Category Archives: Oceans

Motorized boats stir up problems for BC’s salmon rivers

December 30, 2013Fisheries, Oceans, Species At Risk, Urban & TransportfeaturedWill Dubitsky

by Will Dubitsky and Jean Clark

Two distinct pieces of federal legislation govern activities in and on our rivers, lakes and coastal waters: 1) The Canada Shipping Act, concerning the waterway surface and the protection navigation rights; 2) The Fisheries Act, pertaining to protection of the marine habitat, below the surface of these same waters. But while they apply to the same waters, on and below the surface respectively, the two Acts do not connect. In other words, under the current legislative framework, one cannot impose restrictions on certain types of motorized boats based on their impacts on the marine habitat.

In effect, regardless of the variances in environmental and community challenges from one waterway to another, the legislative challenges are the same, leaving communities across Canada without the means to protect their respective local environments and community interests.

BC’s ecologically sensitive salmon rivers left unprotected

Over the past 3 decades, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of recreational boaters on BC’s waterways. Gone are the days when the only boat one would see was the occasional fisherman in his “tinny” with a small outboard motor.

Across the province, lakes and rivers, big and small, are now accessed by an increasing number of bigger, faster and much more powerful boats. Recreation in BC is big business. While the increased congestion on BC’s large lakes creates numerous safety concerns, it is on the smaller lakes and rivers that the harmful environmental effects are most evident.

Studies dating back to the 1950’s (Lagler et al) identified the harmful effects of boat-caused erosion and sedimentation on aquatic plants and animals. Lagler found that prolonged use of an outboard in 75 centimetre deep water, and a propeller 35 centimetres from the bottom, removed all plants and silt from a swath 1.5 metres wide. In the ensuing six decades, study after study in the US and Canada have indicated that operating a boat in water less than 2 metres deep damages the aquatic ecosystem.

The erosive effects of boat wakes are also well-documented. In studies too numerous to mention, boat wakes have been shown to cause shoreline erosion and disturbance to aquatic mammals and nesting waterfowl while boat noise chases waterfowl from their nests. These disturbances devour the birds’ scarce resources and can lead to a serious long-term decline in waterfowl.

BC is blessed with hundreds of salmon-bearing rivers and streams. Hundreds of thousands of salmon fry live suspended in these shallow waters before making their way to the Pacific Ocean. With the advent of jet boat technology, high-powered aluminium hulled boats can travel at high speeds in these extremely shallow and ecologically sensitive marine environments.

Powerful, modern “wake boats” are kicking up waves and protest

One BC boat manufacturer has a model called “Extreme Shallow” designed for “skinny water” fun and boasts it can operate in just 5 inches of water. The impellers of these jet boats can pump as much as 3000 to 4000 gallons of water a minute.

The result? Salmon fry, and the aquatic insects that are their food supply, are crushed or washed ashore by these powerful forces. Similar impacts are associated with other types of motorized watercraft that generate wakes in these highly environmentally fragile salmon-bearing rivers. Nevertheless, though all this evidence in studies dates back more than 60 years, communities remain powerless to do something about this in the absence of a modern legislative framework.

While Transport Canada’s safe boating guide states that a 10 kph speed should be observed if less than 30 metres from shore, these common-sense guidelines do not apply to our rivers, where the 30 metre rule would effectively restrict boats to a no-wake speed on most inland rivers and streams.

Legislative framework hinders constructive solutions

The Canada Shipping Act, administered by Transport Canada, ensures that there are no impediments to navigation and that marine transportation is conducted in a safe manner. Not only is the Act ill-suited and not intended for protection of the environment, but also Transport Canada requires that all non-regulatory options be explored before a municipality can proceed with a request for a regulatory solution. In this regard, Transport Canada strongly encourages communities to adopt a voluntary code of conduct with near 100% adherence. This latter requirement is a source of irresolvable conflicts across Canada because few communities can achieve the necessary level of voluntary support for the code of conduct to be effective.

Accordingly, municipal governments and community organizations across Canada have been unable or unwilling to tackle this issue, anticipating a complicated and potentially controversial process that can take years while, all too often, pitting neighbour against neighbour in what may seem like a never ending ordeal.

The second piece of legislation, the Fisheries Act, administered by Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) was created in 1867 and remains one of Canada’s oldest existing pieces of legislation. While its mandate is to conserve and protect fisheries resources in all Canadian waterways by protecting the marine habitat, the current government has rendered the Act an empty shell, at the request of the pipeline industry.

Moreover, recent DFO enforcement changes include the reduction of DFO staffing to levels last seen in the 1980’s and the removal of the term “Habitat Management Program” from their organization and offices. DFO offices are being closed across the country and habitat protection staff are being laid off. The confluence of massive new industrial development and severe cuts to staff, can and will surely, harm habitat and fisheries of the future. There is no will presently within DFO to take the action required to protect our waterways from harm caused by recreational boats.

Suffice to say that: 1) neither of the two Acts were designed to address the current pressures that recreational boating poses for communities across the country; 2) the Fisheries Act is now so weakened that it has to be re-written, practically starting from the equivalent of a blank page; and 3) the two Acts must be linked in order to protect the marine habitat via restrictions on certain types of boating activity.

Will Dubitsky is a Quebec-based contributor to The Common Sense Canadian. Jean Clark is the Director of the Lower Shuswap Stewardship Society. Both are co-founders of the newly-formed Coalition for Responsible and Sustainable Navigation, which will work with communities across Canada to drive legislative protections for waterways from motorized boating.

Ocean acidification accelerates in Arctic, threatening food web: study

December 5, 2013Ocean Health, OceansfeaturedCanadian Press

Ocean acidification accelerates in Arctic, threatening food web - study — Ocean acidification affects shell growth for marine life (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme)

Research conducted at an ice camp high in the frozen North – part of the Catlin Arctic Survey – suggests climate change is threatening the Arctic Ocean’s food web by making those waters more acidic.

The scientists, who camped for months at a time on the sea ice near the magnetic North Pole, tested the effect of various acid levels on tiny, shrimp-like creatures called copepods (KOH-peh-pods) that almost all fish and whales depend on for food.

They found that some copepods do better than others in more acidic waters.

But their recently published research concludes that all the species they looked at suffered at some point in water with lower pH.

Carbon dioxide, the main gas responsible for climate change, increases the acidity of the oceans as it dissolves in seawater.

The Arctic Ocean is becoming more acidic at a faster pace than any other on Earth.

The paper was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and was carried out by the University of Exeter and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

Canadian taxpayers bail out Norwegian fish farms for diseased fish

November 19, 2013Oceans, Salmon Farming and AquaculturefeaturedDC Reid

The only thing keeping a number of Norwegian salmon farms afloat in Canada is the hundreds of millions of dollars they net from taxpayers when their fish die of disease.

You might think the multi-billion dollar fish farm industry was a licence to print money. You’d be almost right, but not for the reason you might think. Norwegian aquaculture giants Marine Harvest, Cermaq Mainstream and Grieg Seafood comprise 90% of BC’s farmed salmon industry and Marine Harvest operates in 22 countries. What you don’t know is that taxpayers, meaning you and me, pay big money to them when their fish get diseases and have to be slaughtered.

Food safety regulator’s fishy business

Once the Canadian Food Inspection Agency detects a reportable disease, it issues a slaughter order and the fish are destroyed. Then the CFIA sends a very large cheque to the fish farm. This taxpayer cheque compensates them for disposable items like infected nets, cost of transport and offloading, cost of sequestering diseased carcasses in perpetuity, and disinfecting all other items that came in contact with the fish, including the boat that transported them. In addition to all this, the commonly accepted extra payment for each fish is up to $30. This figure really comprises an average payment because of all the other costs mentioned.

You’d think the fish farms would have insurance for losses, but my conversations with a marine insurer tell me they have difficulty getting insurance because they lose so many ‘crops’ to – wait for it – disease. So why are we, the Canadian taxpayer paying these foreign, multi-billion dollar corporations?

Industry loses up to a half of its fish to disease

Fish farms like to say their fish get diseases from wild salmon because the latter don’t get sick, as if that’s a justification for cash. Not so. A recent PHD dissertation from Norway showed that the problem with farmed fish is that they are stressed – the cages are overcrowded. This results in high output of the stress hormone cortisol and that weakens immune systems in farmed fish, thus they get disease. They actually change benign viruses into infectious killers.

How much product is lost to disease? One third to one half of all aquaculture products in the world are lost to disease every year, some $35 – $49 Billion (1). I started a Freedom of Information request to the CFIA and DFO to find out just how much we taxpayers in Canada pay to these billion dollar foreign corporations. I have been waiting 10 months now with no answer, so, let me give you a reasonable estimate.

Some fish farms only make money when their fish die

Overall, my expectation is that the cross-Canada disease total will come in at several hundred million taxpayer dollars over the past decade for BC, NS, NB and recently NL. Here in BC, Cermaq Mainstream’s Dixon Point and Millar Channel 2012 IHN slaughters would have paid them, in my estimate, about $35 Million of our cash. That’s so much money that it moved this boom/bust business into positive earnings before interest and taxes (i.e., EBIT), when it lost money the year before – and only made money this year because of having disease. They’ve had a decade of problems before.

See fis.com on November 8, 2013:

[quote]Mainstream Canada reported an EBIT pre fair value and non-recurring items of NOK 43 million, an improvement from a loss of NOK 26 million the previous year, even though volumes sold declined from 5,600 tons to 4,400 tons. EBIT per kilo was 9.6 NOK. Good prices in the North American market and the IHN outbreak last year are the main factors behind the improved result.(2)[/quote]

So Mainstream lost money when they didn’t have disease and made money when they did have disease – because you and I paid them. And they shipped far less fish, even though a third farm, Bawden Point, posted a weak positive for IHN – they were quickly harvested and sent to humans to eat. This should not be the case. Do complain, as I did, to Gail Shea, Minister of DFO (Min@dfo-mpo.gc.ca).

Fish Farms reel in another $400 million in Canadian subsidies

On another aquaculture front, you may be even more unhappy to know Shea announced $400 Million in gifts to the aquaculture sector in Canada last week. That’s a lot of dead, diseased fish. I have asked her for $400 million be given to the commercial, sport and processing sectors in BC that provide 600% more in contribution to gross provincial product than fish farms. I’ll let you know.

Fish, profits turn to mush

And fish farms in BC have been losing money. Mainstream lost money in 2012. Marine Harvest has lost money in the last few years, too, largely due to Kudoa, a fungal disease that cost them $12,000,000 in 2012 – and just prior, in 2011, things were so bad they laid off 60 employees – right before Christmas. Nice guys.

Kudoa results in myoliquifaction that makes farmed fish into mush. Would you buy salmon you had to put in a container with a spoon?

Grieg losing money, drowning sea lions

Oh, and then there is Grieg. They got IHN too, last year, in their Cullodon site in Sechelt. Fortunately, we did not have to pay for that as well. Grieg is also the company that had to pay a fine of $100,000 for drowning 65 – 75 sea lions in their Skuna Bay nets in 2010 – they tarted up that site to sell to the unsuspecting in the USA as environmentally-sustainable, organic farmed salmon. Where is PETA when you need them?

Grieg has also been losing money:

[quote]In Canada, the company cut losses, with a negative ebit [sic] before fair value adjustment of the biomass of NOK 2.71/kg, compared to a loss of NOK 8.22/kg in the same quarter of 2012.[/quote]

And the kicker? Cermaq is owned 59.2% by the government and thus the people of Norway. Why do we give another government our money for their killing our fish in our ocean rather than raising their fish on land in closed containers? This does not make sense.

Ask Shea for BC’s $400 million. We can spend it on habitat restoration, something DFO has been sadly remiss about in BC for decades. This year’s total DFO habitat projects for BC is a measly $900,000, only 2.6% of our own money Ottawa sent to diseased fish farms in BC.

1. View Powerpoint – LABORATORY ISSUES – AQUATIC ANIMAL DISEASE, DIAGNOSIS AND GLOBAL TRENDS by Dr. Fred Kibenge

2. Mainstream did a write down of Dixon Bay for $4.5 Mil for biomass insurance purposes. Millar Channel is the other farm slaughtered.

Harper govt extends salmon farm moratorium in BC, critics say DFO ignoring Cohen recommendations

October 31, 2013Oceans, Salmon Farming and AquacultureCanadian Press

VANCOUVER – Federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea says she will not lift the moratorium on aquaculture development in British Columbia’s Discovery Islands for the foreseeable future.

The announcement came Wednesday, almost a year after Justice Bruce Cohen released his report into the collapse of the Fraser River sockeye run in 2009 and amidst criticism by environmentalists that the federal government hasn’t acted on the recommendations to protect the stock.

Ottawa’s “black box”

Shea also announced the government included “three major measures” in its Economic Action Plan 2013 to address some of Cohen’s 75 recommendations — a statement that was challenged quickly by Stan Proboszez, a fisheries biologist who works with B.C.’s Watershed Watch Salmon Society.

“What she basically is saying comes out of this black box in Ottawa, I assume, and we don’t know how she is coming to these conclusions,” said Proboszez who participated in the inquiry. “We spent $26 million on looking for solutions.”

Shea said the federal government has committed $57.5 million over five years to help bolster environmental protection in the aquaculture industry, through improved reporting, science and an enhanced regulatory regime.

But Proboszez said past research subsidies have benefited the production side of salmon farming by looking at issues like net strength, noting:

[quote]It doesn’t really do anything to mitigate the risks around salmon farming, which I think is the problem, looking at the disease risks of salmon farming[/quote]

Cohen: “likelihood of harm”

In fact, Cohen found Fraser River sockeye faced a “likelihood of harm” from disease and pathogens on farms, especially in the Discovery Islands, which are located northeast of Campbell River, B.C., between Vancouver Island and the province’s mainland.

Shea said Economic Action Plan 2013 contained a new program to support conservation work in recreational fisheries, noting the government approved 28 projects worth $1.8 million for Pacific salmon.

“Again, that isn’t tied to any specific recommendation,” said Proboszez. “Justice Cohen doesn’t talk about that sort of solution.”

DFO’s actions not tied to Cohen recommendations

The minister also said the government is dedicating all of the money from the Salmon Conservation Stamp to the Pacific Salmon Foundation. She said that means the foundation will receive $1 million more annually.

“My understanding is that they’ve been discussing that action for years, irrespective of the Cohen inquiry, so again that should have likely happened a long time ago any ways,” Proboszez rebutted.

“Again, there’s no recommendation that has anything to do with that action.”

Proboszez declined comment on Shea’s announcement about the Discovery Island moratorium because he said he had not yet read the minister’s statement.

Cohen’s recommendations focused heavily on salmon farms

The Conservative government launched the Cohen Commission after just 1.4 million salmon returned in what was expected to be a return of 10 million sockeye salmon for the 2009 Fraser River run.

The inquiry sat for 138 days of hearings, received more than three million pages of documents and listened to almost 900 public submissions.

Cohen’s three-volume report made 75 recommendations, 11 of which focused on the salmon farming industry.

Cohen said the department should not issue any new open net-pen licences in the Discovery Islands, cap production and limit the maximum duration of a licence to one year, starting immediately and at least until Sept. 30, 2020.

On Sept. 30, 2020, the minister should also prohibit open net-pen farms in the Discovery Islands, unless he or she is satisfied those farms pose at most a minimal risk to migrating sockeye, he added.

Cohen said the department should continue collecting fish data from the industry, farmed-fish samples for research purposes as a licence condition, and grant non-government scientific researchers timely access to fish-health data.

Cohen Commission on salmon: a year later and nothing from DFO

October 22, 2013Oceans, Salmon Farming and AquacultureDC Reid

Cohen-Salmon-Commission-One-year-later-and-nothing-from-DFO — Alexandra Morton with yellow salmon on Mountain Bar, Fraser River (Morton facebook page – Oct. 5)

You may have thought the Cohen report on collapsing Fraser River sockeye was a stone dropped through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), leaving not a ripple. You’d be right. Google DFO Cohen Commission and what you find is everyone else in the country commenting loudly but diddly from DFO. Go directly to DFO and search, and the result is virtually the same. Page after page of nothing about the Commission – a year of silence so far.

See no evil, hear no evil

At the time, DFO swamped the Commission with 500,000 documents. But after Cohen completed the intended sessions, the first result for the Atlantic Ocean fish farm disease ISA was demonstrated in two wild sockeye fry from Owikeno Lake, Rivers Inlet. Then one contentious document DFO failed to give Cohen was leaked: a study showing ISA in dozens of wild BC salmon, co-authored by Molly Kibenge, then with DFO in Nanaimo.

Cohen reopened the hearings and the full extent of fish farm diseases cascaded out. The science experts Drs. Kristi Miller, Fred Kibenge and Are Nylund were interviewed. Miller’s work noted literally hundreds of thousands of fish with ISA and HSMI in Clayoquot Sound farmed chinook and SLV phenotype ‘viral signature’ back to 1988 in Fraser sockeye. Today there are only 501 wild chinook in Clayoquot and up to 90% of some Fraser sockeye subcomponents die of pre-spawn mortality.

Fish farm recommendations ignored

With this knowledge in hand, the focus of the most important recommendations in the 1,200 page tome – 75 in total, pages 105 – 115, Volume 3 – came to centre on constraining and removing Discovery Island fish farms near Campbell River, and for DFO to relinquish its conflicting role of supporting fish farms and put its full effort into implementing the 2005 Wild Salmon Policy, and the 1986 Habitat Policy. The report says there should be a new western director general charged with bringing back Fraser sockeye (read report here).

Since then, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) started a perfunctory job of looking at a few thousand fish, and saying it could not find ISA – this after Cohen testimony discredited its lab as not being able to find ISA. And DFO? It’s moved on to aquaculture. The performance measure – wait for it – is: “A transparent regulatory regime for aquaculture in British Columbia and an Integrated Management Plan for finfish, and shellfish, by March 2014.”

New virus

And the latest Norwegian related fish disease has just been shown to be present in BC wild salmon – PRV in Virology Journal, 2013. This may be worse than ISA, as it is the virus associated with heart and skeletal muscle inflammation – HSMI, developed circa 1999 in Norway. This is what those yellow pink salmon and the dying pre-spawn Fraser chum and sockeye are now being shown to have. Sadly, a large pre-spawn sockeye die-off occurred for the first time in the Skeena River in the past couple of months.

You can support the cost of testing all these fish, as hundreds of BC citizens, including me, are doing, on Alex Morton`s blog. She has this to say:

[quote]The Commission changed my life, I am tracking three European viruses, publishing on them in top scientific journals and informing the scientific community. Government is increasingly lagging behind and irrelevant to the science on salmon.[/quote]

Swimming upstream

I understand that Miller and Riddell (CEO of the Pacific Salmon Foundation), good smart people, will be co-authoring a report on fish farm/wild diseases.

Unfortunately, for them and us, fish farms, DFO, and CFIA will be parsing the news releases.

Despite Fukushima radiation, scientists say West Coast fish is safe

October 8, 2013Energy and Resources, Fisheries, Nuclear, Ocean Health, OceansDr. David Suzuki

Following Japan’s devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami, fear spread about risks of leaked radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant – for the health of those living in or near Fukushima or involved in cleanup efforts, and for the planet and the potential impacts on our complex marine food web.

Shunichi Tanaka, head of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, told reporters radioactive water has likely been leaking into the Pacific Ocean since the disaster hit. It’s the largest single contribution of radionuclides to the marine environment ever observed, according to one report. With 300 tonnes of contaminated water pouring into the sea every day, Japan’s government finally acknowledged the urgency of the situation in September.

[quote]I’m taking a precautionary approach: fish will stay part of my diet, as long as they’re caught locally and sustainably, and will remain so until new research gives me pause to reconsider.[/quote]

Social media is now abuzz with people swearing off fish from the Pacific Ocean. Given the lack of information around containment efforts, some may find this reasonable. But preliminary research shows fish caught off Canada’s Pacific Coast are safe to eat.

Fish testing shows low radiation levels so far

It will take about three years from the time of the incident for Fukushima’s radiation plume to reach the West Coast, which would be early next year. Recent testing of migratory fish, including tissue samples collected from Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast, assessed radiation levels and potential effects on marine food webs far away from Japan. Trace amounts of radioisotopes from the Fukushima plant were found, although the best available science puts them at levels below those naturally occurring in the environment around us. Natural, or background radiation, is found in many sources, including food items, medical treatments and air travel.

The most comprehensive health assessment, by the World Health Organization, concludes radioactive particles that make their way to North America’s waters will have a limited effect on human health, with concentrations predicted to be below WHO safety levels.

More reports are in the works. The UN agency charged with assessing global levels and consequences of ionizing radiation will present its findings to the UN General Assembly this month. This is where we may find answers about the amount of radioactive material released, how it was dispersed and any repercussions for the environment and food sources.

Fukushima radiation diluted by currents

The ocean is vast and dynamic with many complexities we don’t fully understand. It appears two currents off Japan’s coast — the Kuroshio Current and Kurushio Extension — diluted radioactive material to below WHO safety levels within the first four months of the disaster. Eddies and giant whirlpools, some tens of kilometres wide, continue the dilution and will direct radioactive particles to coastal areas for at least two decades.

Fish from the water near the crippled plant are not faring so well. High levels of cesium-134, a radioactive isotope that decays rapidly, were found in fish samples there. Radiation levels in the sea around Japan have been holding steady and not falling as expected, further demonstrating that radiation leakage is not under control. At least 42 fish species from the immediate area are considered unsafe for consumption, and fisheries there remain closed.

New concerns from continued leaks

New concerns continue to arise. While the initial leak contained cesium isotopes, water flowing into the ocean from the plant now appears to be higher in strontium-90, a radioactive substance that is absorbed differently. While cesium tends to go in and out of the body quickly, strontium heads for the bones.

A huge accumulation of radioactive water at the plant must be dealt with immediately. Determining the full effects of years of exposure to lower levels of radioactive contamination leaking into the ocean will take time and require continued monitoring and assessment. While Health Canada monitors radionuclide levels in food sold in Canada, and one of its studies incorporates samples from Vancouver, we need to remain vigilant and demand timely monitoring results.

Any amount of leaked radiation is harmful to the planet and the health of all species, including humans. A major release of radioactivity, such as that from Fukushima, is a huge concern, with unknowns remaining around long-term health risks such as cancers.

That doesn’t mean it’s unsafe to eat all fish caught on the Pacific West Coast. I’m taking a precautionary approach: fish will stay part of my diet, as long as they’re caught locally and sustainably, and will remain so until new research gives me pause to reconsider.

With contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Communications Specialist Theresa Beer.

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‘Alarming’ sea star die-off on West Coast

October 7, 2013Ocean Health, Oceans, Species At RiskCanadian Press

'Alarming' sea star die-off on West Coast — A dead morning sun star (photo courtesy of Jonathan Martin)

VANCOUVER – Last month, a diver alerted Vancouver Aquarium staff that he had found a number of dead and decaying sunflower sea stars in the cold Pacific waters of a popular dive spot just off the shore of West Vancouver.

Within weeks, the tentacled orange sea stars had all but disappeared in Howe Sound and Vancouver Harbour, disintegrating where they sat on the ocean floor.

And aquarium staff don’t know just how far-reaching the “alarming” epidemic has been, and whether this and other sea star species will recover.

“They’re gone. It’s amazing,” said Donna Gibbs, a research diver and taxonomist on the aquarium’s Howe Sound Research and Conservation group.

“Whatever hit them, it was like wildfire and just wiped them out.”

Population explosion preceded sea star die-off

The sunflower sea star population had inexplicably exploded in recent years. In some areas they were stacked several stars deep, and those conditions may have been ripe for disease, she said.

“We are seeing some babies, so we’re wondering if they will survive,” Gibbs said. “We’re hoping we get the natural abundance back without this overabundance.”

Other species of sea star — commonly called starfish — are also affected.

Jeff Marliave, the aquarium’s vice-president of marine science, said the collapse has been confirmed around the Defence Islands, north of Vancouver, and off the south shore of Bowen Island, where there is no longer any evidence of what was a huge overpopulation of the voracious cousins of the sea urchin.

“Where the population density had been highest in summer of 2012, on the western shore of Hutt Island, all the sunflower sea stars are gone from that area, with rivers of ossicles (a hard body part) filling ledges and crevices,” Marliave wrote in his blog.

Sea Star Wasting Syndrome

The aquarium has dubbed the epidemic Sea Star Wasting Syndrome.

Aquarium staff don’t know the cause because they have had trouble gathering specimens for testing, as starfish that looked healthy in the ocean turned up as goo at the lab.

The sea star die-off has killed thousands of the marine invertebrates, which can weigh up to five kilograms and live from three to five years.

The Howe Sound research team has heard from veterinarians and other marine experts that similar die-offs have taken place in Florida and California.

“We’re just not sure yet if it’s all the same thing,” Gibbs said. “They’re dying so fast.”

In July, researchers at the University of Rhode Island reported that sea stars were dying in a similar way from New Jersey to Maine, and the university was working with colleagues at Brown and Roger Williams universities to figure out the cause.

The collaboration came about after a graduate student collected starfish for a research project and then watched as they “appeared to melt” in her tank.

Like Howe Sound, the Narragansett Bay area where those starfish were collected had seen an explosion in the population in the previous few years.

“Often when you have a population explosion of any species you end up with a disease outbreak,” Rhode Island Prof. Marta Gomez-Chiarri said in a statement at the time.

“When there’s not enough food for them all it causes stress, and the density of the animals leads to increase disease transmission.

Unfortunately, once that disease is in the environment, it can be difficult to get the population back, she said.”

[quote]Diseases don’t just completely disappear after a massive die-off.[/quote]

Vancouver Aquarium staff are asking divers and other members of the public to help monitor the spread of the disease, and report any similar sun star deaths to fishlab@vanaqua.org.

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Japan’s Fukushima radiation crisis: a Good News/Bad News story

September 11, 2013Energy and Resources, Nuclear, Ocean Health, OceansDamien Gillis

Fukushima Crisis: At least the world is finally paying attention — Fukushima’s crippled Reactor 4, which contains 1,500 precariously-perched, radioactive fuel rods

Addiction experts say the first step toward recovery is recognizing you have a problem.

In that sense, perhaps we’re finally making some progress on what may be the greatest single threat humanity has ever faced: the nuclear catastrophe at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

In recent months – partly driven by fresh concerns about radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean and drifting toward North America’s shores – the media and governments beyond Japan have started to pay attention.

Worst-case scenario concerns surrounding Fukushima have moved from the realm of tin foil hats to accepted reality. The trouble is the science is scarce and much of what little information we do have comes via TEPCO – the private company at the root of the disaster – whose data has been openly questioned by Japan’s nuclear regulator.

As a result of this increased scrutiny, I expect we’ll soon see a crisis management overhaul, with international agencies becoming more involved, while TEPCO receives greater oversight or cedes operational control to the Japanese Government (though there’s a running debate as to who has screwed up worse, TEPCO or the government).

Under the glare of the TV lights, we’re now seeing a heightened urgency in developing and implementing the long-term fixes needed to stem a potential nuclear armageddon.

All this is relatively good news.

The bad news: it’s still the greatest single threat humanity has ever faced. And we’re a long, long way from being out of the woods.

Chernobyl x 10

I first wrote about the crux of the problem 2 years ago in a story titled, “Fukushima Reactor 4: The most important story nobody’s talking about”.

Yet, as was the point of my piece, the mainstream media and political establishment simply weren’t talking about it, leaving TEPCO – the inept, fraudulent private company that created this debacle – to manage and botch the emergency response. (These are the geniuses who put the back-up generators needed for cooling radioactive fuel on the ground floor of nuclear reactors in Tsunami Alley).

At the time, US Senator Ron Wyden and a pair of former Japanese diplomats were about the only political figures raising the spectre of Fukushima.

In a nutshell, they warned there are some 1,500 highly radioactive, spent fuel rods being stored atop the badly damaged Reactor 4 in cooling tanks that could easily crack, should another sizeable earthquake hit. The rods would quickly overheat, exploding gazillions of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, eventually coating the globe with more radiation than we could ever fathom.

A former top advisor at the US Department of Energy, Dr. Robert Alvarez, explained the nature of the threat after conducting his own review of the Fukushima situation: “If an earthquake or other event were to cause this [No. 4] pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cesium-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.” (emphasis added)

Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland and Senegal, Mitsuhei Murata, wrote to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:

[quote]It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No. 4 reactor.[/quote]

So all that stands between us and an unimaginable cataclysm is an earthquake. In one of the world’s most seismically active regions.

Polluting the Pacific

Another, more immediate problem would emerge – radioactive water seeping (gushing of late) from the plant into the Pacific Ocean.

Fukushima radioactive water crisis returns — Radioactive water is leaking from these containment tanks at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant (Kyodo/Reuters)

This issue is related with the seismic one in several ways. First, this radioactive water is likely flowing from one or a number of steel tanks holding water used to cool melted nuclear fuel. Another earthquake, should it cause any of the 1,060 metal tanks to burst, would lead to a significant infusion of contamination into the Pacific.

Of more immediate concern is the liquefaction occurring beneath the plant as a result of TEPCO’s crude efforts to bar the radioactive water from entering the ocean. The company has built a subsurface barrier – using chemicals to solidify the ground and block the flow of groundwater – with the unintended consequence of saturating and destabilizing the ground upon which the hobbled Reactor 4 and others teeter.

It is largely this issue that has woken up the world’s media and political leaders in recent months. Suddenly, we’ve seen a torrent of investigative journalism on the subject – from National Geographic to Japan’s national papers, The Washington Post, Guardian, CNN and wire services like Bloomberg and Reuters. The Chinese Government has been weighing in, expressing shock at the inadequate response by its neighbour’s leaders.

Suddenly, everyone is paying attention.

The International Olympic Committee is rather an anomaly in not being phased by the the increasingly alarming situation at Fukushima – having just awarded 2020 Games to Tokyo.

Radioactive fish

Questions about the health of fish caught in the Pacific Ocean have begun to surface – while South Korea recently took the significant step of banning the import of fish from the Fukushima region of Japan.

These are hardly idle concerns. Last year, Stanford University researchers found 15 out of 15 bluefin tuna they caught off the coast of California tested positive for elevated levels of cesium-134 and cesium-137.

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Both Tepco and Japan’s political leaders face intensifying scrutiny for their respective roles in the initial disaster and its aftermath.

Just last week, in response to heightened pressure around this issue, the Japanese Government stepped up, pledging to invest close to half a billion dollars to build a 27 meter-deep frozen wall to hold back contaminated water ,while maintaining (we hope) some structural integrity to the soil below the plant.

It may prove a harebrained scheme, reminiscent of BP’s increasingly comical tactics in an attempt to stem the flow of its Deepwater Horizon well blow-out (remember the golf balls?). But I’ll take the Japanese Government getting off its ass as a generally positive sign.

Heads rolling, things changing

Fukushima has already brought down one government and countless officials in Japan. The prime minister who presided over the initial disaster and recovery efforts, Naoto Kan, recently dodged criminal charges stemming from Fukushima, as did other senior politicians and TEPCO officials. That doesn’t mean they’ll evade the raft of civil suits headed their way.

Shinzo Abe — PM Shizo Abe is talking tough on Fukushima – will it translate into action? (photo: Tokyo Times)

It’s an ongoing debate as to which entity is more to blame for the disaster – TEPCO or the Japanese Government. Of late, the scales of public disapproval are tipping in the direction of the Abe administration. A recent poll by Asahi News found that 72% of Japanese people believe the government’s response to recent concerns of leaking water was “late”.

But, again, thanks to this heightened pressure, things seem to be changing – and quickly.

As of now, Tepco is still in charge of the clean-up and decomissioning operation (if you can call it that in their hands) – but just this week, the Japanese Government announced it is striking a special team to oversee these efforts going forward, a welcome development so long as it follows through in a meaningful way.

Prime Minster Abe is certainly signing a different tune from his predecessor, calling into question TEPCO’S future management of the situation:

[quote]Instead of the ad hoc approaches that have been taken in the past, we put together a basic policy today that will offer a fundamental solution to the problem of contaminated water. The world is closely watching to see whether the decommissioning of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, including the contaminated water problem, can be achieved.[/quote]

In June, the Abe government announced it was speeding up efforts to remove those scary spent fuel rods atop Reactor 4 – perhaps the best news yet on the Fukushima file.

Light at the end of a very long tunnel…if we’re lucky

Part of the problem underlying the slow response to this enormous threat may be that it’s just too awful to contemplate. Makes for bad cocktail conversation. Really, who wants to discuss the nut-and-bolts of a situation that could be 10 times worse than Chernobyl? And even if we do talk about it, what can we do?

On the other hand, perhaps talking about it is the most valuable thing us regular folks can do. It’s through this pressure – much of which has built through independent media, grassroots groups, and concerned citizens – that Japan is starting to look alive in their response.

Yet, despite Prime Minister Abe’s assurances that the crisis will be resolved by the 2020 Olympics, experts warn that a successful decomissioning of the site will likely take decades – if we can get over the intial danger posed by the water leaks and unstable fuel rods.

Complicating decommissioning efforts is the high level of radiation around the plant (which recently spiked) – making it dangerous for workers to spend much time on site, even with state-of-the-art safety gear.

If we’re lucky, this will evolve into a long emergency that takes 40 years or more to resolve.

At Chernbobyl, they burried the problem – literally – in a massive concrete sarcophagus (which is now due for a rebuild, as it turns out). With Fukushima’s proximity to the ocean and strong movement of groundwater beneath, it’s like having a trap-door under the tomb – so Fukushima will be far more complicated.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done – to some extent at least – with enough political will, technical and financial dedication.

Time for other leaders to step up

Given the global consequences if Fukushima continues to spin out of control – and the magnitude of the engineering feat required to prevent that from happening – we need proactive leadership from beyond Japan. What role did Fukushima play in the recent G20 talks compared to, say, Syria?

In Canada, we need to see some serious action from Prime Minister Stephen Harper – in terms of joining the chorus of international leaders pressuring Japan, but also offering support wherever possible.

On the homefront, it’s time to get serious about the possible health impacts for Canadians. Instead, we’re headed in the opposite direction, scaling back ocean pollution monitoring – one piece of a larger war on science being waged by Canada’s Conservative Government.

Even the BC public health officer overseeing concerns about Fukushima – who has warned that fears about fish contaminated by Fukushima are overblown – is now asking the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans to conduct another round of testing.

The public needs to know that our governments are taking this issue seriously – and their “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to date is insufficient.

It’s a start

Even if Canada isn’t taking Fukushima seriously, others are starting to. The Olympics may be a positive motivator too, as they raise the stakes and international pressure on Japan to get the situation under control.

And compared to two years ago, the amount of media attention – from the world’s top outlets – is a welcome change.

In the end, our fate depends at least partly on luck. Can we move quickly enough to address the biggest single challenge in our history, before what would be the most devastating earthquake of all-time? (I say “we” because we all need to start thinking that way, as a global community facing a common threat).

At least, with this heightened sense of awareness, urgency and action, we can say our odds are improving.

‘Salmon Farming Kills’ campaign ruled defamation on appeal

July 22, 2013Oceans, Salmon Farming and AquacultureDamien Gillis

Salmon Farming Kills campaign ruled defamation on appeal — Anti-salmon farming activist Don Staniford (Darryl Dyck/CP photo)

The BC Court of Appeal came down today in favour of Norwegian-owned aquaculture giant Mainstream-Cermaq in the matter of a controversial campaign targeting the industry. British activist Don Staniford, who devised the “Salmon Farming Kills” slogan and series of graphics and web postings – modeled on cigarette packages and containing various warnings about the hazards of open net pen fish farms – had successfully defended a defamation suit brought in the BC Supreme Court last year by a Canadian subsidiary of Norwegian government-owned Cermaq.

The court ruled today on the company’s appeal, reversing the earlier decision. The judgement grants the company a perpetual injunction against the cigarette-themed campaign and related materials, which will undoubtedly be seen by critics of SLAPP suits – designed to discourage public criticism of corporations and governments – as a blow to free speech. Staniford’s campaign linked cigarettes to salmon farming not just through human and environmental health impacts, but in terms of the pattern of denial of science by the aquaculture lobby.

According to the judgement, “The appellant sought general and punitive damages for allegedly defamatory comments made by the respondent in various publications, as well as a permanent injunction restraining him from publishing similar words and images in the future. The trial judge found the defence of fair comment applied to the defamatory comments and dismissed the action.”

The Court of Appeal found error in the trial judge’s interpretation of “fair comment” with regards to Stanford’s activities. “The defamatory publications did not identify by a clear reference the facts upon which the comments were based that were contained in other documents. The trial judge’s order dismissing the appellant’s claim is set aside, and the permanent injunction is granted.”

In addition to a permanent ban on disseminating similar materials in the future, the court awarded Mainstream $25,000 in general damages and $50,000 in punitive damages, noting, “The respondent is punished for his misconduct during the trial by awarding the appellant special costs of the action.”

Staniford had ignored a court order to cease his “Salmon Farming Kills” campaign during the original proceedings.

Currently on vacation in Ireland, Staniford issued the following statement in advance of the judgement:

Win, lose or draw, the Norwegian Government should hang their heads in shame for abusing the Canadian courts to clamp down on free speech. This is a blatant SLAPP suit designed to kill global criticism of Norway’s disease-ridden salmon farming industry. However, far from stemming dissent this lawsuit has served only to amplify the campaign to clean up the Norwegian-owned salmon farming industry. ‘Salmon Farming Kills’ is now common parlance – even at home in Norway where Norwegian newspapers recently reported on the health hazards and scientists warned against the consumption of contaminated farmed salmon.

Staniford, who relocated his base of operations to Europe and the UK after a spell in Canada – where he developed the “Salmon Farming Kills” campaign – has not yet indicated whether he intends to pursue the case to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Morton: Salmon Virus Lab Stripped of World Body Certification

June 27, 2013Fisheries, OceansCommon Sense Canadian

Republished from Alexandra Morton’s blog.

The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), our global first line of defence against farm animal epidemics, just stacked the odds against stopping ISA virus from spreading in British Columbia. They stripped the lab I am using to track ISA virus of its international certification.

Farm animal epidemics are considered one of the greatest threats to human food security and health. The OIE expects member countries to report diseases of global significance. One of these “reportable” diseases is the influenza family Infectious Salmon Anemia virus, ISAv.

The OIE designates “reference” labs for each reportable disease. Being a reference lab is a perilous responsibility, because calling a new region “positive” for a reportable virus will cause economic hardship to large, powerful agri-businesses. They don’t like that. We, the public, depend on these labs to stand up to this pressure and not take the easier course of action.

I became concerned ISA virus could be spreading into the North Pacific from the Atlantic salmon feedlots when I read the BC government’s many reports of the “classic lesions associated with ISA virus infection” in the Atlantic salmon being reared in BC.

A small team of us have now sampled farm salmon from supermarkets across Canada and wild salmon throughout BC and I sent them to the closest ISA virus reference lab, Dr. Kibenge’s lab at the Atlantic Veterinary College. This was the lab that diagnosed ISA virus in Chile, just before the virus went epidemic causing $2 billion in damages. No one in Chile recognized they had ISA until Kibenge diagnosed it, but by then it was too late. The virus had come from Norway in farm salmon eggs and raged through the country killing salmon.

British Columbia is currently rated as an ISA-free region by the OIE and this brings considerable value to the BC farm salmon product. The USA has stated they do not want ISA virus contaminated salmon, so being ISA-free is critical to accessing the enormous US market, to the survival of the Norwegian salmon feedlot industry using BC to grow its fish.

The CFIA testified at the federal Cohen Commission into the collapse of the Fraser sockeye salmon that if ISA virus is “confirmed” BC farm salmon trade will grind to a halt (see film above). These are big agribusinesses with Norway heavily invested.

The Kibenge lab found pieces of RNA sequence, in my samples. When virologists detect sequences of RNA, they run them through databases that look for matches, like police run fingerprints. These RNA sequences matched European ISA virus, known to infect Atlantic salmon.

Canada refuses to accept these matches as “confirmation” of the ISA virus, because they are only pieces of the virus. Canada does not even see these results as “suspect” for ISA virus. Canada requires the entire viral sequence or “virus isolation,” before reporting to the OIE. However, no one has found the whole ISA virus in salmon which are simply carriers of the virus. The fish has to be dying of the virus for “virus isolation” to be successful. To get a fresh dying Atlantic salmon, you have to have access to salmon in the farm.

This rule sets the bar so high, it prevents any kind of an early warning. It means the virus can be seeping out of the feedlots into the wild and no response is required. No lab studying ISA virus has ever faced the kind of samples I sent to the Kibenge lab, because nobody has ever gone looking for ISA BEFORE it goes epidemic. Most ISA virus researchers have access to dying farm salmon, we only have access to farm salmon in supermarkets. I have been highly criticized for testing the farm salmon in markets – but this is the only way I could ground-truth the BC vet’s reporting that farm salmon in BC only look like they ISA virus, but not to worry that the virus is not actually present.

Seven labs other labs testified at the Cohen Commission that they too found ISA virus sequence, but they have all gone silent since they were questioned under oath. Kibenge’s lab is the only independent lab in Canada running samples provided by an independent biologist.

In November, 2012, the CFIA recommended to the OIE that the Kibenge lab lose its “reference lab” status .

In June, 2013, the OIE removed their reference lab status from the Kibenge lab.

A few days later the CFIA announced they could not find ISA virus in 4,175 wild salmon in BC using “virus isolation.” This test has never worked on wild salmon, everyone involved knows this and the CFIA refuses to test the Atlantic farm salmon, for this Atlantic virus.

I wrote to the Director General of the OIE to ask why they abandoned the Kibenge lab, but he won’t say.

In 2010, China closed its border to Canadian pork during the H1N1 influenza outbreak. In a strange government press release, Canada reopened the pork border to China through successful negotiation of “supplementary certification requirements,” from the OIE and immediately following this Canada gave the OIE $2 million. “The OIE has played a central role in developing international consensus that recognizes Canada’s effective measures to deal with BSE, H1N1, and avian influenza.” Download Canada OIE.png (406.5K)

To remove the “reference lab” status 178 OIE delegates had to vote – international consensus – decided the one lab free to work on ISA virus in BC should lose its credibility. Note all the delegates appear to be government bureaucrats.

Each time the Kibenge Lab gets an ISA virus positive result, the CFIA takes the sample away from the lab with the understanding that they were retesting it. There have been many headlines to this affect.

In April 2012, the OIE wrote me saying the CFIA was investigating the Kibenge Lab positive results:

The OIE is aware that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has been investigating reports of ISAV in wild salmon in British Columbia[My samples sent to Kibenge’s lab]. I am informed that testing of samples by the CFIA national reference laboratory for the national aquatic animal health programme, using the methods recommended in the OIE Manual of Diagnostic Tests for Aquatic Animals, were negative.Download OIE Reply_ISA_Ms Morton.pdf (474.2K)

So apparently the OIE thought the CFIA was investigating the BC ISA virus positive results by retesting them using approved methods. The CFIA said they were going to “send the samples for testing…”

On November 5, 2012, the CFIA talks about “disparate and non-repeatable results” from the Kibenge lab and recommends stripping the lab of its status.

On March 11, 2013 I ask the CFIA about their follow-up testing and the CFIA responded they are not doing any follow-up testing on my samples at all!

So to confirm, we are not doing any diagnostic testing and will not be doing any diagnostic testing for ISA whatsoever. No PCR testing, no virus isolation, no further diagnostic testing because such testing will be of no value to the CFIA at this time. (email, Gary Kruger, CFIA, March 22, 2013).

Shortly after writing this, Gary Kruger’s CFIA email started bouncing.

A few days after the OIE removed its authority and protection from the Kibenge lab the CFIA announced they sampled 4,175 wild salmon and could not find ISA virus. They used “virus isolation,” on wild salmon, a test that has never been demonstrated to work, and did not test any of the millions of Atlantic salmon in net pens in BC waters for this Atlantic virus. This means, the virus could be the farms and entering wild salmon and it will never be detected by the CFIA, even though fragments of the virus have been found in wild salmon by seven labs, most of them working for the Canadian Fisheries and Oceans.

An internal CFIA email produced by the Cohen Commission discussed winning the ISA public relations “war”? Download won the war DFO-599910[1] copy.pdf (199.8K)

“One battle is won, now we have to nail the surveillance piece, and we will win the war, also.” (email Nov. 9. 2011, Joseph Beres CFIA).

Well, the CFIA did indeed “nail the surveillance piece.” They are using a test that has never worked on wild salmon. They are winning this “war”, by using a test that has never worked on wild salmon, they won’t retest the positive results by a leading lab and they won’t test the Atlantic salmon for this Atlantic virus. When I ask too many questions, emails start returning undelivered.

In response, to the OIE decertification of Dr. Kibenge’s lab several First Nations have written to the CFIA and the OIE stating they have samples of fish they have rights and title to in Dr. Kibenge’s lab and they expect the ISA virus testing to be carried out uninterrupted. Many First Nation fishermen worked with me to allow me to sample their catches these samples of Fraser River salmon are in Dr. Kibenge’s lab.

I am going to make a prediction here, based on current trends. The work I am doing with Dr. Kibenge is going to be shut down and only the CFIA will be allowed to report on ISA virus in BC. ISA virus will be successfully denied for some period of time and then there will be outbreaks, like Newfoundland and Nova Scotia are facing right now and we the public will pay to clean it up, we will have to reimburse the farmers if they are ordered to cull their diseased fish, we will eat these diseased fish as they will be sold in the markets and we will live the great experiment on impact of a ferocious Atlantic salmon virus on Pacific wild salmon. The companies will be covered and the price of farm salmon will go up in Chile, if all their BC farm salmon die. It’s a win win for them, loose, loose for the rest of us.

Before my work with the Kibenge lab, look at how Fisheries and Ocean Canada handled ISA virus positive test results in 100% of the most endangered Fraser River sockeye stock, the Cultus Lake sockeye. They hid them from the Cohen Commission, with absolutely no consequence to that lab. The Simon Jones/Garth Traxler lab have their names on a draft report on ISA virus detection in BC’s most endangered wild sockeye, a stock of salmon that caused entire fisheries closures at enormous losses to British Columbians, and they never went back to retest the fish, nor provided the document to the Cohen Commission despite specific orders to provide exactly this kind of information. One has to ask if this was done to protect the salmon feedlot industry from trade disruption.