Fish Farms and Neoliberalism - John Volpe, Updated Jan 2, 2018

When I was doing the posts on Kjersti Sandvik's, Under the Surface, an expose of the fish farm industry in Norway, she covered the issue of neo-liberalism in Norway. The term meant that government did nothing other than provide the best conditions for its industry to succeed. Not what the rest of the world believed. It lead to, among other things, Cermaq being created inside the Norwegian government, and made many politicians filthy rich. In the rest of the democratic world we think of this as fraud.

Not so in Norway, and thus one begins to understand how the major companies, Marine Harvest, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood, from the first day spent a great deal of their effort on communications' spin and bullying governments once they had suckered them in with the 'jobs and revenue' spin - they don't actually deliver on the most important part of their spin, as the number of jobs is low and revenue goes back to Norway to be delivered to shareholders.

Here are a number of links to posts I did on Sandvik's book in 2016. There are more:

Mar 26, 2016:  http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/03/under-surface-kjersti-sandvik.html.

Mar 31, 2016: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/03/under-surface-kjersti-sandvik-4.html.

May, 2016 http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/05/under-surface-kjersti-sandvik-glydendal.html. This post makes it clear that fish farms are not about jobs and revenue, they are for making money, as much money as possible, for shareholders. Go read it.

Sept, 2016: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/09/boom-bust-industry-aggressive-takeovers.html. This one has the profit margin of 23- to 25% the industry makes - a licence to print money.

Now, the take by John Volpe, BC, who has done the snorkeling of rivers, finding Atlantic salmon - a foreign invader - in as many as 97% of rivers with multiple species of Pacific salmonids. Shocking. You will find several more posts on Volpe in December, 2017 on this site.

Volpe did an overview of the industry in the following chapter: Fish Farms and Neoliberalism: Salmon Aquaculture in British Columbia. Most of his conclusions agree with mine, and if you read this site, you will have met my conclusions regularly. Where we disagree, I think it comes down to knowing that the Norwegian take on neo-liberalism is vastly different from the way we do things in Canada. Many of the players would be put in jail here. But the bullying of governments would not change because they don't put many people in jail in Norway - the unhappy Jo Lunder is an exception, his hundreds of millions in bribes in Uzbekistan for instance. He was the CEO of the company that owned Marine Harvest until he was thrown in jail for corruption. Make sure never to forget that it is Marine Harvest's upper CEO that was thrown in jail for corruption. Not Aarskog.

The link to the Volpe chapter is: http://volpelab.weebly.com/uploads/4/4/2/5/44251437/volpe_and_shaw_2008_ch.6.pdf.

Below, I will give you a quote, then a comment.

Quote: And so the stage was set for the migration of Norwegian salmon farm companies to Canada. At home in Europe, Norwegian companies were being compelled to conform to strict (and in some cases costly) new operating procedures, whereas the Canadian federal government threw open the door for them to operate unfettered in Canada. The British Columbia coastline, in particular, provided exemplary physical and biological habitat required by the industry. Meanwhile, coastal British Columbia was starting to experience both the early stages of a downturn in the forest industry and some concern about the abundance of wild salmon stocks. Many coastal communities were supported almost entirely by a combination of forestry and fishing, a situation that rang alarm bells in the provincial government. Thus, a new industry that could support these communities was particularly welcome, making regulators positively predisposed to the arrival of the Norwegians to help solidify the fledgling BC salmon farming industry.

Comment: Not so. Norway went on to destroy its own ocean with 1100 fish farms operating in their fjords. And I think that JV is wrong, saying the laws were strict; that is just communications spin used all around the world, and BS. As I have said repeatedly, they said this in 2015 in Canada, Norway, Scotland and Chile, and thus the statement is necessarily false because no two countries have the same laws. And Chile is universally regarded as the filthiest fish farm country, now, sadly, invading Patagonia, one of the most revered pristine regions in the world.

Oh and that fledgling BC industry was having lots of fall out. The industry is a boom/bust one and unless one has deep pockets, you will be out of business with the first problem, like a disease or lice break out. The original BC residents who started farms got their dreams shattered. And then Marine Harvest, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood bought them up for pennies.

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Quote: At the time, the BC aquaculture industry was based exclusively on farming Pacific (Oncorhynchus) salmon species. The influx of Norwegian operators also meant the importation of the Norwegian species of choice—Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). The Norwegians had spent unprecedented resources establishing an international export market for farmed Atlantic salmon, and they were not about to undermine that success by introducing a novel (in the eyes of their major markets at that time) product in the form of farmed Pacific salmon. The transition in British Columbia’s aquaculture industry from Pacific salmon to Atlantic salmon was swift (see figure 6.1) and rang the first alarm bells for observers concerned about the impact of escaped Atlantic salmon on wild populations.

With the exception of some isolated objections lodged within the BC Ministry of Environment [Narver et al], little resistance was voiced to this paradigm shift in the BC industry.

Comment: Yes, I know some of the players and they did not own the day, unfortunately.

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Quote: Perhaps the most important impact of the tremendous growth of farmed salmon production has been the erosion of the value of salmon on the global marketplace. The massive global increase in farmed salmon production resulted in falling wholesale salmon prices, for both farmed and wild salmon.

Comment: This is the fish farm industry destroying commercial fishery jobs and is one of the reasons I say that fish farms don't create jobs, they replace jobs. It is obvious in BC, when you look at the BC Stats report that this has happened in BC. Here is the table of stats: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/09/atlantic-salmon-breed-in-bc-rivers.html.

I am glad to see this perspective. It documents that fish farms have destroyed the commercial, sport and aboriginal take, by lowering prices on the global market. This lead to bigger fishing boats and too much capital chasing declining numbers of wild salmon - because fish farms lead to their demise - to make the same amount of money, needing five times as many fish.

*

Quote: From 1988 to 2002, the wholesale value of BC farm salmon dropped 55 percent. To overcome this precipitous decline, producers in BC and elsewhere were forced to adopt ever-increasing economies of scale, their strategy being that to preserve a stable profit margin in a market of diminishing unit value, they needed to produce more units, as cheaply as possible. Production in 2002 had increased 895,000 times over that of 1988 (see figure 6.2). Thus, the dramatic decline in the unit value of farm salmon was more than compensated for by the rise in production by six orders of magnitude. BC is by no means unique. The same scenario has been played out in all salmon farming nations, with each company in competition with all others to produce the most salmon for the least cost.

Comment: This leads to firing employees, and saturating an area with farms. Once a farm is operating, it takes only 2 people to man it. Which is to say, that the promise of jobs is fictitious. If you read the Sandvik book quotes in my posts, you will find that the companies argued strenuously against having to train people, process in the regions, and employ locals.

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Quote: The competitive profile of the industry is complicated by the fact that the vast majority of global production is generated by relatively few multinational companies, each operating in many countries. These companies can pit one region against another in their efforts to reduce costs. It is this economic reality from which most issues currently associated with industrial aquaculture arise; the globalization of salmon has transformed this fish from a seasonal, high-value delicacy to a low-value commodity available year-round that comes with significant environmental—and therefore public relations—implications. Thus, the underlying problem: as each company, in each region, has sought to lower production costs, a constant effort emerges to intensify production and reduce any inputs that add expense, such as labour or transportation, which in turn increasingly externalizes the costs of production, forcing natural or social systems to bear these cost.

Comment: Thus the bullying that the companies do because of being Norwegian neoliberal companies, that build it in to their communications spin. They are quick to send in the lawyers because they are so big. The other side of this is that the trade off for their very small number of jobs, and taking revenue out of the country, is that the environment is trashed to offload the costs of raising salmon responsibly, on land.

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Quote: Given that the louse is free-floating in the Pacific Ocean, the chances of literally running into a prospective host (not to mention successfully attaching) are extraordinarily slim. Therefore, natural sea lice abundances tend to be unsurprisingly low. This scenario changes dramatically when salmon farms enter the equation. Salmon farms, by virtue of being home to as many as 1.5 million salmon restricted to cages in a 1-hectare (surface area) site provide a high chance of success for any nauplii lucky enough to float through. Eventually such nauplii attach to their host, mature, and produce nauplii of their own. However, now the chances of successfully finding a host are very, very good—resulting in more farm-salmon infections—and the cycle repeats itself until, if left unchecked, epidemic conditions rapidly set in. Although this situation is clearly bad news for the farm salmon, how does it affect wild salmon?

Comment: and fish farms like to say they get lice from wild salmon. It makes you want to punch them in the nose for saying what they know to be untrue, and destroying the ocean at the same time. My way of putting it is that if you are blaming Mother Nature for your problems, you are doing something wrong, as Mother Nature is the way things are. Put your fish farm on land.

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Quote: Found in the numbered notes to the chapter, and regarding jobs and revenues: No. 3. Between 1997 and 2003, real wages in British Columbia’s fish farming industry declined 29 percent (Marshall 2003).

Comment: fish farms are not about jobs, and workers get poorly treated.

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Quote: p16: Thus, perhaps the most compelling international implication of the salmon aquaculture case lies in its failures. Although fish farming is a successful international industry in financial terms, it illustrates the potential of the blue revolution to go significantly wrong. Instead of salmon aquaculture contributing to addressing global hunger, reducing pressure on wild stocks, and empowering local communities, we see quite the opposite. We see an example of the considerable promise of aquaculture missed, as an inappropriate model for aquaculture is followed.

Comment: the industry is not about jobs and revenues, it is not about feeding the hungry, and it destroys environments to produce its fish, unless it is done on land, and raises a herbivore.

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Quote: p16: The primary failure here is that the industry was structured and has developed in a deeply problematic way. Put differently, although farming a high-trophic-level species poses problems if the agenda is to feed the hungry, more crucial is the fact that any industry constrained by the socioeconomic drivers that salmon aquaculture has been subjected to will struggle to do other than to externalize its ecological and social impacts, and thus will not be sustainable.

Comment: as I have repeatedly noted, the sewage, disease, lice, chemicals, destruction of pelagic feed fish and so on, are, as economists put it: externalities, in that fish farms don't pay for the environmental damage they cause.

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Quote p17:  Despite declaring a temporary moratorium on the number of tenure sites in BC from 1995 to 2002 (although production during this period increased more than threefold: 27,276 tonnes to 84,200 tonnes), successive governments have, on the whole, largely encouraged the industry to expand.

Comment: the industry tripled in size at the same time as a moratorium was in place. Yes, this is crazy, and yes, this is why when you hear something from a fish farm/conflicted government, that you ground proof the claim. Do not believe anything a fish farm company/conflicted government says. It is all spin.

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Quote p17: As for lice, unlike spacing farms out in Norway, here they are packed tight, thus becoming a source of lice explosions: "As the value of farmed salmon drops, the need to cluster farms more and more tightly has increased to minimize travel (and thus, costs) between tenures during the course of operations. As a result, the majority of BC salmon farm sites are highly clustered, with each cluster being located as close as possible to a town that serves as a transportation hub. Major clusters are currently situated around Vancouver Island adjacent to Port Hardy, Port McNeil, Campbell River, and Tofino. Proposed industry expansion north will see Prince Rupert on the mainland added to the list.

Comment: this is why the Broughton Archipelago, the Fraser and Clayoquot Sound (22 farms)  wild salmon numbers have crashed. Go see the Kristi Miller, geneticist's take on disease in wild salmon in this BAD NEWS BITES post: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/12/bad-news-bites-salmonseafood-idustry.html. It is item 80.

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Quote p18, "The ecological problems posed by the industry are a direct consequence of the pressures resulting from the need to compete in a global marketplace."

Comment:  the price of farmed salmon has fallen, thus making it more likely to jettison staff, forget lice and disease, and etc. It is part of the reason that fish farms bully governments to get their way. The mind set is Norwegian, the reason behind the bullying is the need to make money for shareholders. Go and look at the Sandvik posts at the beginning of this article to read this background on the development of the so-called Blue Revolution, which has just lead to environmental damage, not feeding the hungry and jobs are expendable as is the environment.

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Quote p19: And governments:  Perhaps central among them is why the federal and provincial governments have been reluctant to more rigorously regulate the salmon aquaculture industry. We have provided a preliminary response to the question: the economics of salmon aquaculture are unforgiving, and the industry players have successfully convinced governments that stricter regulation would make their product uncompetitive in the global marketplace, thus threatening the viability of the industry.

Comment: this is a polite way of putting that fish farms bully governments. They were educated under the Norwegian neo-liberalist model, created their communications spin and follow it all around the world. The viability of the industry is not threatened, if the externalities are accepted.

The problem is that citizens who have to live with these, are less and less willing to accept the destruction of their oceans - in this case by foreigners. And consider that Jo Lunder ended up in jail for bribing officials in Uzebekistan hundreds of millions of dollars, in the job before he went to work for Fredrikson, as CEO of the company that owns Marine Harvest. If his corruption had not come out, he would still be CEO. I don't see fish farms as companies to shed a tear over.

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Quote p23:  As long as the industry standard remains a globalized, low-value, homogenized product, there is little incentive or indeed little possibility for change. The strategy that BC stands to profit from is the leveraging of its own global reputation as a wild and natural paradise, home to wild (and perhaps) “sustainable farmed salmon—the ethical alternative.” But as long as BC tries to compete head to head with Norway and Chile, the industry will be hamstrung by higher costs of production, forcing it, in an attempt to remain competitive, to offload those costs to its supporting natural and human communities.

Comment: I'm not so sure. This has been done. Scotland has done the 'we are the organic ones', and spent $483 million on lice chemicals last year, and still lost 10 million salmon. And Grieg is doing the 'we are craft Skuna Bay salmon', and then got furunculosis last year. And the opposition is far larger than Norway and Chile. It includes, among others: Atlantic Canada, USA, China, Russia, Australia, Tasmania, NZ, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the Faroes, Shetlands and etc.

And this article was written before the on-land movement started in earnest. My list has 201 on-land fish farms systems comprising almost 20,000 actual on-land farms around the world. We need fish farms out of the ocean: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html.

Sorry to go on so long. Do read the Volpe chapter as it is a good perspective on the issues.

Times Colonist Op Ed - John Volpe

Fish Farms Need to be On Land

See JV Op Ed, Nov 19, 2017: http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/op-ed/comment-the-science-is-in-salmon-farms-need-to-be-out-1.23098148.

I thought readers would like to know that this scientist who points out that fish farms should be on land to stop their environmental damage, has shown that farmed salmon occupy 36.6% of Vancouver Island streams/rivers snorkeled for data, and in rivers with greater numbers of wild salmonid species, it rises to a shocking 97%. (1)

So much for fish farms and DFO claiming escapes can’t happen. Volpe’s 2014 paper, also points out that industry chronically underreports escapes. In fact, in Norway, the non-reporting is so bad by companies like Marine Harvest, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood – the companies in BC – that it now DNA tests Atlantic salmon and fines the non-reporting company. We should do this in BC.

Almost 50 years later, Marine Harvest still likes to use the communication’s spin that they bring fish to a hungry world and the Blue Revolution to humanity. Well, last week, farmed salmon sold in China for $64/Kg, and the reality is that the hungry can’t afford farmed fish, only first world mouths can. 

Not only this, The Sea Around Us (2) document points out that the top 20 forage fish stocks are either collapsing, poorly managed or both. Norway is singled out as destroying the Jack Mackerel off Chile, when in fact, the mackerel should be going to feed third world human mouths, not to feed a carnivore for wealthy mouths. One year the harvest was 100 million tonnes. Little wonder it crashed. 

I did a lot of research to figure out that an industry the size of BC’s kills 5.76 Billion forage fish (3) to bring in one harvest. In other words, fish farms don’t save fish, as they claim, they kill fish in huge numbers. 

And if you saw one of the videos this summer of a dozen fish farms that the Sea Shepherd and chief Quocksister et al stuck a GoPro in random nets, three things were repeated at each farm: deformed/damaged fish, sick behaviour and clouds of fecal matter.

My calculation, and it took a long time to do it, is that in BC, fish farm sewage can be conservatively estimated at $10.4 Billion that we taxpayers eat, er, absorb. (4) We don’t want to pay. The other end of conservative is triple this figure. 

There is lots of cheap land in BC, on Van Isle, unlike in the small, mountain country of Norway, where Marine Harvest is putting $100 million into closed containment, the ‘egg’ for example, and Cermaq is putting together the slightly shakier, ‘flexifarm’, to sequester some of the externalities of fish farming. So, John Horgan/Andrew Weaver, get talking to the Norwegian companies and tell them to bring some of their monetary policy inflated Kroners to BC where they will help them buy even more land, and more land equipment than setting up at home.

Or they can go home and set up on land in Norway. You see, though DFO can’t seem to see the problem, Norway is so fed up with fish farm environmental damage that it stopped auctioning off in-ocean licences in 2014, for Pete’s Sake. It is giving out free licences to set up on land, a $9 to $12-million subsidy based on the previous auction price. Now only concepts that truly separate farmed fish from the environment are being entertained.

In other words, if we give free licences to set up on land, it means BC is subsidizing an on-land industry for the same $9- to $12-million up front that their Norway home country is offering. Sounds good to me.

Oh, and on-land fish farms are much more common than Volpe mentions. My list has 201 different systems (5), comprising 20,000 actual on-land fish farms around the world. It isn’t just Kuterra in BC. On land is everywhere but where governments will allow the environment to be destroyed, like in BC. Come on John Horgan and Andrew Weaver, you can do this quite simply. Or our aboriginals are going to do it for you. The Tsilhquot’n decision is about their rights to territories and they’re going to court over the Broughton Archipelago.

1.     Volpe/Fisher article on Atlantic salmon in BC streams: https://www.academia.edu/17616905/Occupancy_dynamics_of_escaped_farmed_Atlantic_salmon_in_Canadian_Pacific_coastal_salmon_streams_implications_for_sustained_invasions.

2.     The Sea Around Us document: http://www.seaaroundus.org/doc/publications/books-and-reports/2016/End_Use_Reconstruction_Report.pdf.

3.     Fish farms kill billions of fish, calculation: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/10/fish-farms-kill-billions-of-wild-fish.html.

4.     Reference for calculating the $10.4B, taken from my site: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/02/fish-farm-sewage-huge-cost-to-bc.html.

5.     201 On-land Fish Farm Systems: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html. This post also contains dozens of reports on how on-land is cheaper.

Another useful reference, on dumping of lice peroxide into the water, like what Cermaq wants to do in Clayoquot Sound:

KEY Document - 442 Fish Farm News Bites, Updated May 6, 2016

www.fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2015/07/key-document-fish-farm-news-bites.html. 

Jul 1, 2015 - Scandal. Google can translate this for you: https://www.dn.no/nyheter/naringsliv/2015/12/06/2052/Havbruk/dumper-kjemikalier-uten-tillatelse. " It's incredible. I was sure that wellboats had discharge permits [for dumping peroxide into the ocean], says Professor Are Nylund, head of the fish disease group at ...

Atlantic Salmon in Van Isle Rivers - the Volpe Rivers, Updated Dec 29, 2017

Volpe et al snorkeled 40 Van Isle rivers in 1997 to 1999, looking for Atlantic salmon fry and adults. Farming started in 1985, and Volpe was working for DFO at the time of this research. I have fished more than 40 Van Isle rivers, so am interested to know those he looked at.

His work is contained in three PDFs, and I present a few snippets of the three documents coming close to 200 pages in total. Look at this post for the original document I have written on Volpe's work: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/12/atlantic-salmon-in-bc-rivers-bad-news.html.

The fish farm industry started in 1985 and only five years later in 1990 Atlantics were documented in BC streams. This is shocking.

Here is part of the '97 text: "The first documented occurrence of free swimming Atlantic salmon identified in a B.C. coastal stream was in 1990 (Burt et al. 1992). Since then the frequency of reported sightings has increased significantly in both the marine environment (Thomson and McKinnell 1993; 1994; 1995; 1996; 1997) and freshwater (Lough et al. 1995; Lough et al. 1997)."

I will give you my comments and then have listed the rivers swum at the bottom of this post.

Those of you who are fisher dudes will be interested in the river specific information on Atlantics as well as hybridizing with browns, coho and steelhead. If you catch an Atlantic, usually identified most easily by their spotted  gill covers, make sure to give it to DFO, but also find out if Volpe wants it. It should be frozen immediately. Volpe is on the web at: http://www.johnvolpe.ca/ that has a whole section on Atlantics in our ocean and rivers. Take a few images of your fish as well.

Here are the brief Trend notes of the 1997 swims:

Although these surveys provide only observational data which cannot be used to support
or refute certain hypotheses, trends in the data set are apparent and can be informative for
future work.
• Migrating adult Atlantic salmon observed in streams prefer to remain in relatively
large, mainstem waters and tend to avoid head water regions. It is possible that
increased salmonid densities (and putative competition) may be responsible for this
trend. Therefore it may be more effective in the future to concentrate surveys in the
lower sections of streams unless information to the contrary is available.
• No sex or size bias was apparent. Additionally a wide degree of overall health was
observed, from bright chrome fish with no sign of wear or disease to individuals with
significant fin wear and lethargy.
• Atlantics were seldom seen interacting with other salmonids - coho and steelhead
being the rare exceptions.
• Sexual maturation (i.e. colouration, kype development etc.) was not observed until
mid November in any individuals. It is likely that spawning does not occur until after
most fall spawning Oncorhynchus spp. have finished, if at all.

Here are the brief conclusions of the 1998 swims:

TRENDS and CONCLUSIONS

• The capture of at least two year classes of juvenile Atlantic salmon ends any debate regarding the potential for Atlantic salmon to successfully reproduce on this coast. The juveniles were found in typical habitat for the species and exhibited behaviours consistent with those published for wild fish in Atlantic drainages.
• As noted last year, migrating adult Atlantic salmon continue to prefer to remain in relatively large,
mainstem waters and tend to avoid head water regions. Increased salmonid densities (and therefore
competition) may be responsible for his trend. Therefore it may be more effective in the future to
concentrate surveys in the lower sections of streams unless information to the contrary is available.
• Sexual maturation (i.e. colouration, kype development etc.) was not observed in Atlantic salmon until October. It is likely that spawning does not occur until after most fall spawning Oncorhynchus spp. have finished, if at all.

Here are the brief notes of the 1999 swims:

Surveys began on July 13 and ended October 23. Approximately 90.7 km of river habitat was surveyed in 1999 and 213 adult and 176 juvenile Atlantic salmon were observed. Repeat observations of some individuals are likely on systems surveyed more than once. Because there is no way to effectively control for repeat observations over time (individuals cannot usually be discriminated), the number of repeat observations is unknown. Survey summary data are listed in Table 1. Data sheets for each survey including details of all Atlantic salmon observations are found in Appendix 1b.

DCR: And note the large number of Atlantics in the Salmon River: Approximately 110 adult Atlantic salmon were observed in and around what is known locally as the “clay bank pool”, 500m below the Cable House, on October 7. These adult Atlantic salmon were composed of two size classes, each equally represented. A small ~ 1.8-2.3 kg class and a large size class of individuals ranging from ~ 4.5-6.8 kg. Approximately 60% of both size classes showed obvious fin wear and net abrasions suggesting their presence was the result of a recent aquaculture escape event.

Here are the brief conclusions of the 1999 swims: 

TRENDS and CONCLUSIONS

• Juvenile Atlantic salmon were identified in three river systems in 1999; the Adam R., Amor de Cosmos Cr. and the Tsitika R. This being the first year juveniles being identified in the former two systems, juvenile Atlantic salmon were first observed and captured in the Tsitika R. in 1998.
• Most juvenile Atlantic salmon identified to date have been observed in consistently similar habitats - relatively high gradient, fast water over large cobble / boulder substrate. All individuals have shown a benthic habit, defending small territories dominated by a home rock on which individuals sit atop of, resting on pectoral fins. In all cases juvenile Atlantic salmon shared habitats with sympatric rainbow trout / steelhead juveniles - but minimal interaction has been observed between the two species. Similar diets of the two species as juveniles may lead to trophic competition under limiting conditions.
• As noted in previous years, the majority of adult Atlantic salmon observed in freshwater river systems are found in mainstem waters and only rarely in lower order channels. To what degree this is a true reflection of Atlantic salmon preferences and to what extent this is a result of sampling bias is unknown. Survey effort on mainstem areas is disproportionate to total river length surveyed.
• Fin wear (particularly caudal and dorsal) is a common character among farm-reared fish. Of adult Atlantic salmon observed this year, roughly equal numbers showed fin wear as did not. Adults with fin wear were found only in the Adam / Eve R. and Salmon R. systems. In addition to these two systems, adults with intact fins were also found in Kokish R. and Zeballos R. Migratory adult Atlantic salmon with intact fins are indicative of i) a recent escapee without fin wear ii) an escapee with regenerated fin tissue iii) wild reared feral individual. No data are available to evaluate the potential likelihood of each of these three scenarios. It would be extremely informative to know if any captured migratory adult Atlantic salmon with intact fins exhibited scale / otolith growth patterns consistent with being reared in the wild and if so, what proportion?

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Here are the rivers that were looked at in 1997 and those that I have fished are bold faced, just a selection of the +40 I have fished.

Please note that I am surprised some other rivers were not swum, but there is cost and there is time, I suppose: the Big Qualicum, Quinsam, Nahwitti, Marble (only swum in one year), Stamp, Sproat, Taylor, Nahmint, Pachena, Henderson, Toquart, Grice, Gold/Muchalet, Sucwoa, Tahsis, Somass, Gordon, Harris, Loss, Caycuse, Nitinat and the Klanawa.

The rivers: 

East Coast Vancouver Island: 

Adam & Eve Rivers
Heath Creek (Gilford Island)2
Kokish River
Nimpkish River
Salmon River
Songees Creek
Quatse River
Viner Creek (Gilford Island)
West Coast Vancouver Island: Bedwell/Ursus River
Cayhegle River
Colonial River
Heath Creek
Leiner River
Marble River
Moyeha River
Zeballos River

The following streams were added in-season in response to reports of Atlantic salmon
activity either in the system or more commonly, in the adjacent marine environment:

Ayum Creek
Englishman River
Lake of the Mountain Creek
Little Qualicum River
Muir Creek
Naka Creek
San Juan River
Sooke River
Tugwell Creek

The following streams were selected for electrofishing surveys:

Boot Lagoon, Great Central Lake
Coal Creek
Colonial River
Cowichan (Lower) / Koksilah River
Dalrymple Creek
Rosewall Creek
Pye Creek
Whitehouse Creek

These are the streams and rivers he snorkeled in 1998:

East Coast Vancouver Island:

Adam & Eve Rivers
Cluxewe River
Kokish River
Nimpkish River
Salmon River
Scotia Creek
Songhees Creek
Quatse River

West Coast Vancouver Island:

Bedwell/Ursus River
Cayhegle River
Colonial River
Leiner River
Moyeha River
Zeballos River

"The following streams were added in-season in response to reports of Atlantic salmon activity in the area or because the system possessed habitat deemed by the monitoring crew likely to attract adult spawning Atlantic salmon:"

Amor de Cosmos Cr.
Campbell River
Kaouk River
Kennedy River
Lake of the Mountain Creek
South Sarita River
Tsitika River
White River

The following streams were identified for electrofishing surveys:

Boot Lagoon, Great Central Lake
Coal Creek
Colonial River
Cowichan (Lower) / Koksilah River
Dalrymple Creek
Rosewall Creek
Pye Creek
Whitehouse Creek

And in 1999, the following were snorkelled:

East Coast Vancouver Island:

Adam & Eve Rivers
Amor de Cosmos Creek
Campbell River
Cluxewe River
Keogh River
Kokish River
Nimpkish River
Salmon River
Tsitika River
Quatse River

West Coast Vancouver Island:

Cayeghle River
Colonial River
Leiner River
Zeballos River

The following streams with Atlantic salmon culture facilities were also identified for surveys:

Coal Creek
Colonial River
Cowichan (Lower) / Koksilah River
Kokish River
Lake of the Mountain Creek
Rosewall Creek
Songhees Creek
Pye Creek

Cypress Island, WA, Multiple Salmon Escapes

It is common knowledge, through news reports in summer of 2017, that the Cypress Island fish farm cages broke up with 305,000 Atlantic salmon, and with 200,000 escaping in WA, some being found as much as 250 km away in Campbell River, BC, and Tofino on the outside of Van Isle. And showing up in the Fraser and Skagit rivers on both sides of the USA/Canada border.

What is not common knowledge is an earlier farm collapse, spilling Atlantics into Puget Sound in 1996: "On 2 July 1996, high tidal flows destroyed 7 of 10 net pens at a salmon farm near Cypress Island, Washington. Of 101000 Atlantic salmon that were killed or escaped, 35000 fish had body weights ranging between 0.4 and 0.5 kg, while the remainder weighed between 2.7 and 3.7 kg. From 4 July 1996, and for the remainder of the summer, Atlantic salmon were caught in a test fishery that

operates annually at the entrance to Juan de Fuca Strait (Fig.1). "

McKinnel et al. See: https://watermark.silverchair.com/54-6-1221.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAbcwggGzBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggGkMIIBoAIBADCCAZkGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMvz1WJCsIknShimyaAgEQgIIBau-RtT8UAuh17grvuJoBqELfIWkPGjfOkf5ANl1pbpTA_oyPPeuXy2g321RVFaSYko1-nFmhjbpdpZX_qyj4Wyrk_s49cb8XdjsaE6NyP4AYqqnWbZty6BCo4xZilHScjbZF4vlGLm7IIOY3WWZgOTxdfN91jTM_QwQLOZTcPRi1L397fKk3CcwUME7kPL_A0Hw45D7lhsYTj9J0Sf7GAvPakQOvncw5Uh13cxHNO2S_Q6n7iJ4jCLpGfEnoPW5CYMd2L8OjSbNgGuEL3YOzHpgpS_YKyPmTN3wobW13nUS6Sv45XMRdbdxO7Me5bGm6xbFHbLhnrz5813tNIqcJ3GQNToZBPNaY725SetBNw6TzeYNXG-nmFjCnvbqIcwjB_G0MFT6R1VywcM7jCu78WOhQzQs9I_kaHmoBiD2EpRFSD8Vda4VVTb8SGWurc9A_NnwOgkRpnCGSN-j_N_FJwaeEh90xCEfP6pgq.

Atlantic Salmon in BC Rivers - The Bad News - John Volpe, Updated, Dec 26, 2017

First, have a nice Christmas day. Just remember not to eat any of the cancer-causing farmed salmon. Turkey is a green option versus a red option.

Now, John Volpe's trove of research: http://volpelab.weebly.com/salmon-farm-escapes.html.

The two obvious rivers filled with alien Atlantic salmon are the Fraser and Skagit (from the 2017 escape of 305,000 salmon in a Cooke, Cypress Island farm, not part of Volpe's research), both very large rivers with multiple runs of multiple species of salmonids. Volpe has studied 41 rivers on Vancouver Island, including the Tsitika, finding 37% with Atlantics and when multiple specie native salmonids are found the percentage rises to a shocking 97% have Atlantics.

[Please note that you can go to this link for the rivers swum on Vancouver Island to find fry, meaning spawned generations, and adult Atlantic salmon: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/12/atlantic-salmon-in-van-isle-rivers.html.]

Here is Volpe's article rebutting fish farm spin on research by cherry picking the research: http://slowfood.com/slowfish/pagine/eng/news/dettaglio_news.lasso?-idn=174.


In a nutshell: Magnus Johnson and John Volpe criticize the one-sided view developed in Lucas' overly positive paper on aquaculture, reminding us that industrial-scale use of chemicals, waste products and lack of regulatory oversight undermine both environmental and human health.
11/02/16 - 

I have been saying these things for years. Here is the first paragraph of their criticism: 

"The quick guide to Aquaculture by Lucas [1] provides a decidedly positive and one-sided view where the myriad of negative impacts associated with the industry are ignored. Introduction of exotic species or genotypes [2-9], amplification and transmission of diseases [10-13] and parasites [14-18]. Indeed the very nature of industrial-scale aquaculture serves to not only accelerate and intensify these impacts [19] but generates whole new problems when mitigation is attempted [20, 21]. For instance the drug teflbenzuron targets sea lice, a crustacean farm pest, but teflbenzuron is an indiscriminate killer of all crustaceans, equally effective against crab and lobster too. Teflbenzuron levels in the few surviving crustaceans around salmon cages are high enough to trigger human health concerns [22]. The benthic environments around net pens are typically anoxic reflecting the vast biological load of faeces and uneaten feed from farms leading to bioaccumulation of mercury in few wild species left to feed on the deposits [23]." 

Also, as I have said repeatedly, fish farms/aquaculture offload their problems for free - technically known as  'externalities' in economics:

"The commodification of farmed seafood products like salmon and shrimp have created a race to the bottom among producers. Those generating the most product for the least investment gain the market advantage in the modern aquaculture world where consumers base purchasing decisions on price alone. Therefore maximizing economies of scale and offloading costs are fundamental to remaining competitive. Thus, overlooked corollary is that environmental issues such as those above in addition to carcinogenic product [24-26], predator control, feed sustainability, and ecosystem alteration among others are the physical manifestation of "cheap" seafood..."

This is my own conclusion from looking at the fish farm/seafood industry:

"As demonstrably poor as the international salmon farming industry is, its environmental performance is superior to all other major marine finfish aquaculture products globally [27]. In other words, as bad as it is, it's as good as it gets"

For as bad as it gets, go look at the Bengal Bay article on my site, and from the Guardian newspaper: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/31/bay-bengal-depleted-fish-stocks-pollution-climate-change-migration?utm_source=Watershed+Watch+Email+List&utm_campaign=90c2eeb26a-Salmon_News_Feb3_2017&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_405944b1b5-90c2eeb26a-214661381&mc_cid=90c2eeb26a&mc_eid=2d9d06674b. You'll be appalled. 

Again, as I have already stated, here is where fish farming is today on a global level:

"The underlying business model of all industrial scale fish and crustacean aquaculture is to convert inexpensive inputs to higher value outputs. This means converting vast quantities of edible but low value fish such as sardines, and anchovies into much reduced volumes of salmon, shrimp, grouper and sea bass etc. - a net global loss of edible protein but big profits for producers. Profits peak when regulations (or lack thereof) facilitate maximum consumption of "natural subsidies" such as permitting factory farm waste products to be "washed away" by tides free of charge, penalty-free escape events and transmission of pathogens to wild fauna or wholesale conversion of biophysical parameters in and around the production zone. We contend that such farms should pay the state fair market value for the natural capital their operations consume. The alternative is to internalize these costs through transition to self-contained recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) that can be placed anywhere on land greatly reducing the impact on the environment[36]."

Note that Volpe et al criticize the WWF for its ASCs which are compromised by selling the use of their logo as an eco-label. Tassal, in Tasmania, for instance, pays $250,000 per year to use the ASC eco-label.

The link they have is here and you will have:  30. Wilfried Huismann, D.O., Ellen Wagner (2014). Pandaleaks: The Dark Side of the WWF, (Breman, Germany: Nordbook UG). And here is the link to the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/PandaLeaks-Dark-Side-Wilfried-Huismann/dp/1502366541.

Here is part of the book description:

"The WWF, renowned global nature conservancy brand, greenwashes the ecological crimes of corporations currently destroying the last remaining rainforests and natural habitats on earth; and it accepts their money. This business model of the famous “eco” organization does more to harm nature than to protect it."

Note that the WWF eco-label is the ASC. You heard it here first: the ASCs mean nothing. And the fish farm industry pays for its own awards, the BAPs and GAAs. They also mean nothing. If a fish farm says they win awards and achieve certifications for their sustainable, healthy, nutritious product, just laugh at them for trying to fool you. And then point your first finger down and rotate it as though it is going down the drain. "A race to the bottom." And laugh again.

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Onto another paper, Volpe/Morton put out a work that sampled escaped farmed fish in Area 12, in 2000. Some 10,826 Atlantics were caught in the commercial fishery, the farmed industry losing an average of 46,000 farmed fish per annum: http://volpelab.weebly.com/uploads/4/4/2/5/44251437/morton___volpe_2002_ak_fish_res_bull__9__102-110.pdf.

In BC:

The ASWP reports that from 1991– 2001, an estimated 396,522 Atlantic salmon escaped from salmon farms (ASWP 2002), averaging 46,255 fish per year. However, this enumeration of Atlantic salmon escapes is considered inaccurate since the number lost through...

And the rest is even worse: 

"chronic net pen leakage is likely much larger than reported escape values (Volpe et al. 2001). Since the fish farmer’s count on the number of fish that go into a pen is only accurate to within 3%, the exact loss through mortality and decomposition is not known. In addition, escape of up to 20% of some stocks is considered normal as the “non-performer,” slow growing fish pass through nets of increased mesh sizes installed at intervals to maximize circulation. This “leakage” is perhaps 3% of annual production or 350,000 fish per year at present production levels (ADF&G 2001a)"

And in Alaska, where they forbid fish farms, the first escaped farmed fish, presumably from BC, arrived in 1990. And escapes continued to arrive: "About 50–150 Atlantic salmon have been recovered annually in Alaskan waters since 1994 including four from fresh water (ADF&G 2002a), and a recovery as far north as the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea (Brodeur and Busby 1998)."

When you hear fish farms call the alien species they raise, non-performers don't think, gee whiz that's too bad, think instead, aliens are in our ocean that we can't see, and they have almost three dozen diseases they can catch and pass, but they can go in every river and displace the wild Pacific salmonids that we want, not the non-native fish full of their cancer-causing chemicals like PCBs and so on. Here is the EU graphic on the chemicals in farmed fish.

 

You will note that farmed salmon has ten times the cancer-causing chemicals as the rest of the food we eat. It sounds like wild talk, but it is actually true. The comparison with Big Tobacco cancer deniers is actually true. We could die of cancer by eating farmed salmon, at ten times the likelihood of our other meat foods. Like Big Tobacco, fish farms, meaning Marine Harvest, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood, among others, are denying what we have know since 2004 when Hites et al wrote the paper on the cancer-causing chemicals in farmed fish from Scotland.

Go back and read the David Miller paper on the 'crisis' faced in Scotland by the fish farmers. See the review and link in this post: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2011/10/key-document-fish-farm-tactics.html. 

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Here is another Volpe paper on the problems with fish farms: http://volpelab.weebly.com/uploads/4/4/2/5/44251437/volpe_and_shaw_2008_ch.6.pdf.

You will see that fish farm spin has been picked up by the scientists, just as I have:

"Industrial salmon aquaculture was introduced to British Columbia on the basis of three promises: (1) to provide jobs and resources to coastal communities—especially First Nations—that had been hard hit by the downturn in the province’s forest and fishing industries; (2) to help to feed the world, by delivering on the potential to use the 

oceans to farm fish to provide protein-rich food; and (3) to relieve pressure on increasingly threatened coastal salmon stocks. Salmon aquaculture thus looked to be an ideal contribution to addressing important global problems. Since its introduction in 1980, however, salmon aquaculture has largely failed to deliver on its promises, spawning an increasingly vocal campaign by environmental groups defining it as a problem in its own right."

All three of these problems have been dealt with in great detail on this site. Briefly:

1. Jobs are very low and revenue goes back to Norway to distribution to shareholders.

2. They can't feed a hungry world as the hungry can't afford the salmon. In fact, their reduction fisheries for pelagics like anchovy take the fish right out of the mouths of the hungry and use them to make fish for wealthy customers.

3. As for reducing threats on weakened wild salmon numbers, this is silly, with the diseases, parasites, lice, chemicals, algal blooms and acidification, non-sustainable feed, sewage, killing of sea lions... the list goes on, fish farms kill wild salmon. And  their fish feed kills massive numbers of wild fish such as anchovy and mackerel. The top 20 stocks for reduction fisheries are either badly managed, collapsing, or both.

Add this paper and you add the Salmon River to the list of Atlantics reported: https://watermark.silverchair.com/54-6-1221.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAbcwggGzBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggGkMIIBoAIBADCCAZkGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMvz1WJCsIknShimyaAgEQgIIBau-RtT8UAuh17grvuJoBqELfIWkPGjfOkf5ANl1pbpTA_oyPPeuXy2g321RVFaSYko1-nFmhjbpdpZX_qyj4Wyrk_s49cb8XdjsaE6NyP4AYqqnWbZty6BCo4xZilHScjbZF4vlGLm7IIOY3WWZgOTxdfN91jTM_QwQLOZTcPRi1L397fKk3CcwUME7kPL_A0Hw45D7lhsYTj9J0Sf7GAvPakQOvncw5Uh13cxHNO2S_Q6n7iJ4jCLpGfEnoPW5CYMd2L8OjSbNgGuEL3YOzHpgpS_YKyPmTN3wobW13nUS6Sv45XMRdbdxO7Me5bGm6xbFHbLhnrz5813tNIqcJ3GQNToZBPNaY725SetBNw6TzeYNXG-nmFjCnvbqIcwjB_G0MFT6R1VywcM7jCu78WOhQzQs9I_kaHmoBiD2EpRFSD8Vda4VVTb8SGWurc9A_NnwOgkRpnCGSN-j_N_FJwaeEh90xCEfP6pgq

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 And another paper: http://volpelab.weebly.com/uploads/4/4/2/5/44251437/fisher_et_al_2014_biol_invasions.pdf.

This paper says escapes from fish farms are far underestimated: "Farm-level assessments of escapes have been shown to consistently underestimate escapes (Morton and Volpe 2002), since detection is impossible below threshold levels (Britton et al. 2011). Further, discrete high-volume escape events often go unreported until Atlantic salmon appear in commercial Pacific salmon fishermen’s nets (Sumaila et al.2005). Such haphazard reporting represent the only data on Atlantic salmon occurrence in Pacificwaters. Ad-hoc and passive reporting mechanisms greatly underestimate Atlantic salmon  presence in the wild (Morton and Volpe2002)."

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This paper has a Vancouver Island map of the rivers, though it does not name them: http://volpelab.weebly.com/uploads/4/4/2/5/44251437/fisher_et_al_2014_biol_invasions.pdf.

The current Fisheries and Oceans Canada escapes-reporting system—the Atlantic Salmon Watch Program—has been effectively abandoned and was shown to under-represent Atlantic salmon encounters by at least 40 % when it was operational (Morton and Volpe 2002). The lack of monitoring of salmon escapes and invasions indicates a failure of current management practices and a lack of oversight of escapes in British Columbia, with unknown consequences for populations of  native Pacific salmon in coastal rivers.

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This paper is about escape laws and plans:  http://volpelab.weebly.com/uploads/4/4/2/5/44251437/naylor_et_al._2005_bioscience__55__427-437.pdf.

In Table 1. Regulations of aquaculture escapes, 2003, you will find that the laws are not the same around the world, a specific instance where the claim of operating under 'the strictest laws in the world' by fish farms is false.