IPN - Fish Farms Cause Disease, Oct. 31, 2013

Fish farms have long been shown to be vectors for disease, but a recent PHD shows how stress causes reduced immune response and allows viruses to mutate, killing most of the farm. 65 Billion viruses per hour spill into surrounding waters and kill wild stocks.

Note: IPN means infectious pancreatic necrosis, a fatal disease.

See:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130102083557.htm.

Gadan discovered that stress lead to increased production of the stress hormone cortisol. This affects the immune system of the fish and weaker immunity makes them more susceptible to infections. The fact that stress can trigger an outbreak of IPN is corroborated by the experiences of many in the field.

"For the first time, she was able to prove that when infected salmon fry were exposed to stress, otherwise benign variants of the IPN virus changed into pathogenic viruses. In other words, stress lowers resistance, increases the "production" of IPN virus in the fish's internal organs and can lead to benign viruses changing into pernicious variants of the virus."

Farmed fish are always under stress in net-pens because of crowding. That is why one third to one half of all aquaculture products are lost to disease. Fish farms like to say that wild fish give them diseases as they are not affected by those diseases. This is wrong because wild fish are not under the stress that penned Atlantics are. This is the issue of saying that nature has a problem, when the only problem apparent is the stress caused by farmed fish in cages. They need to be on-land in recirculating closed systems.

Fish farms shed 65 Billion viral particles per hour into the surrounding water. In a conservatively estimated 2 knot tide, this means those particles being spread to 12 nautical miles in a six hour tide. Then, when the tide turns the other way, the continued leaching of viruses from the fish farms is carried another 12 nautical miles in the other direction. This means that in half a day viruses can be found in 24 nautical miles of ocean, infecting wild fish as they are carried along.

It is easy to understand that in a closed Sound - most fish farms are in bodies of water with one closed end - say Clayoquot Sound, why there are only 501 wild chinook left in six streams, and why fish farms are the likely final cause of extirpation of the Kennedy Lake sockeye run, once the most important commercial harvest on Vancouver Island, BC.

The fish farm explanation is a communications strategy that may convince those with little experience in fish farm issues. The much more believable conclusion, however, is that wild fish do not spread, say IHN, because there are no wild salmon left anymore in Clayoquot Sound. The fish farms have killed them all.

Do recall that Miller's science showed 25% of farmed chinook in Clayoquot Sound had ISA and HSMI in her Cohen Commission testimony. DFO is doing nothing about this problem other than passively watching wild BC salmon die.