Salmon still at risk despite fall in lice: biologist

There seems to be no end to the controversy around sea lice and fish farms in B.C.

The province released its 2007 Fish Health Report last week, and it concluded that sea lice counts at the province's approximately 130 salmon fish farms are at their lowest level since the inception of the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture's monitoring program which began in 2003.

However, while marine biologist Alexandra Morton acknowledged sea lice populations around the fish farms are "definitely reduced," she said there are still plenty of lice that continue to have adverse impacts on native salmon populations.

Morton has spent eight years studying salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago and has concluded that sea lice infestations caused by the farms are driving nearby populations of wild salmon to extinction. She headed to the B.C. Supreme Court on Monday to argue that the farms should be under the jurisdiction of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and not the responsibility of the province.

Ron Cantelon, vice-chairman of the province's sustainable aquaculture committee, which released its report on fish farms last year, said he doesn't believe Morton's challenge to the jurisdiction of the fish farms will succeed.

"Alexandra Morton will do whatever she can to shut down the fish-farm industry in this province," he said yesterday.

The United Nations' food and agriculture organization has reported that 43 per cent of all the world's fish and seafood currently comes from aquaculture operations, and projections are for it to surpass the catch fisheries in the near future.

B.C. is the world's fourth-largest farmed salmon producer, an industry worth almost $405 million in 2007 and employing about 3,000 workers, but the operations have a history of sea lice infestations that biologists like Morton claim is spreading to nearby native populations, decimating their numbers.

The health report indicates that assessments of 3,380 live fish were examined at 57 of the province's Atlantic salmon farms during 2007, and the audits confirm the industry is meeting health management requirements in B.C.

Morton said the lice numbers may be down, but they are causing havoc on local populations.

"Their numbers are reduced, but when you consider that each fish farm has thousands of fish, there's still lots of lice and their collective effect still adds up to too many lice attaching themselves to juvenile salmon," she said.

Brian Riddell, a DFO biologist at Nanaimo's Pacific Biological Station, said he doubts sea lice will ever be completely eliminated at the province's open-net fish farms.

But he said sea lice numbers among the native populations are not at zero either, with up to four per cent regularly infected with the lice.

"The best we can do is minimize the transmission of the lice to juvenile salmon, and we'll continue to look at ways to minimize the transmissions even further," Riddell said.

"If very low mortality rates are sustained by the native salmon populations due to sea lice, then their numbers will recover."

Riddell acknowledged native salmon numbers are down, but DFO doesn't believe this is solely the result of the fish farms.

"Productivity is down across the ocean and we have no full answers why this is so," he said.

"It could be linked to a changing environment and global warming but we don't know at this stage."

Regardless of the causes of lower native salmon numbers along B.C.'s coast, Morton hopes the Supreme Court will agree with her petition that the fish farms belong solely under federal jurisdiction.

"While the sea floor under the farms is the province's responsibilities, DFO's jurisdiction includes the oceans and the department has structures in place intended to preserve wild fish that the province doesn't have," she said.

"We don't think that the [memorandum of understanding] that was established in 1988 that saw much of the responsibility for fish farms handed over to the province is legal. The drugs, food and other material from these farms enter the ocean currents. However, if the farms were to change to land-based closed containment systems, then they would be totally under provincial jurisdiction."

Cantelon, the MLA for Nanaimo-Parksville, said fish farms are jointly managed by both the province and Ottawa and he expects the courts to dismiss Morton's petition.

"Immigration is a federal matter, but it's jointly managed by the province and the federal government because of its importance in B.C.," he said.

"Fish farms, which contribute almost half a billion dollars to our economy, are also jointly managed by both levels of government because of their importance to the economy, not just because they are located over sea floors."

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Salmon still at risk despite fall in lice: biologist