Thank you for this opportunity.
My name is Michelle Young and I work with the Georgia Strait Alliance as a salmon aquaculture campaigner. GSA works on a wide range of issues affecting the marine environment in this region, but I'll be talking about fish farms.
A good part of my job is spent researching what is actually happening on the salmon farms, watching for issues of concern, such as the levels of lice on farms when stock are treated and fish are harvested, stocking levels, escapes of fish, disease outbreaks, and so on. Through my experience, I've seen a lack of transparency in this industry.
In recent years the two major fish farm companies in B.C. began publishing their sea lice data on their websites. Marine Harvest has been doing so the longest and has the most comprehensive data. Mainstream Canada began publishing their data this year. However, these data are so minimal that they provide little useful information and can sometimes be misleading. They only report adult and pre-adult stages of lice, and only for one of the two species of lice commonly found on salmon farms. To my knowledge, no one has researched the impact of that second species of lice, a general species known as caligus, and what effect it has on herring and other fish in relation to the presence of those fish farms.
Under the precautionary principle, should we allow those farms to continue to be there if we haven't even asked those questions yet?
Just last week I was researching lice levels in farms in the Discovery Islands area, and the Mainstream Brent Island farm actually showed zero lice in October in their data. But it's more likely that they didn't do a count, because they are harvesting and they don't have to count when they go below three pens of fish. I went out there, and they still have three pens of untreated fish, and we don't know how many lice are on that farm, which is very concerning.
The Mainstream farm just across Okisollo Channel at Venture Point treated those fish in September, but their chart doesn't show how high the lice levels peaked, and what dates they counted and treated those fish, or what levels the lice are at now and how long they took to come down after they had treated the fish. Grieg Seafood also has a farm in Okisollo Channel, but they don't report any sea lice data to the public.
The reason I'm concerned about these particular farms is that they are very close to the Marine Harvest farm in Okisollo Channel, which has just reported 22 motile Lepeophtheirus per fish in September. These high levels are occurring in the Wild Salmon Narrows, where we are asking to have five farms removed as an emergency measure. This is a critical migration route for wild juvenile salmon, including Fraser River sockeye, and yet it's virtually impossible for us to know what's going on at these farms.
There are at least four other farms in the Discovery Islands area right now that have exceeded three motile lice, with two others trending up and not showing any count for October.
While we hear a lot about the industry's ability to control sea lice during the juvenile salmon out-migration, sea lice levels still spike, and there are still juvenile salmon in the area right now. There is currently no evidence that anyone has sampled juvenile salmon in the Discovery Islands for sea lice at this time of year.
These elevated levels are occurring just as a new study was published last week on lice levels in this very same area, showing there are higher levels of sea lice in areas with net-cage salmon farms in B.C. They were highest in the Discovery Islands, where salmon farming is most intense.
Last year a think tank of scientists convened at SFU regarding the declining Fraser River sockeye and released a report on what they concluded should be done for these fish. Among the recommendations was the precautionary removal of salmon farms along sockeye migration routes, which is consistent with our request to move these five farms in the Wild Salmon Narrows.
Summarized regional disease data in B.C.'s annual fish health reports are also touted as a fish farm version of transparency. We need to see all of the data to be able to assess the potential impacts. We must know as a minimum which diseases occurred on which farms, how long the diseased fish are in the water, and what is done in the way of prevention treatments and quarantine of these diseases. While new federal regulations are being developed, the veil of secrecy over these fish farm diseases needs to be lifted. We need detailed and timely farm-by-farm disease and sea lice data, but also bycatch stocking and escape data, as well as advance notice of drug and chemical use for people harvesting seafood in those areas at the same time.
To achieve greater transparency, DFO must impose greater scrutiny over this industry and end its promotion of current practices, such as the information that is on their web page, “Myths and Realities about Salmon Farming”, which I encourage you take a look at if you haven't done so.
DFO should not promote an agenda of expanding fish farms with so many unanswered questions, especially while the Cohen inquiry is going on and while federal regulations are being drafted. DFO needs to protect our marine resources with emergency removal of net cages from wild salmon migration routes, including the Wild Salmon Narrows, and immediately begin the transition of this industry into closed containment while providing both regulatory and financial support.