called into question are the oysters, lobster and soft-shelled crabs. The clams, duck and corn still work and had Liebling foreshortened his lunch, the gout might not have got him.

I hope that we hear from some of our friends up the coast, who can offer their local perspective, and also introduce the livelihood versus endangerment side of the issue.

Edited April 4, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)

[paul mitchell]

Don't get me wrong......I've got an environmental science degree and my hero is a cross between Paul Watson / Ed Abbey and Gary Snyder but..........I think you have to take a second and look at the bigger picture - our newspapers run on one word......."fear" - just as on Easter the big story in the Sun was that there was a festering fungus that is going to destroy all the worlds cocoa beans by next year - of course we have raped the ocean - it's not new news - same as forestry in our province - so if the papers / news were reputable sources of information / query why don't they write this salmon story in november - no they coincide it with the start of the sport fishing season - because 99% of this world lives in fear it makes a story - instead of.......someone having the balls to make this a much broader picture / area of discussion in our daily lives - no mention of joining your local streamkeepers group, no way for the average chump who's going fishing in Barkely Sound this morning to think of how he should change this, just makes him feel even more guilty. What do those chumps at the Vancouver Sun care about our coastal fishery? Where is the "real" work to be done?

[jamiemaw]

Don't get me wrong......I've got an environmental science degree and my hero is a cross between Paul Watson / Ed Abbey and Gary Snyder but..........I think you have to take a second and look at the bigger picture - our newspapers run on one word......."fear" -

What do those chumps at the Vancouver Sun care about our coastal fishery? Where is the "real" work to be done?

←

Exactly, Paul. What is the real work to be done? You live right in the nexus of the livelihood versus sustainability debate. What do you think requires action in order to balance the variuos fisheries?

Great to hear from you, by the way.

Jamie

Edited April 3, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)

[Ducky]

Isn't it one of the great ironies of the livelihood/sustainability debate, that the lice from our farmed salmon are now apparently rapidly depleting our wild salmon stocks?

One of the bits of "real work" could perhaps be to rid the fish farms of lice. (We know how to kill lice and we know where the fish farms are.)

On the larger question, why do you, Jamie, say of the Atlantic Cod fishery that "commercial extinction is final"? I thought the cod was commercially extinct - but still thriving in the Atlantic in smaller numbers. Presumably as these stocks grow this fishery will again become commercially attractive. I thought this was a fairly common cycle.

Because of this cycle, and because of the larger Darwinian point that species evolve (and come and go) I have always been fairly sanguine when accosted with these issues by the Birkenstock Brigade in front of Capers on a Saturday morning.

Of course there's a lot to be said for being at the top of the food chain.

[Daddy-A]

Isn't it one of the great ironies of the livelihood/sustainability debate, that the lice from our farmed salmon are now apparently rapidly depleting our wild salmon stocks?

I'm trying to figure out how this is ironic. More like tragic ....

One of the bits of "real work" could perhaps be to rid the fish farms of lice. (We know how to kill lice and we know where the fish farms are.)

My understanding of the process involved in "getting rid" of sea lice, is that the chemicals used to do this are more harmful to the surrounding echo-system. And yet again we are faced with another man-made problem compounded my another man-made solution.

The solution is really simple ... contained pens. Nobody is saying you can't farm fish. What they are saying is that open water farms, like those in the Broughton Archipeligo have been proven a serious threat to wild stocks, both through sea lice, waste polution, and escaped Atlantics contaminating our Pacific stocks.

Rafe Mair deals with this in far more detail:CLICK HERE

Because of this cycle, and because of the larger Darwinian point that species evolve (and come and go) I have always been fairly sanguine when accosted with these issues by the Birkenstock Brigade in front of Capers on a Saturday morning.

What bothers you about the "Birkenstock Brigade"? I find the eco-sensitive a needed counter-balance to the "Rape & Pillage" approach of those who feel it acceptable to leave the problems resulting from today's actions to future generations.

Of course there's a lot to be said for being at the top of the food chain.

How many links need to be destroyed before it ceases to be a chain?

A.

[Ducky]

Daddy-A,

Well the irony lies in the fact that farmed fish was initially thought to be part of the solution for the problem of dwindling fish stocks but then...oh never mind. Yes its also tragic.

Contained pens are the answer, but these cost money, and when money is involved - so is politics.

I have nothing whatsoever against the Birkenstock Brigade. I was merely being descriptive. I do think we sometimes tend to make too much of commercial extinction. It just means that it is no longer commercially attractive to pursue a species, i.e. it costs too much.

Someone did a fine cartoon in the NYT a few years ago where a couple of cod fish read in the morning paper that they are commercially extinct, and the one says to the other: "Finally honey! What do you say we spend the day in bed?"

Re food chains: when links disappear the chain evolves. That is the very nature of evolution.

Being at the top of the chain, and being rational beings, arguably carries with it a certain responsibility for the other links. Interestingly, no other species gives a f___ about any other. Do the whales care if plankton become extinct? Does Pamela Anderson sleep on her back?

In the initial post on this thread, the issue in the "do not eat" section was not, as I understand this, actual extinction, but commercial extinction. Just think of of it as those Chilean Sea Bass spending a while in bed, able to relax.

[butter]

Three questions:

How cognizant are you of the threat to the local fishery? How serious do you think it is?  And, finally, what do you think should be done about it?

←

I am quasi cognizant BECAUSE OF the media and tv documentaries reporting on the subject. I think it is very serious, but most importantly is the #3 question, "What should be done about it?" It frustrates me because not even the experts seem to be able to find solutions or agree on them. Arne mentioned the simple solution of contained pens and I wonder why isn't it being done if it's that simple? I know this sounds awfully passive, but how many battles can one individual take on? I'll do my best to avoid eating the ones on the list. Surprised to see sea urchin is still okay. Is that right?

[jamiemaw]

On the larger question, why do you, Jamie, say of the Atlantic Cod fishery that "commercial extinction is final"?  I thought the cod was commercially extinct - but still thriving in the Atlantic in smaller numbers. Presumably as these stocks grow this fishery will again become commercially attractive.  I thought this was a fairly common cycle.

Because of this cycle, and because of the larger Darwinian point that species evolve (and come and go) I have always been fairly sanguine when accosted with these issues by the Birkenstock Brigade in front of Capers on a Saturday morning.

Of course there's a lot to be said for being at the top of the food chain.

←

Ducky,

We may think we're at the top of the food chain, at least until Mother Nature pulls the feeding tube.

Unfortunately, the Northern cod, once centred on Newfoundland’s Grand Banks is not thriving in smaller numbers. Not at all, and it is one of the saddest and most egregious examples of man’s ecological greed in the history of the world. Yes, it's right up there with buffalo and dodo hunting. In fact current data suggests that the entire biomass may now be only 1,700 tonnes, an extraordinary figure given that 250,000 tonnes of fish were being extracted each year, and that was after the height of industrial-scale fishing, when it may have climbed as high as 800,000 tonnes.

But of more pressing concern now is why cod stocks are not recovering.

I’ll retrace a bit of history, because it's absolutely germane to our coastal salmon fishery, especially the plight of the once-abundant coho and sockeye. Let me preface by saying that I don’t pretend to be an expert, but rather curious for more information, and to the point of some concern. Equally, please know that this is not a diatribe directed at you by any means, but rather its intention is to inform.

Early explorers to the Grand Banks reported that cod were so prolific that hook and line or nets were not required—they simply dangled baskets over the side. Sounds like the sockeye run in the Fraser, when Mr. Talent's ancestors would walk on the fish to cross over on the way to church.

Yet by 1992, when the moratorium finally took effect, the cod population had collapsed completely and the fish had all but disappeared, beginning with the now legendary monster fish--the ones the size of a grown boy. The hindsight of conventional wisdom now tells us that, had the cod fishery been led to the devices of the relatively inefficient inshore fishery—men in dories and small craft—that by the 70s, even though stocks were somewhat depleted, the fishery could likely have been managed back to recovery.

In the 1970s and 1980s though, and despite the warnings of inshore fishermen, the government managed the cod fishery very softly, perhaps fearful of the economic ravages that a more severe curtailment would bring. The 10 principal cod and flatfish stocks went from 500,000 tonnes in 1988 to less than 100,000 tonnes in 1992 when the government finally reacted -- a decline in catch of 90 percent in five years.

Little did the government know that after the moratorium was enacted in 1992, that eventually some 40,000 people would be thrown out of work and the welfare and other social services tab would run to more than $2 billion and still counting more than 12 years later. The social cost alone has been disgraceful.

Here’s a quote from the cover flap of Michael Harris’s excellent history of the collapse of the cod fishery, Lament for an Ocean:

’The northern cod have been almost wiped out. Once the most plentiful fish on the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland, the cod is now on the brink of extinction, and tens of thousands of people in Atlantic Canada have been left without work by a 1992 moratorium on fishing the stock. Today, the Pacific salmon stocks are in similar trouble – victims of the same blind, stupid greed.

In Lament for an Ocean, the award-winning true-crime writer Michael Harris investigates the real causes of the most wanton destruction of a natural resource in North American history since the buffalo were wiped off the face of the prairies. The story he carefully unfolds is the sorry tale of how, despite the repeated and urgent warnings of ocean scientists, the northern cod was ruthlessly exploited.’

You'll find an interesting historical brief here

And then, the worst thing possible happened: The cod fishery became open season to the fleets of highly efficient international factory-freezer ships (and then worse, Canadian 'draggers') that essentially vacuumed the stock dry while running rough-shod over the ocean floor. Within 15 years or so the cod fishery was depleted by an estimated 90 per cent, a figure consistent with the over-exploitation of other global fisheries. That is, for emphasis: Send the factory ships in and within a maximum of 15 years, 90 per cent of the target fishery will be gone and with it much of the subordinate food web that might support any potential for its recovery.

Equally disheartening are the examples of cod now caught only by fishery research officials. Large adults are missing and many cod are emaciated due to the fact that when they were over-fished, so was there feed, which has also seemingly disappeared. If the food chain necessary to support their recovery does not exist, in other words, it is doubtful that they will ever return in meaningful numbers, and that if they do, it will be centuries, not decades, and perhaps (thank Darwin), not even in their original form. This potential for mutation is born out by examples of mouth abrasions and humped backs now found in contemporary Northern cod, evidencing that they are now forced to bottom-feed, for which they are currently ill-equipped.

I think that the cliché of the Birkenstock-beshod environmentalist is well behind us. At least I hope so: There is no person in this province that will remain unaffected by the disappearance of our fish populations. I think that this issue cuts across all party lines to the point where it may even refresh the true meaning of the word ‘conservative’. After all, there is nothing more primal than our need to eat, especially when we are told there’s no more.

Needless to say, any catastrophic depletion of our coastal fishery, especially the salmon fishery, would have a particularly devastating effect for restaurants and the food service industry.

My hope is that we can learn from lessons gained elsewhere, educate ourselves, and take constructive measures, even if those measures might be painful in the short term. But first, the education, and I'm working at organizing a seminar that speaks to where we all need to go--that sustainable ingredients can be delicious.

Jamie

Edited April 4, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)

[HKDave]

Ultimately, if we don't want to remain in denial about this problem, there are 2 directions we can go.

We can follow these 'do not eat' lists, most likely with some heavy help from government regulation and import restrictions (otherwise it probably won't work). This mean we will see far less seafood available, and that at much higher prices than today. Imagine what will happen to the availability and price of wild trap-caught Pacific prawns if we all stop eating imported farmed prawns, as the list suggests.

Or we can accept that the day of wild seafood as a major food source will soon be over, just as happened with wild game meat over the last couple hundred years. We are simply consuming wild seafood at an unsustainable rate, and this will continue to get worse. Nobody would pretend that we could all stop meat farming and go back to trapping and hunting. This is happening in the oceans now. If we want to eat seafood in the future, we need to develop workable aquafarming practices.

Oversimplified arguements like 'farmed salmon bad, wild salmon good' miss the point. It could soon come down to 'farmed salmon maybe possible, wild salmon not possible'. The old days are likely not coming back for coastal fish stocks any more than they are for the herds of buffalo that used to roam the prairies. Even if C Restaurant, or Vancouver eGulletters, or Canada as a whole follows the 'do not eat' list, there are a lot of countries with fishing fleets that will continue to strip the ocean until nothing is left. There are an increasing number of mouths to feed.

That said, I applaud what C and the few other not-in-denial restauranteurs are doing, and I hope the program takes off. Educating the customer has to start somewhere. Bravo.

[FaustianBargain]

Isn't it one of the great ironies of the livelihood/sustainability debate, that the lice from our farmed salmon are now apparently rapidly depleting our wild salmon stocks?

I'm trying to figure out how this is ironic. More like tragic ....

One of the bits of "real work" could perhaps be to rid the fish farms of lice. (We know how to kill lice and we know where the fish farms are.)

My understanding of the process involved in "getting rid" of sea lice, is that the chemicals used to do this are more harmful to the surrounding echo-system. And yet again we are faced with another man-made problem compounded my another man-made solution.

The solution is really simple ... contained pens. Nobody is saying you can't farm fish. What they are saying is that open water farms, like those in the Broughton Archipeligo have been proven a serious threat to wild stocks, both through sea lice, waste polution, and escaped Atlantics contaminating our Pacific stocks.

This chemical used to 'get ride' of sea lice is called Slice. It has replaced its more expensive and less effective predecessor. The problem is that Slice is not an approved chemical and it somehow 'slipped' through the Emergency Drug Release Program(EDR program). The last I checked there are no mandatory govt monitoring program. Also, Slice is not a pesticide(so, it is not governed by the rules governing pesticides) and it is more of a 'drug' because it is ingested by salmon as pellets. The active ingredient in Slice is toxic to all marine life, but it only constitutes about 2% of Slice. So once again, there is nothing regulating this drug/pesticide/chemical. And nobody knows about its long term effect because it is still being 'tested' and is not approved by the relevant authorities.

Closed contained salmon farming is an answer, but it is way too costly. It also helps to keep in mind that about 80% of B.C's salmon farms are controlled by five multinational companies of which all except one has been sued in other countries. It is interesting how these five multinationals work. These five major companies have vertically integrated their operations. They control everything from eggs, feed, production, processing, distribution and even sales. For example, one of them supposedly owns a major supermarket chain that sells salmon. At one point, all of them reported losses due to disease outbreak. This directly increased the overall use of pesticide/drug/whatever. These companies have bad track record worldwide wrt the environmental damage they inflict. They have been sued in many countries, but Canada lets them off with a rap on the knuckles even though they are directly responsible for the leap in the Slice usage in BC salmon farms. The fact that they are using an unapproved chemical(altho' much more effective than the previously approved pesticide) that was allowed under the EDR program is something that should cause concern. There is no telling when the salmon stocks will become resistant/immune to Slice. There is not enough govt funds allocated to test fish stocks.

Another good reason for contained pens for fish is interbreeding between farmed and wild fish stocks. It happened in Chile where over one million farmed fish escaped from their pens! For some reason, the govt is rather soft on these five multinational.

Interesting closed container fish farming solution.

[nwyles]

Who are the multinationals ? And what are the other brands that they own or control. I am always curious to find what a tangled web these companies have.

[FaustianBargain]

Who are the multinationals  ? And what are the other brands that they own or control. I am always curious to find what a tangled web these companies have.

←

Stolt Sea Farm(Sterling-caviar?, Seasupplier Ltd-software, offshore oil/gas industry, runs ocean carriers-Norwegian)

Pan Fish ASA(edit:aka Omega Salmon Group in Canada - Norway)

Nutreco Holdings NV(Marine Harvest in Canada..also into pet food, fish feed, pork and poultry industry-Dutch)

Heritage Salmon Ltd(Supermarket chain like Loblaws/Red Canadian Supermarket - North America/Canada, also manufactures cookies, cakes, yogurt etc..Weston Fruitcake, Udderly Cool brand of dairy products, Bestfoods baking products and across the pond, Fortnum and Mason, majority stock holder-London, British Sugar, )

Cermaq ASA(known as Mainstream Canada - Norway- owns grain silos, into fertilisers, grain feed etc )

All wonderful companies, I am sure..but as the title of the resource link below explains, it is essential to increase volume of production to maximise profits and achieve economies of scale. And that isnt always beneficial to everyone involved in the process..salmon included.

I will dig up the relevant link/resource.

edited to add: and here it is..

Edited April 3, 2005 by FaustianBargain (log)

[jamiemaw]

With thanks to HKDave, here's a brief introduction to the article on sea lice that partly provoked this thread:

Jeremy Hainsworth

Canadian Press

March 31, 2005

VANCOUVER (CP) - 'The spread of parasitic sea lice from farmed salmon to wild populations may be more extensive than previously believed, says a report published Wednesday in a British scientific journal.

"Our research shows the impact of a single farm is far-reaching," Marty Krkosek, the lead author of the report, said in a news release. Krkosek, a researcher at the University of Alberta's department of biological sciences, said sea lice incidence near a farm studied by the research team in April and May 2003 in the Broughton Archipelago off the coast of British Columbia was 30,000 times higher than natural.

"These lice then spread out around the farm," he said. "Infection of wild juvenile salmon was 73 times higher than ambient levels near the farm and exceeded ambient levels for 30 kilometres of the wild migration route."

The report also says the impact of the lice could move through entire coastal ecosystems, affecting populations as diverse as herring, whales and seabirds.'

The full article is HERE but may be behind a subscriber's screen.

Edited April 3, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)

[jamiemaw]

And here's the lead to the other article that elicited gasps last week:

Future Bleak for B.C. Salmon Run

Canadian Press

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

'One of the Canada's richest fisheries, the Fraser River sockeye salmon run, will likely be shut down for the 2008 season due to a sharp decline in spawning stocks that may be related to climate change.

In a unanimous report released Tuesday, the Commons fisheries committee suggests rising water temperatures are an important factor in "a major ecological disaster."

It also blames overfishing for the low spawning numbers last summer, and suggests the Fisheries Department must increase enforcement and research efforts.

The committee says 1.6 million fish, one-third of the total run, went missing in 2004.

"These tragically low numbers mean that there will probably not be enough sockeye salmon to support commercial, recreation or aboriginal fishing on the Fraser in 2008."

It estimates losses in the commercial fishery alone at $78 million in 2008.

Based on the four-year life cycle of the sockeye, "the forecast for 2012 and 2016 is bleak."'

[Ducky]

Jamie:

Everything you say at post 15 above is compelling. I could not agree more that our regulators have failed miserably in protecting our fish stocks - largely because, as seems to be implicit in your argument, we have not been alive to the problem, and have not put sufficient pressure on our regulators.

Any measures taken (such as this thread) to illuminate the problem are therefore laudable. You will get no argument from me on this.

My only, and perhaps small, point in this discussion is that we should be clear about the differences between bad management of a species (commercial extinction) on the one hand and biological extinction on the other. To support arguments against the former by relying on misleading moral imperatives derived from the latter is a poor way to educate ourselves and our regulators about the real problem.

In other words this is an administrative and political problem - not a moral one.

[jamiemaw]

Jamie:

Everything you say at post 15 above is compelling. I could not agree more that our regulators have failed miserably in protecting our fish stocks - largely because, as seems to be implicit in your argument, we have not been alive to the problem, and have not put sufficient pressure on our regulators.

Any measures taken (such as this thread) to illuminate the problem are therefore laudable. You will get no argument from me on this.

My only, and perhaps small, point in this discussion is that we should be clear about the differences between bad management of a species (commercial extinction) on the one hand and biological extinction on the other.  To support arguments against the former by relying on misleading moral imperatives derived from the latter is a poor way to educate ourselves and our regulators about the real problem.

In other words this is an administrative and political problem - not a moral one.

←

Agreed, although I believe that ethics, and even moral suasion, enter into the process of effecting good decisions: To continue the metaphor of Mother Nature pulling the feeding tube, it's the moribund body politic that sets itself up to die, long after the brain expired.

Enjoying the chat,

Jamie

Edited April 3, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)

[Hugh]

I have been taking an exceptionally interesting course with one of the authors of that report on sea lice at the University of Victoria, and he has provided us with a number of frightening insights on salmon farming in BC.

The anti-biotics and other chemicals used to control the populations of parasites like the sea lice, are as already mentioned, bad for the environment, and bad for stocks of wild salmon. It has been suggested that the salmon be raised in the closed pens, the techonology already exists, although the industry claims the costs are prohibitive. Unfortunately, even if this step were to be taken, it in no way makes salmon farming a sustainable practice. Raising farmed salmon requires huge inputs of fish protein (a weight ratio of about 3 to 1) that has to come from wild stocks somewhere else in the world. In the case of BC's salmon farms it comes from the Chilean anchovy fisheries and other fish well down food chain that support their local ecosystem and their fragile economy. Scientists have estimated that some of the Chilean fisheries will collapse in a similar patter to our Cod fishery within the next 8 years. What will the BC salmon farmers do then? Exploit another third world fishing economy?

Not all aquaculture is bad, however some species require a great deal of protein input to create the output we all desire. There are some species, like carp and tilapia that are incredibly efficient and require very little inputs compared to farmed salmon. Hopefully some chef can write an overpriced cookbook and make Tilapia sexy...

[Sam Salmon]

It's good to see the genuine concern about our aquatic resources as expressed by the thoughtful and well informed posters here-with one exception which I'll deal with in a moment.

First off it's been a long damp day-been Salmon fishin' all day long rain & shine!

A rare Sunday off found me and 2 friends trolling local waters for feeder Spring Salmon.

Did you know it's been one of the best Winter Spring Salmon fisheries in years locally?Probably not unless you know someone like me and definitely not if you read local rags.

Anyway we caught/released a dozen fish-only 2 legal size (60cm) and lost a few others as well as the usual bites but no hookups.The reason I mention this is because the Salmon fishery in BC-let's concentrate on Salmon for the moment-is diverse and complex.There exist problems in some places with some stocks but the seas are not dying and some areas have had and continue to have record returns.

The Fraser Sockeye fishery-close to the hearts of many-seems to be caught between changes caused by global warming (low snow pack/little runoff and high temperatures in natal rivers) and good old fashioned human greed/mismanagement and stupidity.

However estimates for this year-as taken from the DFO/FOC site are encouraging

"Total estimated run size for 2005 Fraser River Sockeye

Probability of 50% it will exceed 12.5 million

Probability of 75% it will exceed 8.6 million

Probability of 90% it will exceed 6.2 million

From historic numbers, the average run size for this cycle is 14.1 million. The bulk of the run is of course the summer run, which usually arrives during the first two weeks of August. Its size is around 5.7 million at 90% probability."

It may be that with conditions as they have been this run will be severely impacted-or not-no need to cry wolf just yet and no need to cry in our beer about 2008 either.

Note that estimate is just Sockeye-

"For Pinks

Average run size is at 11.5 million. This year, there is a 90% chance the run size will exceed 8.4 million."

Imagine the wealth we have!

What a fabulous place this is to live in!

Last year I was @ Milbanke Sound-near Bella Bella-Salmon were so thick even someone like me with 30+ years experience in the fishery could hardly believe what I experienced.Orcas openly feeding 150 feet away while I caught Coho after Coho after Coho almost at will-Spring Salmon to 30 pounds every day.Bottomfish so numerous it took me just under an hour to catch 8 prime specimens-Lingcod/Yelloweye/Vermillion Rockfish huge fat and healthy.

People-you know my sometimes lugubrious posts here-would I be waxing lyrical if I thought there was any reason not to?(note that I never drink alcohol while fishing so am not PWD).

As mentioned newspapers feed on bad news-when truly desperate they play on people's fear of the future-a tactic that is beneath contempt.

Groundfish stocks-again in some places mismanagement by Fisheries Canada has led to some areas-like the Strait of Georgia-with plummeting populations.This is a result of political decisions by bureaucrats-DFO scientists have warned of this for years and were ignored.

However 'Outside' stocks remain healthy and a new commitment to Conservation has led to some Marine Reserves being declared-how they'll be managed remains to be seen-I'm somewhat optimistic.

Salmon Aquaculture-so many salient points-I can only add that I have never met a fish farm employee who would ever eat the product he was paid to raise-and I know dozens of them.

Ocean Wise-ran across a reference to this initiative a while back-glad to see it getting some press-it's great idea

One poster here-one 'HKDave' -attempts to inject a note of fear and proposes that we accept the end of wild seafood and settle for the substandard mush he's touted in the past.Ignore him/his blandishments/misinformation

which he's spouted on the site in the past.