Fisheries Committee on April 12th, 2010

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Morton, for coming to the committee and providing your information and testimony. I have a couple of questions for you.

I want to read a comment that we heard at this committee. As you know, aquaculture is one of the possible causes of the decline of the Fraser River sockeye run last year. It was devastated. At a recent hearing, the committee heard that DFO did not “have information that suggests that the presence of fish farms is causing a decline in the wild salmon populations in British Columbia right now”. Could you comment on that statement, as well as, turning to sea lice specifically, sea lice outbreaks?

I have two other questions.

Apparently, a while back, there was a fish farm on the west coast that was about to be charged for a violation. Do you know anything about that case, and if so, could you comment on it?

And finally, sea lice outbreaks have occurred elsewhere in the world, so I wonder if you could comment on the link between those sea lice outbreaks around the world and infestations as they affect our wild salmon populations or other fish populations.

[Alexandra Morton]

Yes, DFO is a bit schizophrenic at this point. I would say the guys on the ground are seeing evidence, but that information never seems to get to the top. So the fact that DFO has no evidence is irrelevant, in my mind.

First of all, they don't know what diseases are on these farms. Second, they had a front seat on the sea lice epidemics of the Broughton. There was enormous evidence that it was the fish farms, because in 2003 they took all the farms off the migration route, and the number of pink salmon that survived and came back from that generation was greater than ever recorded in the history of studying pink salmon.

That's a paper, actually, by Dr. Dick Beamish. What Beamish took from that study was that fish farms and wild salmon can survive together. That was a very flawed jump in reasoning because what had happened that year in fact was that the fish farms had been removed.

There's a lot of evidence that the farms are affecting the wild salmon. There are a tremendous number of holes in our knowledge about what is going on in these farms for viruses and bacteria.

I don't know which farm was going to be charged. I certainly hope it was the Esperanza site in the Nootka Sound area because they had over 40 lice per fish average; they treated it with a drug and got it down to nine, which is still over the provincial limit, and they immediately started killing their fish. So they got most of them out in time, but I have a crew out there right now, and we're finding that lineage of drug resistant lice on small fish.

Mr. Swerdfager says it's very difficult to test for resistance to sea lice. That's not true. It's actually extremely simple. I don't have the budget or capacity to do it myself. I tried but was unable to do that.

In terms of what is happening globally, let me just say that when I first found sea lice on salmon in 2001, I wrote to scientists in Norway and they taught me how to study them. I wrote them and said we had sea lice all over our young salmon. The first thing the guy asked when he wrote back was, do you have fish farms? So it's very well recognized over there.

I would also point you to a recent release by the United Kingdom's Salmon and Trout Association. One of their patrons is Prince Charles. They have a great condemnation of fish farms; they say they are responsible for destroying wild salmon and trout stocks.

It's interesting, because the relationship between salmon farms and governments everywhere has been extremely tight. Some people are calling it collusion. It seems to be the way they operate. But if you talk to the scientists and the fishery people, like the fishermen or in Europe where they own fisheries, they're all seeing a very strong link: as soon as you put these farms in, you've got a decline in the wild fish; as soon as you take them out, it's coming back.

It's such a simple biological reason. Salmon farms break natural laws that wild salmon have to obey. They have to move; they have to have the predators getting the sick fish. It cannot be crowded near the rivers. I mean, imagine this. All these salmon come home every fall and they die. Why would nature kill a fish that went all the way out into the open Pacific and then made its way all the back to its spawning grounds? This is a successful animal. Nature should preserve that fish and send it out again. But instead, it's dead. And the reason is to break the cycle of disease. So you can't just go along now and break these laws and expect there not to be a problem. We have the problem. We just need to follow the natural laws of the salmon.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Calkins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you, Alexandra, for being here. We've met before. I'm not sure if you recall, but I'm certainly interested in asking you a few questions. And I'm very interested in the issue.

My background, just to let you know, is that I have a zoology degree in fisheries and aquatic sciences from the University of Alberta. I've worked as a fisheries technician for Alberta Fish and Wildlife and a conservation officer in the province of Alberta. I've also been a fishing guide. So I've got a lot of interest, particularly in a fish that has a sport fishing value, which of course our Pacific salmon do.

I know you've got a great set of credentials, but if you wouldn't mind, could you just share that for the sake of the committee, so that we can have it as a matter of record?

[Alexandra Morton]

You bet.

I don't have a great set of credentials. I have been doing this for a long time. I'm a registered professional biologist, and I've now written 17 scientific papers that have been published. As a result, Simon Fraser University is giving me an honorary doctorate of science in June.

I've often apologized for my credentials, but Dr. Daniel Pauly, who is one of the best-known scientists in the world and a fishery scientist, told me not to do that. He said, “If you are doing science and it is being published, it has undergone peer review; people with credentials are examining and picking apart your work, particularly controversial work”--as in the case of the science paper, where we actually predicted an extinction. That was an uncomfortable thing for the journal to consider. So they took our data and sent it to Dr. Ray Hilborn, who's also one of the more illustrious scientists on fisheries in the world. He ran the data and got the same results we did.

That is how people attack me--with my credentials--but the science stands. It has now been replicated around the world by my colleagues from many universities, including the University of Alberta.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I appreciate that. I appreciate your honesty. If you're a registered professional biologist, I know that has some meaning.

How many journals have you been published in, and how many periodicals have you had? You said 17. Is that correct?

[Alexandra Morton]

It would take a minute to list all the journals, but they include the North American Journal of Fisheries Management, Alaskan journals, the journal Science, the ICES Journal of Marine Science in Europe, and many others.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Do you include the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences?

[Alexandra Morton]

Yes.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

That's good.

As a person who obviously takes a science-based approach to this--as somebody who thinks probably along the same lines--it's a very analytical type of process. You've stumbled across this lice issue as a part of your whale research, if I can be so bold as to make that statement.

You mentioned that you have a bunch of colleagues who work with you on various studies. Could you tell the committee who you collaborate with? Do you simply study the issue from the perspective of lice? Do you take into consideration other environmental factors?

The Pacific Ocean is a big experimental jar; it's a big lab, if I can put it that way. A lot of information has come to me. For example, I've read reports and heard that water temperature might be affecting some of the runs. I have an article here today that some research going on gives some astounding numbers. It shows that seals in some of these rivers have killed up to 10,000 adult chum salmon per seal; and on the way out, salmon fry were basically eaten like popcorn by seals. They take 60 to 70 fry a minute.

Can you tell us how some of this other information coincides with what you're saying? Your perspective seems to be solely focused on sea lice. I respect the fact that's the issue you're working on, but can you elaborate on how your research and that of some of your colleagues might be looking at these other issues as well?

[Alexandra Morton]

You bet. First of all, I'd like to say I'm not just fixated on sea lice. There are all the pathogens from salmon farms. We really do have to consider the bacteria and viruses.

Water temperature and salinity are two of the big factors in a sea louse's life. He can't survive--he dies in fresh water and survives better and better as the water becomes more salty. So in the saltier years, you get a higher rate. In the colder years, growth slows down, but they're still out there.

It's like a cornfield. If you have bad conditions and you have no corn in that dirt, you will not get corn plants. But if you put your corn seeds in and you have a great year, you're going to have a beautiful corn crop. If you have a frozen year or flash floods, your corn crop is going to be poor. It's the same with the sea lice. Those other variables affect it, but they're not supposed to be there. They're not supposed to be in the inshore waters. People have argued that they are buried in the mud as adults when the Pacific fish go in, but nobody can find them in the mud.

So we do what we do. Obviously, when those journals review us, they are looking for every other reason, and they pick us apart, and those variables are important.

I think you jumped a little bit to the Fraser sockeye and temperature. I've had the privilege of attending two meetings organized by Simon Fraser University. DFO couldn't be there because of the inquiry, but other than that, everyone whose life is figuring out how many sockeye are going to come back, including the Pacific Salmon Commission scientists and the Simon Fraser University scientists, has been there. They say that in-river temperature has not been a variable, particularly in 2009. Ocean temperature was good in 2009. Plankton was good in some areas in 2009. They had all these things that could be designated green, yellow, or red, and for 2009, they were green, green, green. They actually saw the fish leave the river, and they were bigger than normal, and more abundant than normal because this certain lake is not glaciating as much, and it's more productive. That's another issue. In any case, lots of them went out.

They said to me that something has happened in the last decade and a bit that has made the modelling process of how many sockeye are going to come back not work. There's some new variable they say they can't explain. So when I went in front of them, the first thing they said to me was, “Oh, Alex, you've got to get off your sea lice agenda”, and I was like, “Yes, I understand that, but just hear me out for 10 minutes”. I talked about the biological laws of these fish and the diseases that are happening. Imagine, in 2003, 12 million Atlantic salmon were infected with IHN virus, and it was jumping farm to farm to farm. This paper showed that. When they brought their smolt boats through, just sucking water up, they got infected, and they brought it to my home in the Broughton and put it in Simoom Sound, and seven more farms got infected. It would be unrealistic to imagine that our wild fish were swimming through that and not getting infected as well. IHN is deadly to salmon and to herring.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

If that's the case--and correct me if I'm wrong--I don't know of any differentiation. I don't know if a sea louse differentiates between a sockeye and a pink. I don't think it does, but I could be wrong. If that were the case, then some of the things we're seeing.... You do have baseline data you can look at where migratory runs go nowhere near a particular fish farm and we're seeing low sockeye returns or different variances on returns in those as well--for example, the Skeena. Am I missing something in the life cycle such that the pinks can come back in record numbers but the sockeye can't, though they're still sharing the same Pacific Ocean in roughly the same timeframe?

[Alexandra Morton]

A couple of things are going on there. First of all, the pinks that came back last year went out in a different year, so we have yet to see the result for the sockeye. Those pinks went out in 2008, so it's a different story with the pinks all together. The fish farmers drug their fish from Campbell River to Port Hardy, and we got the pinks through and they came back.

The Skeena River, as I understand, dropped by about 50%, which is biologically a very different situation from the 98% drop we saw in some of the runs of sockeye—and it was the big runs, which is why it brought the whole thing down.

But think for a minute what happens. When our sockeye leave the Fraser River, most of them go up through Campbell River and then they leave Vancouver Island and keep on going. They run through the River's Inlet sockeye and they mingle with the Skeena sockeye and then they arc around the Pacific Ocean and do a couple of loop-de-loops and then they come back down.

I'm not saying I'm right, but if you go with the theory that it's disease, you have all these sockeye that potentially have disease moving through the farms, and they go up the coast. They're carrying the disease with them. That's maybe why there is a diminishing effect as you get farther up the coast.

My point really is that until we know what is going on in those farms and coming out of those effluent pipes, people like me can come up with any theory we want. But there is a way around this. If we get the fish farmers to tell us what has gone on in those farms for 10 years and we compare that to what has gone on in our enhancement hatcheries—because those are fish we handle, and we really know what's going on—you can track strains of disease. We do it with H1N1. We can do it with fish, but we're not doing it. There is this veil of secrecy, and try as we might, we are not allowed to know what's going on inside those farms. We're just starting to get a little bit of sea lice information, but it's packaged in a way that's very difficult to use.

So until they come forward with their information, my theory is really about the strongest one out there, unfortunately.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Byrne.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you again, Ms. Morton.

On the issue of finding the truth, are you confident from what you know to date about the terms of reference and the mandate of the Cohen commission, the Fraser River sockeye salmon inquiry...? Would you be able to describe for the committee anything positive you feel about the nature of that inquiry and any concerns you may have?

Specifically, is it your feeling that the Cohen commission has or has not the capacity, the jurisdiction, and the legal opportunity to investigate the conduct of salmon aquaculture farms and reveal the information that you have just described as needing to be revealed?

[Alexandra Morton]

I take great hope with the Cohen inquiry. Unfortunately, I've seen many government studies sidelined, so I'm not confident. But they do have the power, as I understand it, to get these disease records and to question some DFO scientists who I think need to be questioned.

I am concerned that they chose a biologist who has already published a report in which he gives his own theory as to what happened to the sockeye salmon. I think they should have picked a biologist who was neutral.

But that said, British Columbia has put a lot of faith in this. There are many people eager to get to work on it. Judge Cohen seems to be a very thorough and excellent choice. So I am optimistic, but their choice of biologist is a concern to me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much.

Monsieur Lévesque.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good day, Ms. Morton.

Further to a recent decision by the Supreme Court of British Columbia, a new system is slated to be put in place by December 2010 to manage the aquaculture industry. I will ask my questions in quick succession, as I only have five minutes, which isn't much time.

Firstly, in your opinion, is the federal government ready for this deadline? Secondly, did you take part in the consultations leading up to the new federal aquaculture regulations? Finally, did the federal government have a choice other than to move forward with this file? For example, could something else have altered the federal government's decision to move forward? You can respond.

[Alexandra Morton]

I'm not confident they'll be ready, particularly since first nations seem to have opposed the most recent draft. I have participated in those consultations as a member of the public.

I have said to Mr. Swerdfager again and again that he has to consider it might not be possible to have this industry in the ocean and also have wild fish. There might not be a way to manage it as long as they use the net pens.

I'm sorry, I didn't grasp the third question.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Did the federal government have a choice other than to move forward with this file?

[Alexandra Morton]

As I understand it, the federal government can do whatever they want with this industry. I would really like to see the Fisheries Act applied, and if they don't meet that bar, if they simply need to get out of the ocean, I think the support this would have would be enormous. But at the same time, take care of those families, because government, as I see it, made a big mistake here.

We were warning them. I was warning them from 1989 not to put them on the migration route. If you want to gamble with this industry, fine, but you've got to have your ace in the hole. You want to have the wild fish coming and going undisturbed. But because government did not listen to anybody and we've got to this point, there are now families who have mortgages and they're very dependent on the industry, so please take care of them.

I think the federal government does have a broad range of choices, and one of them is simply that there is no right way to do the wrong thing. Holding these things in net pens--Atlantic salmon on top of it--is incredibly risky in what we know in the world of biology today.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Morton.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Donnelly.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You commented earlier about SLICE and you said it was a temporary solution. I'm wondering what in your mind is a permanent solution.

In working with the fish farm companies or the aquaculture companies, I'm wondering how available they're making critical information to you and to the public that you feel is important for the public to know.

The committee is considering initiating both the study on aquaculture across Canada and a study on the Pacific salmon in B.C. I'm wondering what advice you would give the committee before it proceeds with these studies.

Finally, in terms of turning to the inquiry, over a 12-year period, from 1992 to 2004, four post-sockeye fishery season inquiries were called. A total of 96 recommendations were generated. The Williams inquiry acknowledged that DFO had largely responded to the recommendations of earlier reviews. I'm wondering if you could comment on that and what your evaluation or assessment of the federal government's response to these recommendations in past inquiries has been.

[Alexandra Morton]

The permanent solution to preventing lice from becoming resistant to drugs and therefore killing our wild salmon is to put a complete barrier between the wild and farmed fish. That's the only thing that needs to happen here on all of the issues of waste and disease and impact. We just need a solid barrier; just separate the two.

The salmon farms have been extraordinarily resistant in providing information, which I find appalling because they are operating in public waters and the public should know. My community is never told when they are applying drugs. There are all kinds of warnings on these drug bags about handling, and yet people are eating food—clams for first nations, prawns and crabs in commercial fisheries and sport fisheries.

You should talk to Dr. Larry Dill from Simon Fraser University. He was heading up the BC Pacific Salmon Forum, a big study that went on in British Columbia with John Fraser. He quit because of the salmon farms' completely uncooperative nature. They do release a little sea lice information now, but to do scientific tests you have to have individual farms and dates, and the way they clump things makes it impossible for scientists to use the data in their models.

I hope you will look at salmon aquaculture or at what is happening with our Pacific salmon on the west coast. People feel it is the same treatment the east coast got with their cod, when you lost an enormous industry with hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs.

My advice would be to go to the senior scientists in this province who have dealt with this and to retired government employees who have dealt with it. People have sent me memos written for the last 20 years. The provincial Ministry of Environment fought hard to keep Atlantic salmon farming out. They did not want Atlantic salmon in this province. Even Pat Chamut, as director general of Fisheries and Oceans for the Pacific region, tried to prevent egg imports, and gradually you can see how he was eroded and in the end allowed a lot of eggs to come in. I would go back into history a little bit and look at it.

In terms of the four reviews and the recommendations, I see the same thing in salmon farming, where there are all these recommendations made, lots of money spent studying, and very little done, but I would argue that those reviews did not include salmon aquaculture or the disease epidemics that were occurring there, and if these are indeed our problem, none of the recommendations that were taken will fix the problem. For example, reducing the commercial fishery has been tried. There was no commercial fishery last year, and it has been very low for years now. If commercial fishing were the problem, its reduction should be allowing the salmon to return.