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hardee



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PostPosted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 10:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Couldn't have happened to a more deserving company.

More power to local, wild salmon and eco friendly resources.

Harvey
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Larry H



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PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2018 2:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here is the latest news from Alexandra Morton.

http://blog.alexandramorton.ca/post/2018/05/salmon-farms-secrets-and-exploding-cells/

The same Canadian government ministers that killed the Atlantic Cod fishery are trying to kill the Pacific Salmon and the Orca.

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thataway



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PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2018 6:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Larry thanks for the link. I see a C Dory in the header. I was amazed when I brought up the number of salmon farms in all of the PNW--I have been going into this area since about 1950. Even 25 years ago there were relatively few of the farms.
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robhwa



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PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2018 6:59 pm    Post subject: Salmon vs. Timber Reply with quote

I think you can think of the concept of salmon farming a little like timber in the PNW. The demand has increased over time. The native stocks, like native old-growth forest, and highly protected now. At the current time, essentially all timber is produced on plantations. Essentially zero is cut from native old-growth forest, usually just when a road goes through or an area is developed. Salmon for food are produced from a variety of stocks.

The farming conservation concept is that if we produce salmon in farms, the native runs don't need to be used, and can be protected easier, since we don't need them to meet human food needs. Several important differences...planted Douglas-fir doesn't migrate into a native area and compete, and Douglas-fir planted is the same species as native. Both are not true for salmon, at least salmon that escapes pens and Atlantic vs PNW salmon. Also, we are mixing hatchery PNW salmon in with native salmon.

However, it is clear that we can't be fishing for or eating or exporting salmon to the extent we do currently on native stocks alone. Also, if you think the Wild Salmon people support fishing and eating salmon, get real. Read "Deep Ecology". Many of these people think we are the ones that need to go extinct and that we should not be using salmon (or trees) for any of our human needs. I like to eat salmon, like to fish for them, and spend a lot of money doing both, whether in Puget Sound, our oceans or in Ivar's. I want to continue doing so.
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Larry H



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PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2018 7:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

robhwa,

Did you miss the part where it says that the salmon farms are spreading a disease from Norway which is killing off the native Pacific wild salmon?

That is the problem.

A parallel problem is that to raise farm fish, other food fish and bait fish have to be caught and turned into fish pellets to feed the farm fish.
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robhwa



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PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2018 9:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
robhwa,

Did you miss the part where it says that the salmon farms are spreading a disease from Norway which is killing off the native Pacific wild salmon?

That is the problem.

A parallel problem is that to raise farm fish, other food fish and bait fish have to be caught and turned into fish pellets to feed the farm fish.


REPLY: I appreciate your concern for salmon. Yes, I have read all of these posts. I worry that everyone wants to blame someone else for any problem. We often don't see ourselves and our actions as a problem. We typically focus on someone else, and it is usually a company that is blamed. It is often in the interest of others, in this case, individuals and companies that sell other salmon species, to rid us of that particular "problem".

Examples: Amazon is blamed for homelessness, Weyerhaeuser for habitat destruction, the United States for Iran's and Cuba's economic mess, immigrants for lack of jobs for Americans, the list goes on. I don't buy these either.

I am saying that disease transfers from one species to another are ONE problem. They certainly do not seem to be THE problem with wild salmon, and nobody that spends most of their time working on salmon science would likely say that...but they are handy to blame, and they are a problem. Providing animal protein to salmon from our local fish is also a problem, since it is not available to wild salmon.

Focusing on and eliminating Atlantic salmon farming as THE problem with wild salmon solves little. If the disease problem can be understood, addressed and eliminated it is no longer a problem. And then we still have the jobs.

Sorry that salmon are complex, but eliminating the Atlantic salmon farming industry is not going to solve the problem of dwindling wild salmon any more than eliminating hatchery stocking are, and blaming the Atlantic salmon farming industries IS handy. The list of problems with wild salmon is long, global warming, water flow, culverts, forestry and ag practices, point-source and non point-source pollution, endocrine mimics, parasites, surf perch, cutthroat trout...

It can be said, and some advocate, that we should eliminate any salmon fishing entirely, since we often hook wild salmon (I have many times), and even with careful hook and release, they sometimes die, particularly if you play them to exhaustion. So, is the next step eliminating hatchery stocking, and then on to eliminating sport fishing? Hatchery salmon can also introduce diseases. All are certainly problems with wild salmon. There is no THE problem.

By the way, I don't advocate eliminating stocking or fishing either. I love catching hatchery and wild salmon. I spend a lot of money pursuing them. I will advocate for them when I think my efforts will help. Farmed Atlantic salmon give me no joy at all, but right now they seem somewhat of a red herring for wild salmon problems.
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thataway



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PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2018 10:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

robhwah, excellent points. But you left out over fishing by foreign interests outside (usually) of our territorial waters.... Sad

Certainly if viral diseases and parasites come from the farmed salmon...-- Then that process needs to be quarantined to protect the native species. I detect that some think that virus and parasites are not a threat (?).

We won't eat farmed salmon. We do have a good fish market where fresh wild is flow in, but its pricey. I also was in the PNW a few years back when the price of salmon was a dollar a pound to the fisherman. The trollers could not pay for fuel and maintenance of the boat. Sure the seiners would get that

In my lifetime I have seen many fisheries depleted by over fishing. Granted that on occasion National Fisheries has taken this too far. (maybe). We blame all sorts of factors, but poor management is a major basic cause.

There are many complex social and political issues involved (as you point out).
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AstoriaDave



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PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2018 11:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very good discussion of farmed salmon, in the context of market forces and biological concerns vis-a-vis effects on the viability of commercial and sport take of wild fish.

I live in a coastal city with a rich heritage of commercial harvest of Columbia River salmon, and a growing for hire sport salmon fishery within the river. A six man open sled, at 150 bucks a head, is a pretty efficient machine when run by a knowledgeable guide. Though these two kinds of fishermen disagree violently about the right of the other to earn a living off catching salmon (almost all hatchery-reared fish), both abhor farmed fish, and can orate at length about the drawbacks of farming salmon in open net pens.

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Larry H



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PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2018 11:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The salmon problems are different in the three locations, Washington, BC, Canada, and Alaska. Washington is overpopulated, with fewer spawning streams left. BC is not very populated, but they have damaged their streams with logging. The logging damage is being controlled now, but the fish farms are killing off the native runs.

As far as I know, Alaska still has abundant salmon runs. Alaska hatches salmon and releases them to live wild. When these fish return to their hatchery locations, they are caught by the commercial and sport fishermen. This provides more salmon than just the wild runs do.

Alaska does not allow 'fish farms' like BC, Canada. Alaska does not have the PRV virus and lice problems that BC does.

The PRV virus is imported to Canada from Norway because the Alantic salmon eggs are infected with PRV. After the fish farm industry screwed up Norway, they had to move production to other countries. It appears that the Canadian government has sold out to the fish farm companies.

The problem with salmon is 'humans'. We seem to not care much that we are damaging a natural resource that our future decedents might have to rely on. Native salmon has fed the people and animals and forest of this coast for 10-15,000 years. And we have 'killed' it off in less than 100 years.

This is my opinion.
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Larry H



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PostPosted: Thu May 10, 2018 12:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

On edit: 'descendents' not 'decedents'

(Didn't catch it inside of 30 min.)
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thataway



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PostPosted: Thu May 10, 2018 5:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Or it might be decadents.... In any case this is not unique to the Salmon fisheries. We have the same issues in the Gulf of Mexico. Pensacola's major economy for many years was the red snapper fishery. Now the private for hire season is June 1 to July 22. Commercial and private angling is also severely impacted. Same story with various species of grouper.

In S. Calif during the 1940's we would always catch a barracuda or sea bass trolling on the way to or from Catalina. There were plenty of pink abalone. There was a large sardine fishery which produced almost 800,000 tons a year in the 1930's. There was a fleet of almost 400 "Tuna Clippers" in San Pedro in the mid 20th century--now a handful.

Different politics, and causes--same results. Fishings have all declined.
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thataway



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PostPosted: Thu May 10, 2018 5:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

double post
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robhwa



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PostPosted: Thu May 10, 2018 11:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Or it might be decadents.... In any case this is not unique to the Salmon fisheries. We have the same issues in the Gulf of Mexico. Pensacola's major economy for many years was the red snapper fishery. Now the private for hire season is June 1 to July 22. Commercial and private angling is also severely impacted. Same story with various species of grouper.

In S. Calif during the 1940's we would always catch a barracuda or sea bass trolling on the way to or from Catalina. There were plenty of pink abalone. There was a large sardine fishery which produced almost 800,000 tons a year in the 1930's. There was a fleet of almost 400 "Tuna Clippers" in San Pedro in the mid 20th century--now a handful.

Different politics, and causes--same results. Fishings have all declined.


Excellent points, and perhaps many of the same causes there as here. When I was a child, I fished for striped bass, gathered oysters, and caught blue crabs ad lib in the Chesapeake Bay with my waterman father. The bass and oysters disappeared, and I'm pretty sure overharvesting caused it, but with banning (and enforcement of laws) of collecting oysters and fishing for the bass, they are coming back, particularly farmed (and protected) oysters. Again, overharvest and other causes. Farmed fish had nothing to do with these, and when we eliminate fish farming here, it will not solve or probably even help the problems of salmon decline. It is easy to hate fish farming as a handy scapegoat; however, and exploding fish certainly make great newspaper headlines for activist scientists that want to be in the news and have social causes.

If you want to believe that particular cultures, such as tribes, can't hurt salmon, then you are wrong. I found a free floating gill net that probably had been strung across the Nisqually river and broken free from flooding and washed into Oro Bay, south Puget Sound. Only natives can do this legally, and the practice is incredibly destructive to migrating salmon. The net was full of rotting fish and crabs, and an attraction to live crabs that were tangled. I have removed several lost gill nets, often when scuba diving, and they always contain fish bones, decaying fish and recently killed fish. Not a problem? They are the "gift" that keeps on killing.

Tribal fisherman would be among the ones to most benefit from higher native salmon prices. That said, I admire the way the tribes restrict their almost limitless harvest rights here. As far as I can tell, they have the legal right to pretty much take all of the resource, and they don't.

By the way, PRV appears to be nothing new in farmed or wild stocks. Presence may be universal in salmon, and also common in non-salmon species.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141475

With strong, well-designed, large-scale, scientific research that refutes the assumption of recent introduction of PRV, why would I think a study that picked sick salmon out of pens by an activist who made up their mind a long time ago could be used as a clear conclusion for farmed salmon causing this in wild stocks? Wild salmon are not protected in pens and not fed. Any juvenile that has a defect will be rapidly removed by predators or starvation in the wild. It is very hard to conclude that PRV kills wild salmon when it appears to be present in nearly all of them when studied, as well as trout and other fish species.

I won't discount that there are different strains of PRV, just like there are strains of flu, and I won't state definitively that it isn't a problem. I don't know, but an activist scientist will typically not say that. They KNOW.
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thataway



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PostPosted: Fri May 11, 2018 10:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Robhwa, good article and excellent points. A more global approach (might be biased because by Government sources.) is here by Fisheries and Oceans Canada

A question I have after reading that and several other articles--what is the history of Heart and skeletal muscle inflammatory disease, the hemolytic diseases and liver failure associated with PRV, prior to 1999? Fish farming in BC began in 1970 and by 1993, when were began regular cruising in the area, was common. It is entirely possible that a vector such as the herring or other food fish is a vector in the spread of the diseases.

It seems as if the mortality and unsuitability for market is much higher in the farmed fish. Your points about natural selection are well taken. I would think the density of the farmed fish would lead to a more rapid spread, and more overt disease, as happened in Norway.

The last paragraph of your linked article:
Quote:
Little genetic differentiation was observed among sequence types since 2001. This suggests that the circulating virus sequence types are relatively stable in western North American Pacific waters and rules out a recent introduction of PRV into the western North Pacific as suggested by Kibenge et al [10]. However, the mechanisms by which the virus is globally distributed, as well as transmission pathways remain to be elucidated.
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robhwa



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PostPosted: Fri May 11, 2018 12:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
A question I have after reading that and several other articles--what is the history of Heart and skeletal muscle inflammatory disease, the hemolytic diseases and liver failure associated with PRV, prior to 1999? Fish farming in BC began in 1970 and by 1993, when were began regular cruising in the area, was common. It is entirely possible that a vector such as the herring or other food fish is a vector in the spread of the diseases.

It seems as if the mortality and unsuitability for market is much higher in the farmed fish. Your points about natural selection are well taken. I would think the density of the farmed fish would lead to a more rapid spread, and more overt disease, as happened in Norway.


I haven't found much about PRV studies in prior years. Probably no knowledge on that. Remember that a lot of the genetic techniques (Polymerized chain reaction, etc.) of identifying viruses and strains are pretty recent, and only very recently common and now relatively inexpensive. My daughter was using these genetic techniques the other day in her lab at the U Washington in Seattle. It wasn't even available when I was her age.

The study I referenced mentioned using archived samples taken during times when methods used weren't so easy. There is some potential for getting very old cans of salmon, etc., and seeing if the virus was present a long time ago, but I am not a salmon scientist and unaware of any studies older than the one I referenced in the region. PRV was identified by other methods earlier, but not much earlier. Maybe if I dig some of those freezer-burne Alaska salmon out of the bottom of my deep freeze....

Farmed salmon are clearly are closed in, may or may not be under more stress (being protected, treated with antibiotics and fed may be less stressful than under predation and near starving?), but population density probably outweighs any of these for virus spread and concentration in tissue. Research results bear this out...the virus spreads easier in pens, and can spread from pens to nearby areas.

There is a correlation between distance to farmed salmon and concentration of PRV. There is no established relationship between concentration of PRV and disease, though it probably makes sense. You find few deformed and diseased fish in the wild, so you can't do a controlled study as you can in pens. Deformed and diseased wild fish don't survive. Actually, if we think of food for Orcas, it is probably the weak salmon that get eaten first. Diseased and deformed fish in pens can survive to be picked out and displayed. All salmon are sorted and rated similar to apples in Wenatchee. The best are sorted out and sold to stores and restaurants whole and maybe exported. In Wenatchee the deformed apples are turned into juice. I don't know what happens to the lesser quality fish, wild or farmed.

PRV is in Alaska, BC, Washington, Chilean, Norwegian, pretty much any fish, not just salmon that has been tested for it. Indeed, it may be the flu virus of fish? I am just speculating on that. I have opinions too. Another factor, identical to flu, is that there are strains, and all aren't likely of similar infectiousness or effect. Again, speculation.

A fish biologist recently told me that fish farming is alive and well in Alaska, producing a billion pounds of product per year, but trying to keep out of the spotlight, and salmon farming is not common and being phased out due to political pressure and the pristine image of wild Alaska salmon.

The image of wild Alaska salmon is somewhat deserved. I can and do pay dearly for it, perhaps a hundred dollars a pound when you think of the costs of going there and fishing, licenses, etc. I am lucky. I can take a filet my family caught out of that deep freeze and prepare it almost any time I want. However, many people don't have the luxury of paying an extremely high price, and farmed salmon in Washington provide jobs and cheaper access to salmon. Eliminating farmed salmon will drive up the price of salmon overall. That is easy for us to force on people when we have the ability to pay for and operate C-Dorys. If we can afford that we can afford a higher price for salmon.

I do not like salmon farming. I not not eat farmed salmon. I do farm oysters and clams on my floats and tidelands and all are not native except the Olympia oyster, which is unproductive. When is the last time anyone ate a native Washington oyster in a restaurant? Whey do many people think differently about farmed shellfish?

My opinions are not entirely based on science. I just think blaming farmed salmon on the decline of wild salmon in general probably misses many of the real issues. Salmon farming is a handy scapegoat when tribal fisheries, commercial fisheries, sport fisheries, and many, many other factors also lead to the decline of salmon.

I do believe that everyone that posted here has the interest of wild salmon, either hatchery stocked or native spawned, at heart. Most of us probably fish, all of us boat, and we want to keep doing so. If we catch or eat salmon, or run our boats, and I do all of these, we are part of the problem, but if we can help with other issues (i.e. habitat, pollution, science, hatcheries, paying for enforcement), we can also be part of solutions.

This is my last post on this. I appreciate everyone's comments and opinions. I'm sure we will see more on this issue in the future, and I am looking forward to the annual run of chinook, coho, and hopefully, lots and lots and lots of pinks, running by my shore. I would fight tooth and nail to keep salmon farming out of Oro Bay, that is for sure. However, I don't think I will have to.
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