Fisheries committee  It's probably one of the main causes of high mortality—at least in the farms, where it's easier to study—compared with all the other agents that usually occur. In the first three months, it's probably the main cause of mortality. There's a pretty acute [Technical difficulty—Editor] mortality.

Fisheries committee  It can happen in every phase, but it's more common in juveniles, yes.

Fisheries committee  This study was actually performed for two years. In the first year, which is the one I have references for, tests were done in a region where there were basically very few, if any, active farms. The permanence of the fish in that area was very short. I don't have the final data for the second year, but the permanence was definitely longer once the farms were actually present.

Fisheries committee  As I said, it's a ubiquitous bacteria, which means it can stay in the water column. Some studies say that it's also in jellyfish. It stays in the water column, and then when fish are stressed and you have intensive farming in a farm.... This is an opportunistic bacteria. When there is something not going properly, it can infect the fish, and then it explodes.

Fisheries committee  No. It's a treatable disease without any antibiotics, but sometimes the treatment has to be prolonged for a long time to resolve the disease.

Fisheries committee  It's usually a pretty acute disease, so we're talking about days.

Fisheries committee  The process as it was set up for those nine reviews was wrong from the start, in the sense that it was already narrowing the scope to only sockeye salmon and only in that region.... They were already positioning themselves for the failure of a meaningful review from the start.

Fisheries committee  There has been an interpretation of the word “endemic” by DFO and the application in this case, because endemic can usually be seen as consistently present in a population, as opposed to epidemic.

Fisheries committee  Yes. The problem is that even if it was endemic—and it's not—there are endemic agents that are a concern. There is IHN, which is another virus that is endemic of the sea and endemic of sockeye, but if they get IHN, they die. It's a measure of concern, even if that agent is endemic.

Fisheries committee  When you have a sustainable activity, it means you have a balance between economic factors, social factors and financial factors. Trying to find the balance among these three big areas is not very easy. Personally I've been struggling to understand what would be a way to address all three factors at the same time.

Fisheries committee  I believe so. We've been trying to do a study directly in that area to assess what the impact was of the agents in that type of population because, as I said, chinook and coho in particular spend a lot of time inside the sound in the first phase of their lives. They are in close contact for a long period of time with the farms that are present in that area, so the impact is definitely prolonged, and that can be detrimental to their survival.

Fisheries committee  No, they don't. The title of the assessments says that the assessments were based on the sockeye salmon and aquaculture in the Discovery Islands, so they don't apply to all the species and they don't apply to all the regions.

Fisheries committee  It's a question for whom?

Fisheries committee  When you empty a farm because of the removal of the fish, you cannot clean the water around the farm. It takes some time to actually go to the base level of agents, remaining food, drugs and whatever is used during the production cycle. Usually, it takes some months. It depends on the tidal flow and how secluded or not the location is.

Fisheries committee  It takes weeks, if not months.