More damning studies continue to define the negative impacts on wild salmon of sea lice originating from fish farms. And once again the issue is edged with urgency as the time approaches for vulnerable smolts to begin their seaward migration from coastal rivers and streams past these unnatural concentrations of sea lice.
A December 2007 study by Martin Krkosek of the University of Alberta's Centre for Mathematical Biology and BC's Alexandra Morton published in the journal Science concluded that pink salmon runs in the Broughton Archipelago could be extinct by 2012 if the 70-80 percent rate of sea lice infections continue to plague the migrating smolts. This prediction was based on a mathematical model calculated from 37 years of comprehensive Department of Fisheries and Oceans' data for 71 central coast rivers. In reply, the salmon farming industry has argued that pink salmon fluxuations are normal and that another unpublished study – not peer-reviewed and riven with errors, Krkosek contends – indicates no grounds for concern.
Then, a January 2008 news release announced that another study in the upcoming April edition of North American Journal of Fisheries Management will confirm that, "Sea lice infestations of wild juvenile fish in Pacific Canada extend beyond juvenile pink and chum salmon in the Broughton Archipelago to juvenile pink, chum and sockeye salmon, as well as larval herring in the Discovery Islands." This study, by Krkosek, Morton and Rich Routledge of the Simon Fraser University's Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, contends that the sea lice infections originating in salmon farms may be expanding to an ecosystem epidemic. Mike Price of the Raincoast Conservation Foundation has urged immediate genetic analysis of the sea lice to determine if the source is from fish farms.
The discovery that sockeye smolts and immature herring are also infected with sea lice is alarming. The peer-reviewed paper notes that, "Sea lice on juvenile herring are unreported for the Pacific and extremely rare in the Atlantic." It adds that, "Together, Fraser sockeye and Strait of Georgia herring are British Columbia's most important commercial fish stocks." Such a pervasive presence of sea lice indicates that something is radically amiss in the West Coast marine ecology. Although salmon farms are not confirmed as the origin of this expanding infection, suspicion is pointing in their direction.
A third study, however, helps to confirm this suspicion, while giving credibility to the December study's predicted extinction of pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago. A paper called A Global Assessment of Salmon Aquaculture Impacts on Wild Salmonids by Jennifer Ford and the late Ransom Myers, both of Dalhousie University, may be the first to examine the overall effects of salmon farms on wild fish in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, England, Scotland, Ireland and in the central and northern coastal areas of British Columbia (Globe & Mail, Feb. 12/08).
Wherever salmon farms exist, wild stocks suffer. "We show," the study finds, "a reduction in survival or abundance of Atlantic salmon, sea trout, and pink, chum and coho salmon in association with increased production of farmed salmon. In many cases, these reductions in survival or abundance are greater than 50 percent." The report describes the overall impact of salmon farming on wild fish as "significant and negative".
"Studies have clearly shown," the report concludes, "that diseases and parasites are passed from farm to wild salmon" and that in Atlantic regions "escaped farm salmon breed with wild populations to the detriment of the wild stocks. ...In this study we used existing data on salmon populations to compare survival of salmon and trout that swim past salmon farms early in their life cycle with survival of nearby populations that are not exposed to salmon farms. ...Many of the salmon populations we investigated are at dramatically reduced abundance, and reducing threats to them is necessary for their survival."
Professor John Reynolds, who holds a chair in salmon conservation at Simon Fraser University and is a scientific advisor to the BC Pacific Salmon Forum, describes the research as "very significant". "It's basically the first time anybody has put the global data together," he said (Ibid.).
It is this global scope that makes these research findings so persuasive and so damning of the salmon farming industry's present practices. The details of rising or falling local populations of Broughton salmon are now explained in the context of a wider historical and geographical perspective. Defenders of the industry may quibble about whether individual wild runs are healthier or weaker from year to year. But the overall trend will inevitably be downward. The incompatibility of present salmon farming practices with wild salmon is confirmed. "It tells me," says Professor Reynolds, "we really are going to have to think about the way we are doing salmon farming" (Ibid.).
Of course, only the salmon farming industry knows whether or not this will be the last of their self-serving claims of harmlessness, of insignificant impact or of insufficient studies. As they deny, procrastinate and obfuscate, our wild salmon populations are collapsing at an undetermined but inevitable rate. Detailed study after study has been identifying the pieces of this trend. Now we have a comprehensive study to confirm the end result. Surely no one – not even the salmon farming industry – wants to cause such an ecological catastrophe.