Evidence of meeting #26 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was farms.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Is there science on the impact of farming, and particularly runoff from farms into, say, the Fraser River?
5:10 p.m.
Regional Director General, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Absolutely. That's not my area of expertise. I don't know if any of the panel members would view that. There certainly have been a lot of studies. I've seen them myself.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
That would be something that the DFO would do or have a handle on.
5:10 p.m.
Regional Director General, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
There would be the interface where B.C. would be looking at farm runoff, as an example, and ways to mitigate it. We would be looking at the management of the fish, the impact on the habitat.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
There are no ongoing discussions between you and British Columbia so we're all working—
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
No problem.
We'll now go to Mr. Calkins for five minutes or less, please.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to go back to finish up on a conversation with Dr. Miller-Saunders. We were talking about the nidovirus in the hatcheries. When did you first discover this? When did you first find out? When was it common knowledge that this virus has been present in some of our hatcheries?
5:10 p.m.
Research Scientist, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
About two and a half years ago we discovered the nidovirus. We did a study where we looked at the distribution of the nidovirus in the Quinsam system, where we had samples in the hatchery, both of wild fish and hatchery fish. We followed them through their migration out into the marine environment and first observed the nidovirus in wild fish after they'd come in contact with hatchery fish in the early marine environment. Then we saw a rapid decrease in the prevalence of the virus within the first three weeks or four weeks in the ocean, which could be either mortality or because they have cleared the virus. At that particular point, when fish are so stressed in trying to adjust to a new salinity environment, we are very interested in the potential for that being mortality.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Has that virus, do you think, always been there and we've just found or discovered it because we just looked for it? What's the baseline? Are we starting to establish a baseline? Give me a sense of where this whole thing is at, because it all seems relatively new to me, and I'm not sure that it's not always been there.
5:10 p.m.
Research Scientist, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
We are trying to establish a baseline. One of the ways you can determine how long a virus may have been here is through sequencing. You look at the depth of the sequencing phylogeny for the virus, and we do know that there are different variants. We do see some depth in the sequences that suggest that they've been here for a period of time.
We are planning to carry out more sequencing and do a more robust phylogenetic analysis like we've done with PRV. We'll be having a paper on that coming out in a couple of weeks where we can really look more holistically at the distribution across the province and in fish from Washington as well, because we capture them along our coast, and try to get an idea of the depth of how long that virus may have been here and whether it likely evolved here on this coast.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Is there any suggestion that the movement from fresh water to salt water might help the salmon when it comes to fighting the virus? Have we been able to collect any samples of any of the material or tissue in salt water and compare it with what you found in juveniles or returning salmon in fresh water?
5:15 p.m.
Research Scientist, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
We did a little bit of work with the early version of our FIT-CHIP a couple of years ago. One of the things that we did see in the fish was a shift in the timing of osmoregulation. Because the virus infects the gill—and we've been able to show that through viral imaging under the microscope as well as our molecular work—we are concerned that the virus may disrupt the ability of fish to shift to becoming full smolts. If it does disrupt their ability to smolt, it could disrupt their ability to adapt to the salinity in the environment, and that in and of itself is a huge detriment to survival.
In all our work in FIT-CHIP's data thus far, osmoregulatory failure and osmotic stress appear to be the most closely linked with survival, of all the stressors we've looked at—more so even than temperature.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Do you think this virus is stress related and that changing some of the rearing structures at a hatchery might help with this virus?
5:15 p.m.
Research Scientist, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I think one thing that could potentially help that's been happening for the last couple of years, in part from the department's work on PRV, is getting the hatcheries to make sure that they're disinfecting their eggs as much as they can to remove the potential for viral transmission, vertical transmission, from the females to the progeny. That certainly could decrease the level of the virus.
One reason that a hatchery might carry a virus more than wild fish is just the high density environment, so it's easy to spread. We don't really know a lot about vertical transmission of this particular virus, but it is possible that vertical transmission is a major source of transmission, and that, if they were to treat the eggs well, they could reduce the incidence of the virus in the hatcheries.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Mr. Calkins. You're a little bit over the time.
We'll now to to Mr. Morrissey for five minutes or less, please.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Thank you again, Chair.
I must say I've been most impressed with the level of competency we've seen before this committee of the DFO personnel who have appeared from the scientific and research community.
Dr. Miller-Saunders, I'm impressed with your passion for the science that you're doing here and the cause that's at hand. I truly hope that the groups that come together utilize the great resource that has been on display before this committee, namely, within the scientific branch of DFO, on a host of very.... We may not agree; we may not like the message, but it's clear, from the witness I've been listening to here, that you're bringing it forward in a non-biased stance. I think that's extremely important. The decision-makers simply have to listen.
I would like you to comment on the following, because we often hold Norway up as the gold standard on getting it right. You made a comment earlier that we are ahead of Norway. I would like to know where we're ahead of Norway and in which particular areas.
5:15 p.m.
Research Scientist, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Well, one of the difficulties that Norway has in studying disease impacts in wild fish is that there are so few fish out there for them to capture and study. They've been limited to looking at migrating adults that are returning to spawn or at juveniles that are going out, but they are really unable to catch fish in the ocean because they're just not dense enough.
My work with them has been to recapitulate some of the tracking studies that have been merged with FIT-CHIP and infectious agent monitoring, and also to look at the role of exposure to farms. They have been doing tracking studies on where fish go and their migratory behaviour, but they've never been able to link physiology, disease and those kinds of aspects in those studies. Our program focuses on non-lethal detection of infection and stress, so we're able to carry out these studies on fish populations of conservation concern without mortality to those fish. That's where I think Canada is absolutely ahead of the game. It's not only because of my research but also the work that I do with universities, which are really leading the charge when it comes to the tracking studies. This is a game-changer, to be able to actually study these processes in a non-lethal way. It's like taking a saliva test in a human.
5:20 p.m.
Research Scientist, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
It's completely new, yes. Our first publication on the merging of tracking studies with non-lethal physiological samplings came in the science paper that I published back in 2011. That was the very first time this kind of technology had been utilized. Our technology has evolved a lot since then and our genomic technology is much more targeted to specific signatures of stress and disease. It's a lot more powerful than what we had back in 2011 and it's going to be a game-changer in terms of what we understand.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Do you have more ability today or going forward to focus on that level of research?
5:20 p.m.
Research Scientist, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I certainly hope so. I do have some funding from the Pacific Salmon Foundation to continue in that level of research. I know that the Pacific salmon strategy has a placeholder for that kind of work, but whether or not that work actually gets funded, I don't know yet.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
You feel it's very important to fund that level of scientific research.