Tag Archives: Salmon

Alex Morton Blog: Today I am on the Stand

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Read this blog from Alexandra Morton as she prepares to take the stand at the Cohen Commission into disappearing sockeye.

“I can see how the Fraser sockeye got where they are today. I want to
know if Salmon Leukemia is infecting the Fraser sockeye. I want to know
why only the runs that pass salmon farms are collapsing and rebounding
in unpredictable patterns. I don’t see DFO accepting this
responsibility. Dr Mike Kent – ex-DFO retracted ten years of his own
work on this disease when he was on the stand. Then Dr Mark Sheppard,
DFO said he does not think it exists and will never report it even when
presented the clinical diagnosis. Dr. Marty BCMAL also does not think
it exists even though he has reported the symptoms in 587 farm salmon.
Dr. Saksida was on the stand yesterday she says it does exist. Dr.
Miller, DFO is trying to confirm all this and DFO has taken away her
funding to work on sockeye!!”

http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2011/09/today-i-am-on-the-stand.html

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Times-Colonist: Infectious Salmon Anemia Here in BC!

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Read this astonishing editorial by DC Reid in the Times-Colonist, suggesting recently release fish farm disease records show deadly Infectious Salmon Anemia has reached the Pacific Coast of Canada.

“The worst possible thing that could happen to Pacific salmon has
happened: Norwegian, Atlantic Ocean ISA virus that has wiped out every
fish farm country in the world has been brought to the Pacific Ocean
where there was no ISA – until it was brought to Chile and now B.C. There
is only one solution: Get fish farms out of the water immediately and
onto land where they can infect nothing other than themselves. The best
data are the province’s. After seeking to keep them secret, Christy
Clark’s government relented. See: www.catchsalmonbc.com.

You will be staggered by how many hundreds of times HEM (interstitial
haemorrhage) and SSC (sinusoidal congestion) were found in fish farm
Atlantic salmon. These are the classic symptoms of ISA that wiped out
500 farms in Chile, resulting in a $2-billion loss. ISA in Norway is so
entrenched it has never been completely wiped out. Scotland looks on the
edge of a disease meltdown. And over the last six months Chilean farms
sequenced for ISA have grown to 23, suggesting another cyclic infectious
disaster soon.”

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Alexandra Morton on Fish Farmers’ Charge of “Unwanted Trespass”

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Read this blog by Alexandra Morton on another recent development at the Cohen Commission – the charge that she and others observing fish farms up close are somehow trespassing in open waters.

“How dare these Norwegian corporations suggest ‘unwanted trespass’!!!! If
we do not stand up to this now, they will erode our freedoms until we
are all serfs of the corporations. The ocean waters of Canada are not
the private property of anyone! The chiefs of the Broughton have given
me their blessing to travel freely through their territories. I rarely
get angry anymore – it takes too much energy to stay in this fight – but
this is so fundamentally wrong it needs strong opposition.” (Sept. 5, 2011)

http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2011/09/unwanted-tresspass.html

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Precautionary Principle Missing in Protecting Wild Salmon

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Alexandra Morton and her small team have had the daunting task of searching through 500,000 documents for the Cohen Commission into disappearing Fraser sockeye – most of which had only been released after the Provincial Government and salmon farmers did everything possible to keep them secret.
 
This government, of all governments, tried to say that releasing the disease audits of the farms would betray privacy and I’m sure they were right – the privacy of the government departments and Norwegian fish farm companies that should have made these documents available long ago. Many of these documents may implicate fish farms in the loss of sockeye and were from the days when the provincial government carried that portfolio.
 
I’m sure this question has occurred to you: What right have the governments to withhold documents from the public they are elected to serve? Where the hell was Premier Photo-Op? Why didn’t she simply order that these be released (that is, before she felt compelled to do an about face at the last minute, under pressure from the media covering the Inquiry)? Same question for Prime Minister Harper who, after all, set up the Cohen Commission.
 
The answer is that the entire question has been and I suspect continues to be one massive government cover-up.
 
The federal government has made it impossible for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to do their job because that job conflicts with another they hold – they are mandated to look after our wild salmon while at the same time pushing aquaculture (including fish farms) for all they’re worth. Fisheries ministers attend Fish Farm conventions trying to induce fish farmers to come to our coast while their scientists are supposed to be protecting wild salmon from the ravaging lice from fish cages, and, even worse, deadly disease!
 
There is a bigger picture here and I hope this is a nettle Commissioner Cohen grasps – the precautionary principle, which simply states, “if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action.”
 
This is a huge matter, for the onus of proving the unsafeness of fish farms does not rest upon Alexandra Morton; rather, the onus of proving its safeness rests upon industry and the government departments in question which have massively failed that basic obligation entrusted to them.
 
This isn’t some niggling matter. Fish farmers, without that onus, are scarcely going to cooperate, nor will governments who are supposed to hold their feet to the fire. It has rested upon those who, by far, can least afford it to find out the truth.
 
I’ve watched this develop from the very time the tireless lady from the Broughton Archipelago began her fight nearly a decade ago. She has been impeded by government the entire way and was even threatened with jail by the DFO. Every step was blocked; every truth she put forward was met with lies.
 
Scientific proof of the danger to wild salmon from fish cages was denied in the name of science that didn’t exist or was so faulty as to call into question the researcher’s integrity. How Alex has put up with this massive cover-up is beyond me and those who have been at her side.
 
In a long life I have never seen courage as I’ve seen in Alexandra Morton.
 
The plain fact of the matter is that DFO and the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Lands have wrongfully abused their mandate by refusing to force the industry to demonstrate the safety of their corrosive intervention into the environment and we must all shudder to think what would have happened if a very brave, knowledgeable and, thank God, stubborn woman had not fallen in love with BC and vowed to protect it from the most powerful interests in the world – rapacious industry protected by corrupt government.

Alexandra Morton takes the stand at the Cohen Commission this Wednesday and Thursday (Sept 7-8) – the hearing will be live streamed on Rabble.ca.

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Vancouver Sun: Province Changes Mind, Agrees Salmon Farm Audits Should be Public

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Read this story from the Vancouver Sun’s Cohen Commission reporter, Gordon Hoekstra, on the Province’s u-turn from opposing the release of salmon farm audit records.

“The environmental groups, including the Pacific Coast Wild Salmon
Society and the Raincoast Research Society, had argued the audit
information was important to make public because it would give more
insight into what types of diseases are occurring at salmon farms. Symptoms
of salmon diseases like marine anemia, sometimes called a leukemia, are
described in the audit data, environmentalist and commission
participant Alexandra Morton said Tuesday during a break in the inquiry.” (Aug 31, 2011)

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Province+allows+release+salmon+audits/5332306/story.html#ixzz1WcNOeHOy

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This graph, presented to the Cohen Commission, demonstrates how the introduction of salmon farms on the Fraser sockeye migratory route lines up with the collapse of thos wild stocks

Morton Sees Answer to Fraser Sockeye Collapse…And She’s Finally Free to Share It

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In a blog posting yesterday, following a series of major developments at the Cohen Commission, biologist Alexandra Morton suggests she now has enough pieces of the puzzle to pin much of the blame for collapsing Fraser sockeye stocks on salmon farms.

Morton and her team have reviewed over 500,000 documents submitted to the Cohen Commission into disappearing Fraser sockeye over the past year and she would have presented her conclusions to the public sooner, were it not for a confidentiality undertaking she and other Inquiry participants were forced to sign. But as of this week, much of the key evidence upon which Morton is basing her allegations has been officially entered into the record at the Commission and is thus now public.

The final piece fell into place when counsel representing the Clark Government backed down from its opposition to allowing a batch of fish farm disease databases from being entered into the record. The Province’s lawyer had made the argument that concealing information from the public was somehow actually in the public interest. But Monday, following a wave of public protest and negative media, Premier Christy Clark backed down and the records became public.

Morton writes in her blog, “In 1992, the salmon farms were placed on the Fraser sockeye migration route, and the Fraser sockeye went into steep decline…The only sockeye runs that declined were the ones that migrate through water used by salmon farms.” (emphasis added)

For instance, the Harrison sockeye run, which migrates out to sea via the Strait of Juan de Fuca – around the Southern tip of Vancouver Island, thus avoiding all the fish farms – is the one Fraser run that has been experiencing above average returns throughout the past two decades, while all other stocks have plummeted.

As Fraser sockeye nosedived throughout the 1990s and 2000s, DFO apparently became so concerned it asked Dr. Kristi Miller – head of Molecular Genetics at the Department’s Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo – to investigate. Miller applied revolutionary genomics research to the mystery and came up with some startling findings  – the subject of great curiosity of late amongst the media and public, heightened by the Harper Government’s refusal to let her speak publicly about her work.

Miller discovered a “genomic signature” (a sort of genetic fingerprint) in sockeye that were dying in the river before they had a chance to spawn. Upon closer study of the fish and their symptoms, she concluded whatever disease was killing them and leaving its signature was strikingly similar to a virus that was ravaging farmed Chinook salmon in the late 80s and early 90s. This disease was being studied by one Dr. Michael Kent, who appeared as an expert scientist at the Cohen Commission last week just prior to Dr. Miller.

Kent labelled this mystery disease “Plasmycytoid Leukemia” at the time, while the fish farm industry called it “marine anemia”. Recently, Kent has been backing away from his work on the subject, which has complicated things for Miller.

But several key things jump out of this newly public data for Morton – the first being the fact these Chinook farms were located on the narrow Fraser sockeye migratory route through a maze of islands near Campbell River.

Another key issue is timing. In 2008 (the out-migration year for the phenomenal 2010 Fraser sockeye returns), the industry pulled all its Chinook farms along this corridor as it learned of Dr. Miller’s progressing research. Of course, we know those stocks rebounded dramatically. But in 2007, while the disastrous runs that would return in 2009 were swimming past these then-active farms, this mystery disease was peaking.

The Inquiry heard this week that research by the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (the Provincial body with jurisdiction over fish farms at the time), was finding the disease in farmed fish. Morton writes:

What Miller did not know came out today and this is why I think salmon farms are killing the Fraser sockeye.

Four times a year the Province of BC goes out to the salmon farms, picks up approximately five dead farm salmon and does autopsies on them. There are approximately 600,000 farm salmon/farm so this is a very small sample.

While the BCMAL vet apparently does not “believe” in marine anemia, he frequently records the symptoms of this disease in the provincial farm salmon disease database he even notes:

“In Chinook salmon, this lesion is often associated with the clinical diagnosis of “Marine anemia”.

According to Dr. Kent’s studies, this Plasmacytoid Leukemia/marine anemia virus affects farmed Chinook much more so than farmed Atlantics. He did, however, find it can infect wild sockeye.

Morton writes, “Most important to us Kent found it could spread to sockeye. And DFO did nothing. The salmon farms remained on the Fraser sockeye migration route.”

But in addition to this disease, Morton believes another virus, Infectious Salmon Anemia, has also been wearing down Fraser sockeye (unlike marine anemia, farmed Atlantic salmon are highly susceptible to ISAv):

While the province of BC, the salmon farming industry, the Minister of Fisheries, MPs etc., have all been saying infectious salmon anemia is not here the province of BC has recorded the symptoms of this disease over 1,100 times in their database which only a very few people have ever seen. Disturbingly, ISAv symptoms are spiking just after marine anemia symptoms in three different years. Marine anemia is an immune suppressor. This graph looks only data from salmon farms on the Fraser sockeye migration route. The dates 2009, 2010, 2011 refer to the dates those sockeye returns went to sea. For example the sockeye that crashed in 2009, went to sea in the spring of 2007.

The adjacent graph depicts a scary double-barrel viral assault on Fraser sockeye that Morton believes – combined with other stresses in the marine environment that can compound the effects of diseases – is the key to solving the mystery of collapsing Fraser sockeye.

It remains to be seen how Morton’s hypothesis and this flood of new, publicly available data impacts the final months of the Cohen Commission – or public opinion on salmon farms. The Inquiry also learned last week of the lengths Dr. Miller’s own DFO colleagues, the aquaculture lobby, and even the Harper Privy Council Office have gone to to keep Miller from pursuing and publicly discussing her groundbreaking work. Miller even told the Commission – to muffled gasps throughout the court room – that the future funding of her work is in serious question, thanks to policy changes from the Harper Budget Office.

But in light of the seriousness of these allegations and starkness of some of this data now coming to light for the first time, it’s clear that if we have any genuine desire to stem the decline of Fraser sockeye, these diseases need to be taken seriously and studied further with all the necessary resources and departmental and political support they merit.

If the Cohen Commission cannot deliver at least that much, then it will have failed its most basic objective.

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Alexandra Morton and her lawyer Greg McDade in 2009

Miller Takes Stand at Cohen: More Clues and Questions in Salmon Virus “Detective Story”

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Dr. Kristi Miller spent all day on the stand at the Cohen Commission yesterday in front of a packed gallery – but it wasn’t until the end of the day, when Alexandra Morton’s lawyer, Greg McDade, got his first crack at her that things got really interesting (McDade continues his questioning of Miller today).

McDade referred to Miller’s quest to reveal the identity of a mystery virus killing wild salmon as a “detective story.” And true to the genre, a clearer picture is emerging, one clue at a time – but just as new facts fall into place, more questions arise.

We had learned earlier in the week of the struggle Dr. Miller faced to get access to farmed Atlantic salmon to test them for this mystery virus. Emails from Dr. Miller to several of her colleagues, made public yesterday, suggested Miller was facing considerable pressure from inside DFO not to expand her work to farmed fish.

Under examination on the stand, we learned from Dr. Miller that the BC Salmon Farmers’ Association wasn’t very good at returning her phone calls – that is until her groundbreaking paper was published in Science. Then the phone started ringing.

Then, one week before she was due to take the stand at the Cohen Commission, the industry apparently changed its mind and volunteered to start supplying Dr. Miller’s program with fish samples from their farms.

Naturally, this won’t happen until after the Inquiry and there’s, of course, no way of knowing whether the fish farmers will follow through with their promise after the media glare of the Inquiry has faded. But it’s interesting to note the timing of their capitulation.

There were also reports in the media yesterday of Miller backing away from some of her research. But it was actually a colleague, Dr. Michael Kent – who was on the stand earlier this week as part of the Commission’s scientific panel – who was backing away from some of his earlier work, upon which Miller had been relying.

Dr. Kent had been studying a mysterious virus wiping our farmed Chinook salmon in the early 1990s. He called it “Plasmacytoid Leukemia”, while the salmon farmers called it “marine anemia.”

But Dr. Kent never finished his work and it was only this week that we learned a few things about the loose ends he left behind. He told the Commission he called it a retrovirus, even though he wasn’t sure at the time that it was a virus. He had also reported tumours behind the eyes of the fish – but later backtracked, saying he hadn’t examined them to know they were actually tumours and now thinks they may have just been inflammation.

Years later, when Dr. Miller was searching for her mystery virus, she
noted considerable symptomatic similarities between this disease defined
by Dr. Kent as “Plasmacytoid Leukemia” that was killing farmed Chinook
and the mystery virus she was pursuing. But these inconsistencies in Dr. Kent’s earlier research appear to have complicated Dr. Miller’s work on her initial hypothesis, which was that this could be the disease killing wild sockeye (these Chinook farms were on the migratory route of Fraser sockeye and Dr. Kent did find that his mystery disease could infect sockeye).

Miller’s team has recently shifted to a new hypothesis for the mystery disease, which is a “parvovirus” (a type of virus that infects many animals but hasn’t yet been found in fish). Her team is pursuing that hypothesis in the next phase of their research.

According to Miller:

  • Some kind of new pathogen, thus dubbed a “novel” virus, is almost certainly helping kill millions of sockeye in the river before they spawn
  • These diseased sockeye all bear a very distinct “genomic signature” (a pattern of genes that are activated to deal with certain stresses)
  • Her team is working on identifying the virus causing this signature and killing the fish

In perhaps the key exchange of the day, lawyer Greg McDade asked Dr. Miller if this yet-to-be-named virus could be the “smoking gun” that best explains the recent collapse of Fraser sockeye. Miller responded, “It could be the smoking gun…But we have to do the work.” Work that will now allegedly include farmed salmon.

Finally, McDade drew Miller’s attention to two different versions of a summary of her findings to DFO staff. One of version contained a paragraph that suggested a possible link between this mystery virus  and salmon farms, based on the disease killing framed fish that Dr. Kent was studying in the early 1990s. The next version looked identical – except that one paragraph was missing. What ensued was the following exchange:

McDade: “You got some blowback from DFO when you put that paragraph in your report, didn’t you?”

Miller: “I would say there was concern but I don’t think there was a large pushback…I think there was some concern around the speculative nature of that comment but I don’t recall any exact conversations about removing it.”

One final note: Earlier in the morning, Miller responded to questions from the Commission’s lawyer about her being “muzzled”. Contrary to what some media reported yesterday, Miller didn’t deny any of what has been reported by Margaret Munro and other media about her “muzzling”. Miller said she had never been prevented by DFO management from publishing any research – which was not what had been alleged by any media I’m aware of. She did however agree that she had been prevented from speaking publicly about her work and even barred from attending a closed-door academic “think tank” at SFU.

Mr. McDade’s questioning of Dr. Miller resumes this morning.

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Alexandra Morton on Miller’s first day of testimony

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Read this blog from Alexandra Morton, weaving together several interesting developments that emerged from the questioning of Dr. Kristi Miller at the Cohen Commission this week.

“We learned today that although strong similarities exist between the
farm salmon disease and the condition of the sockeye, Miller has been
unable to test farm salmon. But, she said, a couple of weeks ago the
salmon farming industry decided to cooperate! No, she has still not
been able to speak to the farm vets and begin the process of setting up
the protocol. That was not going to happen until after the Inquiry.” (Aug. 25, 2011)

http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2011/08/day-3-cohen-inquiry-disease-hearings.html

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Cohen Commission Scientist Accused of Avoiding Salmon Farm Research

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Read this report from CBC.ca on a heated exchange at the Cohen Commission this week between Alexandra Morton’s lawyer, Greg McDade, and Oregon Sate University scientist and Inquiry scientific panel expert Dr. Michael Kent.

“McDade demanded Kent explain why the scientist didn’t include
information in his report to the commission about the transmission of
sea lice from open net-cage salmon farms to wild salmon stocks,
specifically sockeye.” (Aug 24, 2011)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/08/23/bc-scientist-accused-salmon-inquiry.html

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Did Dr. Kristi Miller's gorundbreaking virus research face internal roadblocks at DFO?

Cohen Commission: Was Kristi Miller’s Virus Research Obstructed by DFO Colleagues?

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A new twist in the case Dr. Kristi Miller – the DFO scientist infamously muzzled by the Harper Government from discussing her groundbreaking salmon research publicly – came forth yesterday at the Cohen Commission into collapsing Fraser sockeye.

Ecojustice Lawyer Tim Leadem, Q.C., who represents the Conservation Coalition at the Inquiry, introduced into evidence two separate emails, each from Dr. Miller to senior DFO colleagues Drs. Christine MacWilliams and Stewart Johnson, respectively – both of whom are on the Inquiry’s scientific panel. The emails followed a senior staff meeting all three attended at the office of Dr. Laura Richards, DFO’s Pacific Region Director for Science, earlier this year.

In each note Dr. Miller describes efforts by these colleagues to prevent her from broadening her research into a pathogen – believed to be a parvovirus – to include farmed Atlantic salmon. Miller’s research shows this parvovirus may be associated with pre-spawn mortality in wild sockeye.

Dr. Miller’s research resulted in a paper published in the prestigious journal Science this past January. The publication called it some of the most important new salmon research in a decade – yet Dr. Miller was prevented from speaking to media about her work by the Harper Government’s Privy Council.

Now Miller’s emails suggest her work faced road blocks from within DFO as well.

Having established the genomic signature of this Parvovirus, Miller apparently wanted to start testing farmed Atlantic salmon on the coast, to see if they had the pathogen too and what transmission there may be between farmed and wild fish. According to these emails, Dr. Miller’s colleagues, Drs. MacWilliams and Stewart, had argued to the Regional Director against this new reserach going forward.

Dr. Miller wrote to Dr. MacWilliams following this meeting:

I am following up from our conversation in Laura Richards office regarding your reasoning for not initiating any testing for aquaculture fish (specifically Atlantic salmon) for the Parvovirus we have recently identified in high prevalence in wild sockeye salmon populations. You stated that until such a virus is accredited as an OIE rated disease, causing considerable observable mortality, and the molecular assay is validated and certified as such, one cannot ask industry to voluntarily submit fish for testing, that you would recommend to them that it would not be in their best interest to comply.

Translation: You told our boss that until the OIE (World Organization for Animal Health) is absolutely certain about this disease and officially lists it, there’s no reason to go looking for it in farmed Atlantic salmon, even if we know it’s here in wild fish. You even said you’d advise the salmon farmers not to let us test their fish.

Miller’s email to Dr. Johnson was similar, except in his case she alleged his main rationale for blocking this work was that DFO should test wild pink and chum first.

These two scientists have been on the stand this week as part of the Commission’s expert science panel, discussing the topic of diseases and parasites. When they were questioned about the emails by lawyer Tim Leadem, they claimed Dr. Miller was “misstating” their comments to Dr. Richards.

But when pressed, there was little they specifically took issue with in Dr. Miller’s comments. In Dr. Johnson’s case, he contended he had actually suggested studying all species of wild Pacific salmon before testing farmed fish – as opposed to just pink and chum, as Dr. Miller alleged in her email. Both MacWilliams and Johnson were also sure to tell the Commission they hadn’t responded in writing to the email from Dr. Miller.

Is Kristi Miller’s work is being squeezed from inside DFO? (This on top of the pressure she’s been under from the Harper Government, including this week’s revelation that her lab in Nanaimo is facing funding cuts from the Treasury Board).

We’ll get to hear Dr. Miller’s response to her two colleagues – and hopefully some answers to many other burning questions relating to her work – as the embattled scientist and unexpected media focus of the Cohen Commission takes the stand herself today and tomorrow.

More on that this week at TheCanadian.org.

Read Dr. Kristi Miller’s email to DFO colleague Dr. Christine MacWilliams

Read Dr. Kristi Miller’s email to DFO colleague Dr. Stewart Johnson

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