Furunculosis - Grieg Seafood, Skuna Bay in Big Trouble - Taxpayers Unhappy

Fish farms like to say farmed fish catch diseases from wild fish. So: bad Mother Nature, and good and poor farmed fish. Yes? No, I don't think so.

Were it more expensive than the free sewage treatment they get in pristine oceans, fish farms would have set up on land long ago and never gone back. And, any company that blames Mother Nature for their problems, needs to get a grip: nature is the way things are supposed to be. If you have a problem with Mother Nature, you are doing something wrong.

In Norway, the in-ocean license cost is $9- to $12-million each and they are snapping them up. Our fish farm licenses are a measly $5,000 - sad, but true. So we are subsidizing fish farms, like Skuna Bay, Grieg Seafood, Cermaq and Marine Harvest, $1.17- to $1.56-Billion to set up in BC and fill our pristine water with sewage.

The other thing fish farms like to say, and this is another example of their global communication's spin, is: fish farm fish get diseases, but wild fish do not. So no reason to take them out of the water, eh?

Sorry, but that is also bull, too. In the first case, the science shows that fish release cortisol into their blood when they are stressed, and farmed fish are stressed because of being close to other fish and the unnatural environment they are in. Cortisol leads to inflammation, and thus to more easily catching diseases. Look back in the Index for 2015, on this site and it has the link to the science: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/01/key-document-index-2015.html.

So, Grieg Seafood - that raises Skuna Bay, Nootka Sound farmed fish in a 'craft' way, as in 'organic', sort of - that has just latched on to Buckhead Beef as a distributor in the USA - has been dumping its Nootka Sound dead fish because that are dying of furunculosis.

This is plenty worrying because this is a bacteria, not a virus, and while we don't care that fish farm fish die of disease, we certainly don't want them infecting wild salmon. Fish farms need to be on land.

This is what happened the last time around with this disease:

"This is a highly contagious bacterial disease.  The industry had big problems with this in the early 1990s in Broughton and as a volunteer in a local coho hatchery we got it lost 28% of our broodstock, injected the rest with Oxytetracycline and it worked,  but the second time the strain was drug resistant as it was on the farms - resistant to all drugs approved for use at the time.  During this outbreak in the farms we lost the over-wintering chinook and the spring chinook fishery in Kingcome, all the lodges pulled out the next year and those fisheries have never re-established.  This was in the days that the salmon farmers lived in Echo Bay so there was a lot of information exchange." June 17, 2016

There must be lots of dead salmon in Grieg Seafood's Nootka Sound farms because the most popular post on my site for the past couple of weeks is the one on the $177 million we taxpayers have paid for diseased dead fish farm fish. We don't want to pay. This is the post: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/01/taxpayers-pay-for-diseased-dead-fish.html.Fish farms are obviously looking to make us pay more for their diseased dead fish in Canada.

Here is the letter confirming that Grieg Seafood is losing fish to disease in Nootka Sound:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Grieg Seafood BC identifies furunculosis in Nootka Sound farms
CAMPBELL RIVER, BC – June 1, 2016

Grieg Seafood BC has identified that several of its Nootka Sound farms show signs of the
pathogen furunculosis, an endemic disease in the Pacific Ocean that does not impact wild
salmon.

We have removed these mortalities from our farms to comply with our Mortality Recovery and
Disposal Management Plan as part of our Condition of Licence. Actions such as this, are taken when necessary and follow strict protocols.

Number of fish removed May 23-31, 2016:
Atrevida - 3907 (1.46% of fish stocked)
Concepcion - 4154 (1.09% of fish stocked)
Williamson - 6953 (1.36% of fish stocked)

- 30 -

About Grieg Seafood BC Ltd:

Grieg Seafood BC Ltd. is a salmon farming company established in 2000, with offices in Campbell River, a hatchery in Gold River and farms located on the east and west coasts of Vancouver Island. It farms approximately 14,000 metric tonnes of salmon per year and directly employs more than 100 people from Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast of BC. Grieg’s commercial activities support a wide range of rural communities and supplier companies on the Island and elsewhere in BC

For further information contact: Stewart Hawthorn , Managing Director

***

So, for 100 jobs, we in BC are putting up with farmed fish passing a virulent bacteria to wild Pacific salmon - 73 Million wild salmon, and 13,900 jobs dependent on them. My calculation is that from wild fish, in the ocean and on land, in BC, the annual take is $2.52 Billion, while all the aquaculture industry contributes to GPP is a measly $61.9. Yes, that's how bad the disparity is.

My information is that the Powell River area farms - also Grieg - are dying right now - an area that we taxpayers paid for diseased dead Grieg fish only two years ago. DFO, Justin Trudeau, Dominic LeBlanc, we want fish farms out of the water.

See this for text on the Clayoquot Sound, BC bloom and salmon die off, June 17, 2016 post: http://clayoquotaction.org/. Here is the article: http://clayoquotaction.org/2016/06/mass-die-off-at-clayoquot-farms/.

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One more thing: Skuna Bay has had furunculosis in the past, 2012:  https://grieg.no/content/uploads/2015/04/GSF-ASA-AR-2014.pdf.