LICE In Norway/LICE in BC - April 13, 2012

In Norway, sea lice are out of control. Read these articles:

The New York Times (2011). Copy and paste this:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/business/energy-environment/22iht-rbog-fish-22.html?pagewanted=all

"In Norway, which is a leading producer of farmed salmon, the head of the Directorate for Nature Management recently called for salmon production to be halved to save wild salmon stocks. Such drastic action was needed to bring lice under control, he said"

The Caledonian Mercury (2010): http://caledonianmercury.com/2010/02/16/plague-of-super-lice-threatens-wild-salmon/0029326

"The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research has estimated that there are over 300 million lice infesting 350 million farmed salmon in cages along the coast of Norway. The industry is six or seven times larger than its environmentally sustainable limit, the institute suggested.

The Norwegian government’s Directorate for Nature Management is arguing that salmon farming in Norway must be reduced this year."

Copy and paste this link into Google for its very long list of articles on sea lice being out of control in Norway, : https://www.google.ca/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=Directorate+for+Nature+Management+norway+calls+for+reduced+salmon+farms&oq=Directorate+for+Nature+Management+norway+calls+for+reduced+salmon+farms&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_nf=1&gs_l=hp.3...7945.13465.1.13616.31.31.0.0.0.0.233.2904.23j7j1.31.0.frgbld.&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=b6eae99fd1f9e98c&biw=991&bih=531

This scientific paper, 2012, says that Norwegian sea lice are at such a high level that they limit growth of greater numbers of farmed salmon:http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/02/07/rspb.2012.0084.full.

The problem is so bad that Norway, where Marine Harvest, Cermaq/Mainstream and Grieg Seafood, the parent companies of those in BC, originate, that K44 million is being invested in research to find new chemicals because SLICE does not work on lice.

What is happening in BC, you ask? The Norwegian derivative fish farms are doing a five year study in the Broughton Archipelago to prove - wait for it - that sea lice are not a problem. The point is that fish farms deny a problem in every new legal jurisdiction they open in and will argue - often for more than a decade - what they have given up on in the rest of the world.

Do note that the BC fish farms claim 1.5 lice per farmed fish and that that's not so bad that it can harm anything. You will also note from above that the figure in Norway is 300/350 or .86 lice per farmed salmon. That means that BC fish farms have almost twice as many lice as Norway where the parents of BC fish farm companies acknowledge lice are out of control.

How many lice are there per smolt in BC? Price et al, 2011, found very high lice numbers: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/02/09/science-sea-lice-sockeye-salmon.html

The study found an average of 4.83 sea lice per fish in 2007 and 1.61 sea lice per fish in 2008. Upstream from the farms, they found 1.10 and 0.95 sea lice in 2007 and 2008 respectively. In 2007, there were just 0.17 sea lice per fish off the north coast of BC, where there were no salmon farms.