Top-rated American TV newsmagazine program 60 Minutes sunk its teeth into BC’s longstanding salmon farming controversy last night.
While the program – hosted by renowned health commentator Dr. Sanjay Gupta – stopped short of passing judgement on the aquaculture industry, it left viewers with some real food for thought on everything from the risk of viral outbreaks to the waste with which farms coat the seafloor.
Industry sticks to its guns
Marine Harvest spokesperson Ian Roberts stuck with the industry’s favourite argument – that it somehow takes pressure off of wild stocks by growing fish for human consumption. “By raising fish in the ocean, we’re actually preserving what’s left in the ocean,” he told Gupta.
We owe it to our oceans to make sure that we’re providing an alternate to just capturing the last wild fish.
That argument doesn’t wash for the industry’s critics, who cite a well-documented correlation between salmon farms and the collapse of wild salmon populations around the world.
“Salmon farming cannot be done in the ocean, in netpens, without destroying the environment around it,” independent salmon biologist Alexandra Morton told Gupta. “These are not farms – these are feedlots. They’re growing as many animals as possible, as fast as possible, in as small a space as possible.”
Salmon farming goes viral
Gupta didn’t let Roberts and co. off the hook like much of Canada’s mainstream media has a tendency to do. He raised some key questions posed by many scientists concerned with the impacts of industrial salmon aquaculture. “One of the things that happens to humans is that if they live in close quarters, what might otherwise be a relatively harmless infection can spread very quickly. Is that an issue here?” Gupta asked, noting:
Farmers vaccinate salmon against known viruses, but the vaccines don’t always work. Every year, there are outbreaks on salmon farms and some scientists are concerned those diseases could spread to wild salmon.
The Chilean equation
The program recalled the outbreak of a deadly virus – Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISAv) – which wiped out much of the Chilean aquaculture industry in 2008-09, inflicting $2 billion in losses on companies like Marine Harvest.
“They could not believe how many fish it killed…But they don’t have wild salmon,” said Morton of the Chilean disaster. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen here. This salmon farming experiment – this is the only place it’s going on amongst abundant wild salmon. Here, we are risking everything on this coast.”
“One of the things you hear is that these fish could have an impact on the wild fish that swim through this area. Why not just put these farms where they’re not in that kind of proximity?” Gupta asked Roberts.
“We have relocated farms in the past,” Roberts replied. “But I don’t believe that aquaculture in British Columbia is having an effect on the wild fish. If it was, I wouldn’t be a part of the business.”
Alaska refuses salmon farms
Gupta then journeyed to Alaska, where “there’s no room for farmed salmon,” as third generation fisherman George Eliason told 60 Minutes. Eliason’s father was the state senator who led the ban on farms 25 years ago. Instead, the state uses hatcheries to rear juvenile fish before releasing them into the ocean – a system termed “ocean ranching”. Today, the state enjoys the biggest wild salmon fishery in the world.
“The concerns that your father had about what [salmon farming] might do to the wild salmon population – was he right?” Gupta asked Eliason.
He’s right. We’ve got a great fishery up there now. Why take the chance? Why even try it?
Wasting away
The 60 Minutes correspondent also got a peek at the thick layer of excrement farmed fish eject into the marine environment, creating “dead zones”. He also heard about the industry’s history of impacting whales and other ocean creatures with noise devices designed to scare them away from eating the farms’ fish.
But perhaps the big takeaway for viewers of the 13 min program will be the silence of the federal government on the whole issue.
Cohen Commission’s failure
Gupta zeroed in on the Cohen Commission into collapsing Fraser River sockeye stocks – which was launched following the disastrous returns of 2009 – grilling Commission Senior Counsel Brian Wallace on the government’s decision to ignore key recommendations by expanding salmon farms before additional disease testing is complete.
The government’s failure to take the Cohen Commission’s criticisms of the salmon farming industry seriously has been a major sore spot for local environmental groups and First Nations.
“[Morton] makes a claim that ISA virus has been found in the waters and the fish of British Columbia. Is that true?” Gupta asks pointedly. “I don’t know whether that’s true or not,” Wallace responds.
Gupta: How can we not know if that’s true? We’re not talking opinion or conjecture – we’re talking about science here.
Wallace: We don’t have the answer.
Gupta: You looked at 600,000 documents and you spent $26 million. We should have some sort of answer here, shouldn’t we?
Wallace: It’s just that it’s a very complex subject. Somebody said, you know, ‘this isn’t rocket science – it’s much more complicated than that.’
Gupta: So, we dont know that the virus is not here and we don’t know that it is here.
Wallace: I think that’s correct.
Gupta: It sounds like until the virus actually gets out of these farms and into the wild population, that’s going to establish the risk.
Wallace: That’s one way to establish it.
Gupta: That sounds like it would be too late.
Wallace: [Long pause] Um…I hope not.
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