Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Salmon farmers to spend $1.5 million on wild fish study

Industry will appoint independent researchers to look at disease transmission, migration routes
10468555.jpg
A spawning sockeye salmon completes a journey from the Pacific Ocean to the Adams River near Chase, east of Kamloops.

The B.C. Salmon Farmers Association is putting $1.5 million over the next five years into a series of research projects on how wild and farm-raised salmon interact.

The announcement is part of the industry’s attempt to address recommendations stemming from Judge Bruce Cohen’s recent inquiry into the state of Fraser River sockeye.

Don Noakes, dean of science at Vancouver Island University, said the work will help fill some of the gaps in our knowledge of what’s happening under the surface of our coastal waters.

“There’s still a lot we don’t know about salmon,” Noakes said on Sunday. “The research is to gain information about wild and farmed salmon, how they interact, and how better to ensure that the environment in all aspects is of benefit to both wild and farmed fish.”

Researchers will focus their efforts on five themes, including fish pathogen transmission, salmon migration routes, environmental management, fish health reporting and information sharing, according to the association.

Though the money is coming from salmon farmers, Noakes said the work will be done by independent researchers who are affiliated with various universities.

“Some of the vets and the biologists from the industry will certainly be involved, because we’ll need data that involves salmon farms and they’re in the best position to provide context and to provide that information. But the whole intent is to get as broad a group as possible to do this research so it’s unbiased,” he said.

Academics, researchers, conservationists, government and industry members selected the research topics during a round of workshops held over the past year.

One of the most pressing topics is disease transmission between wild and farmed fish.

Of major concern to the industry is infectious hematopoietic necrosis, a lethal virus that is endemic to wild Pacific salmon and herring but that leads to rotting flesh and organ failure of farmed Atlantic salmon. The virus has caused some farms to quarantine then cull their salmon.

“Part of the problem is we don’t even know what kind of pathogens ... the wild fish are actually carrying,” said Noakes.

But it is fears of a different virus — infectious salmon anemia — spreading from farmed to wild salmon that has sparked intense criticism about ongoing contact between Pacific and Atlantic salmon on the West Coast.

There have been no confirmed cases of salmon anemia in wild Pacific salmon, but a federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans scientist testified during the Cohen inquiry that she had found pieces of the virus in B.C. sockeye salmon during testing in a government lab. When the samples were tested at a different DFO lab, they came back negative.

Compounding the history of uncertain findings related to the deadly virus, a P.E.I. lab that claimed to have found infectious salmon anemia in wild Pacific salmon was later stripped of its testing status after the World Organization for Animal Health found it lacked proper quality standards and failed to investigate conflicting results.

The researchers will also be studying fish migration. The inquiry called for a moratorium on new fish farms in the Discovery Islands archipelago between Campbell River and the mainland, a migration route for Fraser sockeye.

“We know so very little about ... migration routes of wild fish and just even some of the basic behaviour even though we’ve been studying them for a long time,” said Noakes.

Cohen had also called for better collection and distribution of data on farmed fish, something researchers will work on as one of the projects.

“Fish health monitoring and reporting for hatcheries is limited,” said Noakes, who had worked at DFO as a director of its biological station in Nanaimo. “You couldn’t go and find out what ... the fish health records were right now on a website. You’d probably have to do an (access to information and privacy) request. I was with the department for 19 years, and I could probably say there was little monitoring, and not for a widespread list of diseases.”

The federal government released in October data related to the performance of B.C.’s farmed salmon industry. The information came two years after Cohen called for Ottawa to be open with its scientific data, noting the industry’s “potential harm” to Fraser River sockeye is “serious or irreversible.” Absent from the released information was data on disease and pathogens in salmon.

B.C.’s salmon aquaculture companies have set a target of 2020 for all of the region’s farms to receive certification by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. To receive certification, farms must be assessed for their environmental, economic and social impacts. To date, no Atlantic salmon farms in the province have met the standard. Two are in the audit process at this time, said Jeremy Dunn, executive director of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association.