Evidence of meeting #12 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was farms.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Raynald Blais Bloc Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, Mr. Pennell and Mr. Harvey.
My first question is for Mr. Harvey.
You say that you are not a sea lice specialist. Imagine what the situation is for us, particularly as we must make recommendations on this issue. I am not asking you to stick your neck out, but perhaps to help us out a little more. You have read a lot on this subject. Personally, I have not done so, I am learning as I go, and I understand very well that there is not necessarily any consensus on the issue.
However, according to what you have read, is it possible to determine whether or not sea lice are one of the reasons causing a decline in the salmon populations? Could there be other reasons? Could you tell us about any research you have done on the subject?
This would obviously be with a view to helping us more, because as I will repeat, the situation is much less clear to us than it is to you. Not having any formal training as a biologist, all I can really rely on is my own common sense.
Therefore, could you be of more assistance to us, rather than answering in the way that you have until now? Dr. Harvey?
As an Individual
As I understand it, you'd like me to comment on whether sea lice is just one of the factors that could be causing problems for pink salmon; I'm just saying “pink salmon” because that's really the only one on which much work has been done.
Let's put it this way. My opinion and what most scientists are writing in their research papers are the same, which is that there are many threats to salmon. Many of them interact. We don't know quite how the interactions work, but of course you would not be a good biologist if you didn't acknowledge the fact that usually these things are a combination of factors. There are an awful lot of things that have been shown to affect salmon populations.
In the United States, for example, they have a slightly different situation with their salmon, and they have what they call the “four Hs”. Let me see if I can remember: harvest, hatcheries, and hydro power. What's the other one? It's habitat, of course. It's loss of habitat.
It's a little bit different here in B.C. We don't have the big hydro-power developments they have. But on the other ones, as well as things like climate change and contaminants that come floating across in clouds from smelters in Asia, those kinds of things have all been shown to affect population strength in salmon. It's highly unlikely that it's only one thing. Again, the great thing about the precautionary principle is that it says there might be 10 different things, but that doesn't do us much good when we're trying to create policy here or trying to make legislation.
By the way, I really do see your point of view about having to rely on a bunch of waffling experts who are trying to protect their positions. I do see your point of view. I do try to write for the public, to make it intelligible and strip all the jargon out, but the precautionary principle also says there might be 10 different things that are causing a problem. Which ones can you actually do something about?
In this case, there are things that can be done about harvest. There are things that can be done about some of the hatchery effects on wild salmon. There are some things that can be done to give them back some habitat. There's not much we can do about climate change in the timeframe that will affect salmon--and it definitely will--but there are also things that can be done about sea lice.
If we suspect that the harvest is a problem, we cut down on the harvest. We may not be able to actually prove that, strange as that may sound. It's not as cut and dried as that, but we suspect it pretty strongly, so we'll cut down on the harvest.
If we suspect strongly that sea lice are a problem, we'll do something about them. I believe that's happening with the kind of integrated management that Bill Pennell has referred to.
So really, I don't have an opinion that's any different from what most scientists are saying. We live in an ecosytem. There are all kinds of influences on them, and yes, there are a lot of things that are damaging to salmon. Sea lice is one of them. It may be one that we can do something about more easily than we can for some of the others.
Bloc
Raynald Blais Bloc Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC
I would like to ask Dr. Pennell a question.
Earlier on, during your presentation, you mentioned that we need a new approach, that we must innovate. You even talked about the social sciences. I'm having a lot of difficulty following you when you go down that path. I will therefore leave it to you to convince us that the social sciences are in some way connected to the natural sciences, as far as sea lice, aquaculture and decreasing numbers of salmon are concerned. Try and convince us that there is a place for the social sciences somewhere in this complex maze.
Acting Director, Institute for Coastal Research, Vancouver Island University
Okay. I'll try. I should tell you that I'm not a social scientist, although the Institute for Coastal Research, where I'm now working, is an attempt to look at coastal resource problems with an interdisciplinary approach that includes social sciences and humanities, not just natural sciences.
The point I was trying to make was that we do a lot of research and we learn things. We learn how to do a better job of salmon farming. We learn how to manage sea lice, for example, as we've been discussing.
But the real question is different; it's whether we should have salmon farming in British Columbia or not. There are people on both sides of that issue, and it does not seem to yield to scientific research. Therefore, what are the real issues? Why do people feel so strongly about this? This is where social scientists can have an impact and help us understand.
There are some questions they might answer. Why is this medium-sized industry attracting so much negative attention and what are the drivers of this? How is the industry perceived in local communities and what are the dynamics of these perceptions? What is the value to coastal communities of the jobs created by this industry? How does it compare to other industries? How do the jobs created by this industry affect community resilience?
Are there ways that the salmon farming industry could bridge the current controversies, other than waging a better PR campaign? Why are scientists frequently so strongly on one side or the other of the issue?
This is beyond the usual debate of science. Is this a common situation in natural sciences all over or is it systemic to this type of question? How do the media, the government, and the public make use of scientific discovery? How have other industries met such challenges?
Those are all questions that different branches of social science could help us with, I believe.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank both doctors for being here at the committee to provide information on this subject.
My first question is for you, Dr. Harvey. I think it's on something that you've already been talking about. You've mentioned that you reviewed 131 papers and that you put out your own review or study, I guess. I was wanting to know what conclusions you've drawn from your 2009 review.
You've mentioned climate change. At some point early in the debate around climate change, there was a degree of uncertainty and a lack of consensus, so could you keep that in mind and reflect on climate change in the debate? I'll just throw this in and you can agree or disagree: that we're now at a point where scientists have reached consensus that climate change is having an impact on many ecosystems.
Would you say the same about sea lice? Or are we too early in the review of the science and the testing of this knowledge to see if there really is an impact of sea lice on wild salmon?
As an Individual
We were too early in 2009, when I was reviewing the papers that I could find on the topic, but to back up, you asked another question about what my conclusions were at the time.
On the question of whether sea lice from salmon farms were causing the decline of pink salmon populations, I did conclude that the jury was out on that, and that people did not agree on that. As Bill Pennell has pointed out, they did not agree, and they did so in a pretty strenuous way. There were rebuttals and chains of counter-rebuttals on papers. Again, I hadn't really seen very much in the scientific literature before. The scientists seemed to be emotionally invested in this debate.
On climate change, there has been research going on for a lot longer than probably most people realize. I was just reading Carl Sagan's last book. He was a great scientist and also a great writer about science. This book was written just before he died in the mid-1990s. He has a long chapter in there on climate change. Even then, within the scientific community, there was pretty much a consensus.
So no, we hadn't reached that point in 2009 with sea lice. But I think what we had reached was a point where I had absolutely no difficulty believing that sea lice from salmon farms were infecting wild pink salmon—absolutely—but there did seem to be some effects of management in reducing the sea lice that could get out of salmon farms and that were amplified in the salmon farms.
Probably one thing nobody has mentioned here that I think is quite important is that we can't just say that we seem to have found a way to reduce the numbers of sea lice and it's “problem solved”. If it's being reduced by management that includes the use of a pesticide, we have to make sure that is not having any detrimental effects, or at least effects that society will not accept.
Climate change--
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
Could I just jump in here? I'm sorry. Unfortunately, I don't have much time, and I have one other question.
In the next round I'll ask Dr. Pennell a number of questions, and they do relate to SLICE and the application of SLICE, but before my time runs out, I just want to ask you, Dr. Harvey, about the issue of risk analysis and the precautionary principle.
Given what you have reviewed and given some of the questions you've just been asked about management, do you have a suggestion or recommendation in terms of the type of technology that's being used by the aquaculture industry currently, i.e. open net versus closed containment?
As an Individual
I don't there, but I do have a recommendation on what they're calling the integrated pest management strategies. There are now area plans that are beginning to emerge. I do have a recommendation that those be refined and monitored, heavily monitored, and that we keep a very close eye not only on the numbers of lice, which do seem to have gone down, but on whether there are any side effects of these management plans. I mean, clearly that's the bargain you have to make.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen, for taking the time to appear before us. I appreciate it.
Let me start with Dr. Pennell.
Just so I understand a little bit more of the zoology, when we're talking about the infectious stage of sea lice, what stage is that? Are we saying that there are adult lice on fish farms that reproduce, so there are larvae, and that it is those larvae that grow to some infectious stage and then attach themselves to some species of fish?
Can you just clarify that for me? Then I have a follow-up question on that issue.
Acting Director, Institute for Coastal Research, Vancouver Island University
Yes. Starting with the female fish with eggs, the ovigerous female--and in this case, let's say it's an Atlantic salmon on a farm--the female produces two long strings of eggs. I've forgotten how many eggs; I think maybe 900 to 1,000 per female. These eggs hatch into what's called nauplius larvae, and they go through three stages of non-feeding moults, when they shed their outer integument and grow.
The fourth stage is called the copepodid, and it is a stage that has a little filament that it can use to attach to a host. All these four stages that hatch from the eggs are carried in the currents and the plankton, and at the infective stage, which is a few days of life in which it has to attach to a fish, when it bumps into a salmon or somehow finds a salmon—and it's usually a salmonid of some sort, but it could be a stickleback or a herring—it attaches.
Then it goes through a whole series of moults while it's attached. It gets larger and larger and finally becomes an adult male or female. They mate, and more eggs are produced. The whole process, depending on temperature, takes about 45 to 50 days.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
So for my follow-up question, then, how much work has been done to know if that actually happens in the vicinity of these fish farms?
Specifically, I'm curious about what your opinion is on the work of Kenneth Brooks, who has done some work suggesting that, given where these farms are located, with the salinity and currents and so on, these sea lice are not in an infectious stage while the smolts or young salmon would be swimming by these farms, and they're further out.
At least, that is my understanding of his conclusions. I just wondered what you think of that, Dr. Pennell, and perhaps Dr. Harvey as well.
Acting Director, Institute for Coastal Research, Vancouver Island University
I think I might be on the edge of my abilities to give you a good answer. I think he's probably right in that there are extreme tidal currents, not transport currents, and back-and-forth sloshing tidal currents in this very complex area known as the Broughtons.
I think that probably we're looking at about eight or 10 days from hatch to the infective stage. In that time, those animals could have moved quite far from the farm of origin. But I don't think that's an important issue. They're adding to the overall pool of infective stages in the area, and therefore if there is or was a farm contribution, it doesn't have to take place right beside the farm. It could take place downstream or upstream.
Just to repeat something I said earlier, it's quite a fascinating biological mystery how these infective planktonic stages, tiny little things, manage to find their hosts so effectively. They do find them. But when you take a plankton sample and try to sample them from the plankton with a fine mesh net, I think as Brian said in one of his reports, you're looking at one or two larvae in a volume the size of a living room. We don't know quite how they manage to do it, but they do it.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Thank you for that.
Dr. Harvey, do you have anything to add on that particular issue?
As an Individual
Yes. First of all, there was just a sense of wonder when I got to read all of this stuff; there were a couple of hundred papers I had to chug through. And yes, it is extraordinary that they manage to find a host. It's also very interesting about how fast our ability to look at the effects of currents and wind on these tiny particles is; you have to remember that this is going way beyond anything we knew about current movement, about the movement of water, and yet suddenly that's very important, so we have to learn and create models.
Ken Brooks' theories are based on mathematical modelling, in which you take the best information you have, create a model, feed the model with the information, and come out with a conclusion about what you think might be happening. There are other mathematical models, and there are quite a few from Europe, where perhaps the fjords are different, so you can't really extrapolate. So I think we're maybe 60% of the way to understanding how a louse might get from A to B.
Nevertheless, as Bill says, if the salmon farms have a lot of lice on their fish and they're amplifying the numbers of lice that could come from the wild and they're dumping out there, then again, the precautionary approach is to say, okay, this may be causing a problem, so let's see if we can reduce them on the farms, which is, I think, what is starting to happen.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Those are good points. I appreciate that.
I have one final question, Dr. Pennell, and then I'll turn it over to Ms. O'Neill-Gordon, if she has any follow-up questions.
Dr. Pennell, you commented on sockeye, but you went past that pretty quickly. The whole point of the commission of inquiry that's taking place at the moment and will be continuing for a while longer is to find out what might be causing the decline in sockeye. In the terms of the reference, one of the things is aquaculture.
I want to see if I understood you correctly. You seemed to be saying that you couldn't see how lice from aquaculture operations could be playing a significant role in that decline. Did I understand that correctly?
Acting Director, Institute for Coastal Research, Vancouver Island University
Yes. However, I want to clarify that what I gave was an opinion, and you could get a different opinion from other people. I based that opinion on the general results of laboratory work, which show that juvenile salmon--in this case, mainly pink and chum salmon--become more resistant to sea lice the larger they get.
They're the smallest of the salmon. A chum salmon would be about a quarter of a gram when it comes out into the river, and a pink salmon maybe a fifth of a gram. They are very, very tiny. They don't have fully developed scales when they first arrive in salt water, so they're quite vulnerable; at least, that's the conclusion that a lot of researchers have come to.
As they grow older, they get a more complex integument and start developing scales and perhaps other immune responses, because fish have an increasing immune response as they get larger. For any number of those reasons, they seem to become more resistant.
Sockeye salmon are smolts. They've already spent a full year in a lake, and in some cases two years, and they're much larger. They are 25 to 30 times larger than a pink fry and they have fully developed scales; therefore, I would suspect them not to be particularly vulnerable to sea lice.
Now, I don't know that anyone has done work with sockeye to prove this, so it's a bit of a conjecture, but I thought that of all the many things that could be affecting sockeye salmon populations in the Fraser, sea lice are perhaps the least likely.
That's my opinion. You might want to get another opinion from some of the DFO scientists.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Okay. Thank you for that.
Do you have a final comment on that, Dr. Harvey?
As an Individual
Well, it's very early in the game to say what's causing the decline in sockeye. It's a classic case, in the sense that there are many, many factors. As for whether it could be sea lice or not, what's the evidence? That's what any biologist wants to say: what is the evidence? If it's a hypothesis, fine, it's a hypothesis. We already have two hypotheses: one is that it couldn't be and the other is that it could be.
Actually, that's probably not a particularly difficult thing to test. If you want to make decisions that are based on science, then who cares what people's opinions are? This is testable.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
Gentlemen, on behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank you very much for taking the time out of your schedules to be with us, discuss your positions, and share your opinions. We really do appreciate it. As you can appreciate from the questions you have received today, the committee is really searching for information, and we appreciate your taking the time to provide that.
Thank you very much, gentlemen.
We will take a short break as we prepare for our next witness.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
I call the meeting back to order.
I would like to welcome Mr. Krkosek.
Mr. Krkosek, I know you were here for the first part of our meeting, so I probably don't need to go through it again. We allow 10 minutes. You'll hear the beeping noise. I know you've already witnessed that here a few times.
Mr. Krkosek, we really appreciate your taking the time today to come and appear before our committee. Hopefully we can have a great discussion and carry it on a little further. I'll turn it over to you at this point, if you'd like to make any opening comments.