Escaped Atlantic Salmon Invade BC Rivers - John Volpe. NEW PAPER

Volpe has a new paper out on the invasion by leaked Atlantic farmed fish in Vancouver Island Rivers: https://www.academia.edu/17616905/Occupancy_dynamics_of_escaped_farmed_Atlantic_salmon_in_Canadian_Pacific_coastal_salmon_streams_implications_for_sustained_invasions?email_work_card=view-paper.

In a nutshell the results show: 37% of rivers have multiple year classes of Atlantics, meaning they are established breeding populations. In rivers with multiple Pacific Species, the results show 97% Atlantics, a staggering number.

Chronic low-volume escapes of salmon from farms into Pacific waters (‘‘leakage’’) are typically undetectable (Britton et al. 2011). Analysis of escape-reporting from farmers indicates that reports greatly underestimate the true number of Atlantic salmon inadvertently released from open-net pen rearing sites (Morton and Volpe 2002).

We systematically snorkel-surveyed 41 known Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.)-supporting rivers and creeks on Vancouver Island over a span of 3 years. We estimated and accounted for imperfect detections using multi-season occupancy models.

So what did they find?

Volpe says: "We detected Atlantic salmon in 36.6 % of surveyed rivers. After accounting for imperfect detection, occupancy models estimated that over half of surveyed streams across the study area contained Atlantic salmon, and that 97 %of streams with high native salmon diversity were occupied by Atlantic salmon.

And he offers a caution: "Even in intensive snorkel surveys, Atlantic salmon are detected in occupied streams only 2/3 the time, suggesting abundance and distribution of non-native salmon is greater than indicated by the only existing data."

Here is his most important point: "Further, Atlantic salmon are more likely to occupy streams with high native Pacific salmon diversity— and more likely to maintain occupancy across years— potentially increasing competitive pressure on native salmonids."

And this point is highly important as well: "These data for the first time show that Atlantic salmon occupy Pacific coastal rivers for multiple years. The impact of Atlantic salmon occupancy in British Columbia rivers must be factored into policy decisions regarding the future of salmon farming in the provincial waters.

And DFO aint doing this despite Minister Jordan's recent decison to move fish farms out of the Discovery Islands.

Just how bad is the DFO system? Volpe offers these comments: "The current Fisheries and Oceans Canada escapes-reporting system—the Atlantic Salmon Watch Program—has been effectively abandoned and was shown to under-represent Atlanticsalmon encounters by at least 40 % when it wasoperational (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."

MOST POPULAR POSTS - June 2020

The Most Popular Posts in June are:

1. Greg Tayulor - Holding DFO to Account on Endangered Chinook: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2020/05/reg-taylor-holding-dfo-to-account-on.html. I have made comments on where I think support for wild salmon is needed, not simply reducing sport fishing of a population facing extinction.

2. Most Popular Posts - December, 2019:  https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2020/01/most-popoular-posts-december-2019.html. Each month I make a list of those posts that have gleaned the most page views. And sometimes this list is high on the list for readers of this site.

3. Technical Information on Sewage Comparisons: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2020/06/technical-info-on-sewage-comparisons.html. This is interesting science on a slightly different view from what I have written. Do read it.

4. 320 On Land Fish Farm Systems Around the World!!! : https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html. This is the all time number one read post on this blog.

5. Most Popular Posts: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2017/01/january-2017-most-popular-posts-on-fish.html. And the number one post on this list is the David Miller one from 2011 where he showed how the fish farm industry conspired to destroy the science on fish farm chemicals in farmed fish, Hites et al. This is the issue - read the Miller post - that made me decide to get involved in the fight to get fish farms out of the ocean.

6. GOOD NEWS POST: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/11/good-news-post-links-to-on-land-closed.html. There has been an explosion of good news on on-land fish farms. The list is approaching 500 articles, papers, analyses and so on.

7. BAD NEWS BITES: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2017/05/bad-news-bites-fifth-post.html. The bad news in in-ocean fish farms. We are approaching 6000 problems. Hard to believe but true.

8. Atlantic Salmon Breed in BC Rivers : https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2017/09/atlantic-salmon-breed-in-bc-rivers.html. This, again, is a classic post on this site. Among other things it allows calculation of a passive, leakage escape number of 153,000 salmon per crop cycle. And DFO tried to suppress Volpe's research. But failed.

9. Wild BC Salmon Plan - Contact your MLA:  https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/02/wild-bc-salmon-plan-contact-your-mla.html. We need your voice to contact the BC government to get a move on, before it its too late for wild salmon.