Legacy
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o Inside: o Game Fishing o Special Investigation o Opinion o Activism o Habitat o Salmon Feedlots oo Alternative Electricity
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Legacy Wild Game Fish Conservation International Wild Game Fish Conservation International (WGFCI): Established in 2011 to advocate for wild game fish, their fragile ecosystems and the cultures and economies that rely on their robust populations. LEGACY – Journal of Wild Game Fish Conservation: Complimentary, nononsense, monthly publication by conservationists for conservationists LEGACY, the WGFCI Facebook page and the WGFCI website are utilized to better equip fellow conservationists, elected officials, business owners and others regarding wild game fish, their unparalleled contributions to society and the varied and complex issues impacting them and those who rely on their sustainability. LEGACY exposes impacts to wild game fish while featuring wild game fish conservation projects, community activism, fishing adventures and more. Your photos and articles featuring wild game fish from around planet earth are welcome for possible inclusion in an upcoming issue of LEGACY. E-mail them with captions and credits to Jim (wilcoxj@katewwdb.com). Successful wild game fish conservation will ensure existence of these precious natural resources and their ecosystems for future generations to enjoy and appreciate. This is our LEGACY.
Wild Game Fish Conservation International Founders
Bruce Treichler
Jim Wilcox
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Contents My heart has made the choice ____________________________________________________________________________ 5
Game Fishing Planet Earth – Then and Now _______________________________________ 6 Kenai King ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 6 You can't beat a big angry cock fish!! _____________________________________________________________________ 7
Community Activism, Education and Outreach ____________________________________ 8 Stopping Farmed Salmon at the Cash Register_____________________________________________________________ 8 Action Alert: “Hard Evidence” ____________________________________________________________________________ 9 Only when... ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 10 Video: Free the Snake ___________________________________________________________________________________ 11 Video: American Indians Block Oil Pipeline _______________________________________________________________ 12 OCEAN CONDITIONS AND SALMON RETURNS: __________________________________________________________ 13
Habitat _____________________________________________________________________ 14 ‘Free the Snake’ flotilla protests dams, threat to wild fish runs _____________________________________________ 14 License to kill: How Washington may lose its right to wipe out salmon _____________________________________ 16
Harvest ____________________________________________________________________ 20 U.S. seafood watch program puts four B.C. fisheries on red list ____________________________________________ 20
Salmon Feedlots – Weapons of Mass Destruction, Floating Cesspools _______________ 23 Video: Cleansing Our Waters ____________________________________________________________________________ 23 Video: Fish Farmers Speak Out __________________________________________________________________________ 24 Video: Humback entangled in BC salmon feedlot__________________________________________________________ 25 Cesspools feeding the world with dead and dying Atlantic salmon _________________________________________ 26 THE DEATH OF ATLANTIC SALMON, COURTESY OF NORWAY ____________________________________________ 27
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Forward The October 2016 issue of “Legacy” marks sixty consecutive months of our complimentary eMagazine; the no-holds-barred, watchdog journal published and distributed by Wild Game Fish Conservation International. Wild game fish are our passion. Publishing “Legacy” each month is our self imposed responsibility to help ensure the future of these precious gifts entrusted to our generation for their conservation. Please read then share “Legacy” with others who care deeply about the future of wild game fish and all that rely on them. Sincerely,
Bruce Treichler James E. Wilcox
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
My heart has made the choice
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Game Fishing Planet Earth – Then and Now Kenai King
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
You can't beat a big angry cock fish!! Congratulations to Mr James Coates on catching this cracking 24 pounder on the fly from the Kercock beat of the River Tay yesterday. Photo credit: Scottish Salmon Fishing Surgery
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Community Activism, Education and Outreach
Stopping Farmed Salmon at the Cash Register
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Action Alert: “Hard Evidence” Alexandra Morton's video at the link below further documents two key concerns associated with current, ocean-based, salmon feedlot practices: diseased and dying Atlantic salmon spreading their diseases to wild Pacific salmon and other wild marine species feedlot salmon diet intentionally and illegally augmented by wild juvenile Pacific salmon and herring https://www.facebook.com/CoastCast/videos/504700969737240/ Based on this video alone, ocean-based salmon feedlots must be banned from marine environments. Please contact your elected representatives today to have these weapons of mass destruction removed from our marine environments.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Only when...
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Video: Free the Snake
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Video: American Indians Block Oil Pipeline
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels OLYMPIA CHAPTER OF TROUT UNLIMITED September 28, 2016, 7:00PM NORTH OLYMPIA (FIRE) STATION #83 5046 BOSTON HARBOR ROAD NE
OCEAN CONDITIONS AND SALMON RETURNS: CLIMATE CHANGE, THE ‘WARM BLOB’, AND RECENT ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS.
Photo courtesy of NOAA Climate Prediction Center
Photo from Toby Black, WDFW
Program: The public is invited to the September 28, 2016, meeting of the Olympia Chapter of Trout Unlimited for a presentation titled “Ocean Conditions and Salmon Returns: Climate Change, the ‘Warm Blob’ and Recent Environmental Conditions. The speaker is Aaron Dufault, Pink, Chum, Sockeye Salmon Specialist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). In his presentation, Aaron will give a brief overview of key climate change concepts, discuss the 2015 salmon returns in relation to changing ocean conditions including the hypothesized links to the ‘Warm Blob’, and give the current outlook on 2016 climate and environmental conditions as they relate to salmon survival. There will be refreshments and a fishing equipment raffle following the presentation. Bio: Aaron earned his BS in Aquatic and Fishery Sciences from the University of Washington, and his MSc from California State University Northridge where he studied the effects of ocean acidification on juvenile corals. Aaron has worked at WDFW for 4 years now as the Pink, Chum, Sockeye Salmon Specialist. His duties range from forecasting pink and chum salmon returns to serving on the Fraser River Panel technical committee. He has a particular interest in how climate change will influence Pacific Northwest weather and regional climate and what effects that may have on salmon in Puget Sound.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Habitat
‘Free the Snake’ flotilla protests dams, threat to wild fish runs September 19, 2016
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels RIVERS -- A "Free the Snake" flotilla of boaters launched on the Snake River Saturday calling for the removal of four dams on the lower Snake to help improve salmon and steelhead habitat. The rally was staged out of Clarkston. The second annual event included more than 200 boats and some 350 protesters including members of the Nez Perce Tribe, sport fishermen, biologists, and others who believe dam removal is key to saving native, endangered salmon and steelhead. "It was the most eclectic collection of watercraft I’ve every seen in one place on the water," said Sam Mace, Save Our Wild Salmon Inland Northwest director. Kevin Lewis, executive director of Idaho Rivers United, said fish numbers in Idaho began to drop even before the Snake River dams, when four dams were built on the Columbia River, according to the Public News Service. "When they built the four lower Snake dams, the numbers then dropped below the point of selfsustaining," he told the Service. "So, you basically had crossed that tipping point of the fish being able to survive eight dams in each direction." The groups want the Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite dams to be removed. This summer the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers installed fish ladders on two Snake River dams to try and help the fish. Last year, of the 250,000 Snake River sockeye that made the run, only about 40 made it to central Idaho. Removing the dams would be "the single best action federal agencies can take to restore dwindling wild salmon populations in the Columbia and Snake rivers," said Mace. "Taking out the Snake River dams would boost the regional economy and re-open a pathway to more than 5,000 miles of high quality habitat for endangered wild salmon and steelhead." Lewis said climate change is another factor in low fish numbers. Warmer temperatures have led to lower river flows, and dams create reservoirs where water tends to heat up. He said a federal judge recently ruled federal agencies need to reconsider dam removal as an option to save these fish. "This judge issued a scathing opinion that the federal government had repeatedly failed to do enough, including taking dam-breaching off the table as not being an alternative when clearly, it needs to be an alternative," he said. It would be the largest dam removal project in U.S. history. Lewis said the dams produce about three percent of the power on the Northwest grid, and that the region currently has a 15 percent energy surplus. But the Bonneville Power Administration said the dams play an important role at peakdemand times. The flotilla is an effort to engage people in the upcoming public scoping hearings the federal agencies will be holding around the region—including in Spokane and Clarkston-Lewiston—to take input on the new EIS process they are beginning on the Columbia-Snake system, Mace said. "We had expected the hearings to begin after the first of the year, esp. since the judge granted their request for more time. We found out a few weeks ago that hearing could begin as early as October. It’s frustrating that they are planning hearings during a crazy presidential election—and fishing season."
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
A salmon-blocking section of West Hylebos Creek in Federal Way in 2015 before the state Department of Transportation replaced it. While appealing court orders, the state has been carrying out some culvert projects.
License to kill: How Washington may lose its right to wipe out salmon September 19, 2016 So you’re a salmon heading upstream this fall. It hasn’t rained much for months. The water is low. You reach a culvert that takes the stream under a state highway. The culvert was installed higher than it should have been. In February, water may gush through the pipe. But now, when the water level is low, it doesn’t even reach the pipe. Guess you won’t be spawning this year. Or any year. Sorry about that.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Now — too late for you, but maybe not for the relatives that will try to spawn in later years — the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has decided the state must do more toward fixing its hundreds of culverts. The court affirmed a lower court decision ordering the state to replace its worst salmon-killing culverts that block passage upstream for the fish. A unanimous three-judge panel held that the culverts violate federal treaties signed with Washington tribes. When the 9th Circuit ruled for the feds and tribes on appeal, it scathingly rejected the state’s arguments and even its math. For one thing, the court found the state’s cost estimates — running to $1.9 billion — were “dramatically overstated.” This case really goes back to issues raised nearly half a century ago, and its legal underpinnings stretch back more than a century before that. Some observers think this decision points toward a future court order to breach the four lower Snake River dams, which currently make it harder for salmon to reach high-altitude spawning streams in the Idaho wilderness. Logically, that’s not much of a reach. But legally, it may be. Many legal details are different, not least the fact that the federal government owns and defends the dams, while in the culverts case, the United States, in its role as trustee for the tribes, has joined a group of tribes to sue the state. The state has petitioned the 9th Circuit to re-hear the case with all judges taking part. The court issued such a sweeping and sharply worded decision that Las Vegas would probably give you pretty good odds against the state winning on appeal. But the state agencies involved could presumably appeal all the way to the Supreme Court —likely for the ultimate judicial slapdown — but for now, the 9th Circuit panel decision is the law. The new decision may be the most important ruling on treaty fishing rights since 1974. The treaties date to the 1850s, when Washington’s territorial governor, Isaac Stevens, signed pacts with the tribes so that the United States could gain clear title to most of their land. The treaties said the tribes could always take fish at their “usual and accustomed” places, “in common with” non-native inhabitants. By the mid-20th century, no one really knew what that language meant, but tribal members fished in the rivers and, increasingly, the state arrested them, sometimes with gratuitous force. In 1970, the United States sued Washington to determine what rights the treaties actually guaranteed. Four years later, U.S. District Judge George Boldt ruled, essentially, that the treaties reserved to the tribes a right to take up to half the fish. The state resisted, appealing the decision and encouraging people to believe that it would go away. “Except for some desegregation cases,” the 9th Circuit observed in 1978, “the district court has faced the most concerted official and private efforts to frustrate a decree of a federal court witnessed in this century.” The Boldt decision didn’t go away. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld it. But the case had raised questions that Boldt didn’t answer. He had divvied up the fish but deferred until later the question of whether the treaties guaranteed the tribes an environment in which fish could actually live.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels In 1980, U.S. District Judge William Orrick decided that indeed, the right to catch fish meant nothing if there were no fish. So, yes, the treaties guaranteed an environment that could produce salmon. Five years later, the 9th Circuit said not so fast. The environmental right existed, but it could on the basis of “concrete facts which underlie a dispute in a particular case.” Culverts created and maintained by the state offered the tribes some attractive concrete facts. Seattle attorney John Sledd, who argued the recent 9th Circuit case for the tribes, explains that culverts clearly have significant impacts — nearly 20 years ago, state agencies estimated that they reduced salmon runs by some 200,000 fish per year. And the remedies are straightforward; replacing pipes under roadways is basically just a matter of spending money. In 2001, the tribes sued the state over its culverts. Six years later, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez ruled that the culverts did violate the treaties. In 2013, he ordered the state departments of natural resources, parks and recreation, and fish and wildlife to get fish through their worst culverts within three years and ordered the Washington Department of Transportation, which maintains most state culverts, to get fish through the worst of them within 17. The state appealed. We don’t actually know which state agencies wanted to fight Martinez’ decision and which wanted to comply. Obviously, the fighters won. And now they’ve lost. Again. The 9th Circuit has upheld the district court decision on every point. Arguably, Martinez’ 2007 decision was the real landmark. Lewis and Clark law professor Michael C. Blumm and Jane G. Steadman have called it “the most important treaty fishing rights decision since the Supreme Court’s affirmation of Judge Boldt some 30 years ago.” But then, Orrick’s 1980 decision looked like a landmark, too. This time, however, the lower court decision has been resoundingly affirmed. Blumm calls it “a complete and utter victory for the tribes and the federal trustee.” Judge William Fletcher, who wrote the 9th Circuit opinion, seemed taken aback by the argument that the state could in theory wipe out the salmon without violating the treaties. Fletcher’s written decision quoted from oral argument: “The Court: Would the State have the right, consistent with the treaty, to dam every salmon stream into Puget Sound? “Answer: Your honor, we would never and could never do that. … “The Court: … I’m asking a different question. Would you have the right to do that under the treaty? “Answer: Your honor, the treaty would not prohibit that. “The Court: … Let me make sure I understand your answer. You’re saying, consistent with the treaties that Governor Stevens entered into with the Tribes, you could block every salmon stream in the Sound? “Answer: Your honor, the treaties would not prohibit that.”
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The state had argued the same thing back in 1980. It seemed like a loser then — “I was sure we had won the case when the state said ‘we can kill every fish,'” says a lawyer who represented a tribe at the time. “I could see the eyes roll” — but ultimately, it wasn’t. This time was different. The state’s position was just a theoretical extreme, but its effect seemed more than theoretical. Blumm thinks the argument “obviously influenced” Fletcher. Sledd says, “I think that kind of extreme position did not sit well.” The 9th Circuit’s logic could easily be applied to, say, federal dams, but the facts of this case don’t necessarily translate to other salmon questions. Still, Blumm says that at the very least, the ruling has implications for culverts in other Northwestern states. Beyond that, it’s hard to say. Even without expanding its scope, the decision is “a great step in the right direction,” says Wild Fish Conservancy’s science and research director, Jamie Glasgow. However, Glasgow says, “While I think we should celebrate, there’s still a whole lot to do.” He points to culverts owned by counties, private citizens and the U.S. Forest Service. He notes that structures on properties between road crossings also block some streams. And he says that railroad embankments, often built on the flat land near stream mouths, block miles of waterways. Some Forest Service officials are well aware of the problem, but “they have just a fraction of the funding they need.” Should it take treaty litigation to keep people from blocking salmon streams? No. Washington has had laws against it as long as there’s been a Washington — longer, actually. The current state was once part of the Oregon Territory, and Oregon’s very first territorial legislature passed legislation that forbade blocking salmon streams. From that day to this, though, environmental law that should protect fish has frequently hasn’t been enforced. “If it was,” Glasgow says, “I’d be out of a job.” No danger of that. And no danger of the tribes’ environmental rights being settled any time soon. The 9th Circuit decision is “a big deal,” Blumm says. “We’ve been waiting for it for what, 46 years.” And yet, it’s hardly the end of the story. The meaning of Boldt’s decision and ultimately of the treaties will keep evolving. Slowly. “I’m afraid.” says Sledd, referring to a Charles Dickens novel that features an intricate and nearly endless civil case, “we may be on our way to putting Bleak House to shame.”
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Harvest
A 24-pound chinook salmon. An American seafood sustainability program is now recommending consumers avoid eating fish caught by four B.C. salmon fisheries, which have been "red-listed" due to concerns over shrinking chinook and coho populations
U.S. seafood watch program puts four B.C. fisheries on red list September 6, 2016
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels An American seafood sustainability program is recommending consumers stop eating salmon caught by four B.C. fisheries that it has “red-listed” over concerns about shrinking chinook and coho populations. The recommendation comes as there are persistent questions about dwindling Fraser River sockeye returns, which have been in decline for the past decade. In the latest update to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, four B.C. chinook and coho fisheries were listed as “avoid.” Ten others were identified as having “some concerns,” but remain listed as “good alternatives.” The four fisheries newly labelled as “avoid” are all in southern B.C. — chinook caught off the south coast using purse seine (a net that is drawn into the shape of a purse to catch large schools of fish) or drift gillnets (vertical sheets of net with certain sizes of netting to capture specific types of fish), and coho salmon in the same region using the same two methods.
Editorial Comment: Ocean-based salmon feedlots have a long history of receiving the “AVOID” recommendation. These weapons of mass destruction must be removed from the world’s oceans.
“Most fisheries receiving the avoid recommendation have very small catches of coho and chinook salmon that are often taken incidentally in fisheries targeting other salmonids,” said the Seafood Watch update, released Tuesday. The 10 fisheries listed as “good alternatives” include those along the North and Central coast of B.C., transboundary rivers and the west coast of Vancouver Island. The report ranks commercial salmon fisheries based on their effect on the species or on other species, their management effectiveness, and their habitat and ecosystem. According to Jeffery Young, a science and policy adviser with the David Suzuki Foundation, the rating is not necessarily a criticism of a fisheries’ practices, but reflects that the salmon targeted by these fisheries are in serious decline. “These are fisheries we still have some concerns about but they’ve done basically all they can,” said Young. Jeremy Dunn, executive director of the B.C. Salmon Fishers Association, agreed with Young’s assessment. “It doesn’t mean these fisheries are poorly managed, but there are concerns for the stock,” he noted, adding that climate change, which is largely credited as being a reason behind the dwindling wild salmon stock, only points to a bigger need for salmon farms. According to Dunn, B.C.’s current fish harvest is about 50 per cent farm-raised and is projected to reach 75 per cent in the next two decades. “Farming is really the only chance, but doing it properly is paramount,” he said. Young said the decline of chinook could also affect the 83 resident killer whales in southern B.C. waters that rely on chinook as their primary food source. Killer whales are listed as endangered under the Species at Risk Act.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels In 2012, retired judge Bruce Cohen issued 75 recommendations after a three-year, $26-million study of the collapse of the Fraser River sockeye fishery in 2009, when only 1.4 million fish returned, despite a projection for 10 million. The study looked at a variety of factors that could be hurting the sockeye population — including climate change and the effect of farmed salmon on wild salmon — and called for the federal government to implement a wild salmon policy and tighter restrictions. Federal Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc recently said Ottawa had acted on 32 of the recommendations either in whole or in part. Research is also being conducted to determine if and how salmon farms are affecting wild salmon. And a project involving the Pacific Salmon Foundation, Genome B.C. and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans is looking at the high mortality rate of juvenile salmon during early ocean migration. While many may point the finger at salmon farms as the culprit behind disease spread in wild stocks, Dunn said sustainable farming is necessity to balance demand on wild salmon populations. “I think the pressure on global fishery stocks is very real and documented and does point to the need for the farming of aquatic species, including salmon, but really points to the need for sustainable farming — which is why our farmers have committed … and believe strongly in not only farming with world best practices, but also third party certification,” said Dunn. Young hopes is that the benefits expected from implementing all of the Cohen recommendations will not just help sockeye runs, but also chinook and coho — and in turn, help with killer whale populations. “That’s a lot of what the Cohen Report is about, is looking at things in a more comprehensive way,” he said.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Salmon Feedlots – Weapons of Mass Destruction, Floating Cesspools Video: Cleansing Our Waters “What you do to our resources, you do to us”
Our Leaders Have Spoken. The authority of the Musgamagw Dzawada'enuxw people comes from 13000+ years of having a respectful relationship with our lands and waters. When we say our waters are hurting because of fish farms, they are. It's time for BC and Canada to listen now. Thank you to all who came out to support us at our rallies in Victoria and Vancouver. You are linking arms with us as we protect our sacred way of life, Gilakasla! Thank you to Tamo Campos for creating this video that mirrors our strength back at us and gives us courage! This is only the beginning. Stay tuned for news of further action we are planning to take. Editorial Comment: Unsustainable Impacts associated with ocean-based salmon feedlots are in fact global – beginning with the fishmeal to human health.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Video: Fish Farmers Speak Out
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Video: Humback entangled in BC salmon feedlot
Humpback entangled in rope today near Klemtu (Marine Harvest Sheep Passage fish farm). Was professionally disentangled. Locals will strive to relocate and monitor the whale. It is essential that coastal British Columbians know what to do if an entanglement is witnessed since, with increasing numbers of Humpbacks on BC's coast, the risk of whale entanglement has become greater. Our preliminary results from research conducted with MERS / DFO suggest that over 47% of Humpbacks in BC have been entangled (>1,000 Humpbacks). This data provides an indication of how serious the risk of entanglement is but does not reveal how many Humpbacks die after becoming entangled. WHAT TO DO IF YOU FIND AN ENTANGLED WHALE. - With great urgency, report the entanglement with location to the DFO Incident Line / VHF 16. 1800-465-4336. - If at all possible, remain with the whale at a distance until trained help arrives or another boat takes over tracking, otherwise the chances of relocating the whale are greatly diminished. - Take whatever video/photos are possible but maintain a distance that doesn't stress the whale. - Do NOT attempt to remove any fishing gear or rope from the whale as it risks human and whale safety (has led to human death). Professional training and equipment are needed to assess the entanglement and proceed safely with the greatest chance of success. Often, much of the fishing gear in which the whale is entangled is not visible at the surface. If well-intentioned members of the public remove the gear at the surface, it is made much more difficult to: (1) recognize that the whale is entangled; and (2) disentangle the whale even if it is relocated. Trailing gear at the surface provides the opportunity for trained responders to attach a tag to track the whale and/or to attach floatation to maintain contact with and slow down an entangled whale. Loss of this gear can significantly reduce rescuers' ability to save the whale.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
Cesspools feeding the world with dead and dying Atlantic salmon Increasing Human health and environmental integrity risks
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels
THE WORLD’S MAJOR EXPORTER OF FARMED SALMON IS NOW KILLING FISH ON OUR SIDE OF THE ATLANTIC.
THE DEATH OF ATLANTIC SALMON, COURTESY OF NORWAY In 1969 Norway bestowed upon the world Atlantic-salmon aquaculture. It spread quickly to Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, Canada, the US, Russia, Denmark, Chile and Australia. At Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF) board meetings as recently as the late 1990s we dined on ocean-farmed salmon. I liked it better than the wild stuff, because it wasn’t as dry. Atlantic-salmon aquaculture was a Godsend, we said. It would result in fewer wild salmon being consumed by humans. And we were right.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels But not in the way we’d imagined. Fewer wild salmon are being consumed by humans today because, thanks in part to salmon aquaculture, there are lots fewer wild salmon. For example, about 100 salmon farms packed into Canada’s Bay of Fundy (the highest concentration in the world) have been largely responsible for devastating wild-salmon runs. Just 40 years ago some 40,000 wild salmon returned to the inner bay. Today returns are down to about 250. Saltwater salmon farming is a global disaster. Nothing poses a graver threat to Salmo salar—not global warming, not habitat destruction, not even grossly unsustainable inshore and offshore netting by Norway, Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, Greenland and Russia. But if all possible best practices are implemented, can Atlantic salmon be safely raised in ocean net pens? Norway has supplied the answer. At a conference held in Alta, Norway, this past February—attended by most movers and shakers in the Atlantic-salmon-conservation world—the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research shared data indicating that the majority of the nation’s wild salmon have been compromised by hybridizing with aquaculture escapees. An analysis of 125 of Norway’s 650 salmon rivers revealed that only 35 percent of the stocks were genetically intact. Twenty-five percent had been severely compromised, 7 percent moderately compromised and 33 percent lightly compromised. Salmon anglers are the only people on Earth who rejoice at the sight of lice. The presence of sea lice means a fish is a chromer fresh from the cold salt; once in freshwater these parasitic crustaceans fall away and die within hours. But no one celebrates the galaxies of sea lice that swirl around salmon net pens feasting on the blood, mucus and fins of smolts, killing many along with wild inshore fish like sea trout. In natural settings smolts and sea trout are safe, because sea lice don’t hang around bays and estuaries; but add a few salmon net pens and you’re lousy most of the year. So hideous are the lice infestations in some Norwegian rivers that hatchery smolts have to be placed in tanks, towed past the net pens out of the fjords, and released in the open sea. In 1994 Norway and the six other members of the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization, all major producers of farmed salmon, convened in Oslo to sign an agreement ponderously entitled “The Convention for the Conservation of Salmon in the North Atlantic Ocean to Minimize Impacts from Salmon Aquaculture on the Wild Salmon Stocks.” All signatories pledged to keep net pens no closer than 30 kilometers from the mouths of salmon rivers, and all promptly reneged. Ignoring the history of virtually all pesticides and antibiotics, the industry in Norway and elsewhere assumed its lice problem was over and therefore declined to develop other drugs… Fishing tourism is huge in Norway. Yet the government has seen fit to permit net pens at the mouths of the country’s best salmon rivers. The Alta, famed for huge fish and generally recognized as the greatest of all Atlantic-salmon rivers, has about 150 net pens in its fjord. Pathogens proliferating in crowded net pens are rampant in Norway. These include pancreas disease, amoebic gill disease and infectious salmon anemia (a fatal, hemorrhagic virus transmitted by sea lice that replicates in the gills, kidney, liver, intestine, spleen, muscles and heart). In January 2015 Norway fjords boiled with an estimated 120,000 escaped steelhead trout, some of which carried pancreas disease that may have infected salmon and sea trout and some of which doubtless tore up incubating salmon eggs while attempting to spawn.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Anglers were instructed not to eat the alien trout, because they’d been fed delousing drugs. Total salmon escapes for that year were reported at 160,000—the operative word being “reported.” Scientists set the figure closer to 800,000. An ASF study comparing best practices (such as “codes of containment”) applied in Norway, Maine, Atlantic Canada and British Columbia placed Norway as the clear winner. For example, if escaped fish show up in a river and no company has reported a loss, Norway’s government conducts genetic testing, traces the escapees to the company and fines it heavily. The significance of the study is this: Despite all of the ecological squalor created by Norway’s salmon farms, the country is still considered a world leader in salmon-farming best practices. That pretty much says it all about the state of the industry worldwide. The alleged silver bullet of delousing drugs—“Slice”—came online in the late 1990s. You mixed it with the feed, and presto: Smolts were pretty much lice-free. Ignoring the history of virtually all pesticides and antibiotics, the industry in Norway and elsewhere assumed its lice problem was over and therefore declined to develop other drugs to apply alternately with Slice. A decade later sea lice had built resistance, and Slice was basically useless. Now there’s talk of “cleaner fish” like cunners— small wrasse to be dumped into net pens where they’ll supposedly act as oceangoing oxpeckers, ravenously delousing smolts. But in lots of salmon-farmed waters cunners aren’t indigenous and are likely to wreak ecological havoc. In 1983 5.5 percent of adult salmon entering the Magaguadavic were net-pen escapees. Today 98 to 99 percent of all salmon in the river are escapees—every one unaccounted for… West Coast salmon farms in the US and Canada are packed not just with Atlantic salmon but also steelhead trout and Pacific salmon; and they suffer all of the ills of Norwegian farms. Since 90 percent of the farms in BC are Norwegian owned, Dan Lewis, who directs Clayoquot Action, a group committed to protecting the biocultural diversity of Vancouver Island’s Clayoquot Sound, wanted to see what his province is in for. So he organized the “Wild Salmon Delegation to Norway,” which undertook a two-week fact-finding mission that included the Alta conference. “What we found is an industry beset by problems such as disease outbreaks, sea-lice infestations and farmed-salmon escapes,” Lewis reported. “The situation in Norway is dire; one headline we saw read: ‘Five years left to save wild salmon.’” Atlantic-salmon angler-activist Nat Reed, a conservation hero who bootstrapped the environmental records of the Nixon and Ford administrations while serving as assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, offered this assessment in his acceptance remarks as honoree at ASF’s 2013 New York dinner: “Norway, considered by the majority of the world as a land with a social conscience and a leader in environmental affairs, is the largest villain when it comes to allowing extensive sea and even fjord netting and permitting salmon farms often at the mouths of their once highly productive rivers . . . . They are destroying their own rivers’ salmon stocks and have even taken to intercepting the migrating salmon headed for the northern Russian salmon rivers.” And Chris Buckley, ASF’s past US chairman who attended the Alta conference with Reed and spoke on ASF’s behalf, told me: “What worries North Americans is that whatever the Norwegians decide to do will be what everyone else ends up doing.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Norway’s aquaculture practices are going to prevail in every place they do business, and they do heavy business in Canada, Chile, Ireland, Scotland and Russia. There are some rivers in Canada where introgression from farmed fish has destroyed the wild runs. That will happen in a lot of western Atlantic rivers.” Rivers collected by the Bay of Fundy are already dominated by net-pen escapees. On New Brunswick’s Magaguadavic a 24-year ASF monitoring program reveals virtual elimination of wild salmon by farmed-fish invasion and introgression. In 1983 5.5 percent of adult salmon entering the Magaguadavic were net-pen escapees. Today 98 to 99 percent of all salmon in the river are escapees—every one unaccounted for because, unlike Norway, Canada doesn’t trace the origin of escapees. Not that checking genetics Norway-style is the best solution. Anglers have no way of doing that, and the process is time consuming. External marking would work better. “We think it’s critical that all fish in the industry be marked,” said ASF’s executive director for research and environment, Jon Carr. “We’re trying to get Canada to require that. In 2013 we had 71 escapees show up over 10 days in the Magaguadavic. That’s just one river, so this was obviously a major escape event—probably well over 10,000 fish.” Maine isn’t perfect, but it’s doing better than Canada or Norway. Disease is under control. Introgression isn’t much of an issue for two reasons: 1) Major escapes no longer happen, and 2) wild salmon have been essentially wiped out by factors not fully understood. Finally, while lice are a problem, they’re less prolific than in Norway, because Maine water, more distant from the Gulf Stream, is colder.
A sea trout suffering from a sea-lice infestation near an Atlantic-salmon net pen.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Most of the progress in Maine can be attributed to the US Endangered Species Act (ESA), far stronger than Canada’s version. In 1993, when RESTORE: The North Woods and the Biodiversity Legal Foundation petitioned to list US Atlantic salmon as endangered, they were cursed from hell to breakfast by anglers, aquaculturists, politicians, the hook-and-bullet press and even ASF. Maine governor Angus King proclaimed that endangered status “will kill the [aquaculture] industry dead, DE-A-D, dead” and that “if you carry it too far, everything’s an endangered species: I guarantee that a mouse in Waterville, Maine, is different in some ways than a mouse in Watertown, New York.” Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) predicted “disastrous consequences.” Sen. William Cohen (R-ME) threatened to legislatively vandalize the ESA. And State Rep. Robert Daigle (R-Arundel) called the ESA “a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of those who have no vested interest in the economy or the people of eastern Maine.” Down East salmon were listed as endangered on November 13, 2000. Less than a month later Maine sued the feds. Joining in this failed litigation were the state Chamber of Commerce, Atlantic Salmon of Maine (an aquaculture venture), Stolt Sea Farm, the Maine Aquaculture Association, the Maine Pulp & Paper Association, the Wild Blueberry Commission, and blueberry growers Jasper Wyman & Son and Cherry field Foods. Before the listing, salmon aquaculture in Maine was well on its way to being killed “dead, D-E-A-D, dead” by the industry itself. Fallowing is the basic, common-sense prerequisite for any kind of farming, but the industry refused to do it. As a result, sea lice reached critical mass at permanent netpen sites, and fish were killed repeatedly by the lice themselves and by louse-spread infectious salmon anemia. One pandemic required destruction of every penned fish in Cobscook Bay—about 1.5 million adults. Refusal to fallow resulted in successful litigation by environmental groups and heavy fines. When a court order mandated fallowing, the industry complained that it had been sorely abused—“forced [temporarily] to go out of business.” At that time Maine aquaculturists were using a European strain of salmon that grew faster than North American hatchery stock but that posed a far greater introgression threat to native fish. The industry refused to switch to North American stock, so another lawsuit and court order forced it to depopulate. Stolt Sea Farm and Heritage Salmon—both based in Canada, where European fish had long been outlawed—were able to convert their Maine sites, because they had North American fish on hand. But Atlantic Salmon of Maine had to sell out to Cooke Aquaculture. Today, thanks to the ESA and input from ASF, Trout Unlimited and the Conservation Law Foundation, Maine salmon farms operate under a standardized containment system that uses best practices and best hardware and is independently audited. As they mature, salmon are repeatedly pumped from net pens into the holds of large vessels where they get hydrogen peroxide baths that knock off the lice. The salmon get dumped back into the net pens, and the bath water, which is pretty environmentally benign, gets dumped back into the sea. But some of the detached lice are still alive, and they go with it. Perhaps Maine’s best practice—again forced by the ESA—is to genetically ID all fish so that any escapees can be traced back not only to the company but also to the individual net pen. Obese, stump-finned fish with no genetic identity are safely assumed to have escaped from Canadian net pens.
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels In January 2015 the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, the most respected environmental watchdog for marketed fish, upgraded Maine-farmed Atlantic salmon from its red “avoid” list to its yellow “good alternative” list, thanks to such “stringent operating permit mandates” as containment protocol and feed based more on vegetables than fish. Net-pen fish everywhere else in the world are red-listed. Cooke Aquaculture, currently the only operation in Maine, does brisk business in Maritime Canada and Chile, where it eschews the best practices it employs in Maine and where it is therefore red-listed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. In 2013 the company was fined $490,000 for killing Atlantic lobsters with an illegal pesticide deployed against its sea-lice infestations. The same year infectious salmon anemia ravaged two of Cooke’s Canadian facilities in Newfoundland, obliging it to destroy 3,700 metric tons of product—for which it was compensated by taxpayers to the tune of $13 million. “Practices are different from region to region,” Carr said. “I think companies just do whatever they can get away with. That’s where our frustration lies.” In one recent three-year period aquaculturists who lost fish to infectious salmon anemia shook down the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for $92.7 million, a tradition the agency has found tiresome. So it recently announced that, at least for this disease, the industry is on its own. Is there a solution? Maine doesn’t provide one. Virtually all of the state’s success can be attributed to the ESA and the tiny scale of Cooke’s operation, both lacking in other nations. It’s easy to cite on-land, closed-containment facilities as the solution. But for the foreseeable future that’s neither honest nor realistic. Denmark has mandated closed containment, but that is unlikely to happen elsewhere, because the industry takes a dim view of the added expense—and in most countries the industry is too powerful and entrenched. Still, land-based, closed-containment facilities are popping up around the world. There are three in Canada, four in the US, two in Denmark, two in China, one in France, one in Poland, one in Scotland and one in Ireland. Others are in the works, including a large facility in, of all places, Florida. Salmon produced by these farms are free of contaminants found in net-pen fish, so they don’t endanger public health. Nor do they pollute the sea with warped genes, parasites, feces, bacteria and viruses. As a result, Monterey Bay Aquarium lists them as its “Super Green” best choice. But so far land-based, closed-containment facilities are small, producing far less than the 2,500metric-ton threshold of commercial viability (determined in a study by the Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute, based in Shepherdstown, West Virginia). And their startup costs are twice that of net pens. So the industry is understandably loath to switch. The director of the Maine Aquaculture Association, Sebastian Belle, offers this: “Growing salmon in tanks on land is like growing dairy cows in barns underwater. It’s not their native environment. People believe there are fewer escapes, but that’s not borne out by the peer-reviewed data. Escape rates are higher than in net pens. If there’s an accident, say a truck backs into a tank, water goes to the drains, and fish follow. Typically there are no screens on the drains. And you have to raise fish at 10 times the density of net pens. That’s an animal-welfare issue.”
October 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Belle’s statement is important as an illustration of industry angst, but its content requires vetting. His industry already grows eggs to smolts in land-based tanks, and now it’s planning to grow “super-size smolts” that supposedly can better tolerate lice. Why not go a little further and raise adults? Fish are, indeed, more crowded in closed-containment facilities than in net pens, but if that’s really cruelty to animals, all trout hatcheries need to be shut down. As for the “peer reviewed data,” ASF has asked the industry to provide it for years and has received nothing. “I don’t know that you can get all the farms out of the sea right away,” said ASF’s president and CEO, Bill Taylor. “Maybe it’s a situation where it happens slowly, where there are no new sites licensed except closed-containment. That’s the only way the industry makes sense.” There’s no doubt that Atlantic salmon can be safely raised in land-based, closed-containment farms. But back to my original question:
Can they be safely raised in the ocean? Maybe on an extremely small scale where there are few or no wild salmon and with all of the best practices, as in Maine. But certainly not the way they’re being raised everywhere else. “We’re holding Norway up to a high standard, because we believe they have the best practices compared to all other jurisdictions,” said ASF’s Jon Carr. But, as he and everyone else who attended the Alta conference will point out, Atlantic-salmon aquaculture in Norway is a catastrophe spreading around the globe like infectious salmon anemia. The big take-home lesson from ASF’s study accurately citing Norway as a world leader in salmonfarm safety is this:
Whenever and wherever you put more than a few net pens in the ocean, you will have an ecological train wreck.