Mail from Alexandra Morton - IS BC an ISA virus suspect area?

IS BC an ISA virus suspect area?

Dear Dr. Bernard Vallat

I am writing to request clarification. Is British Columbia a suspect area for the ISA virus?

We have over 1000 histological reports of “classic” ISA-type lesions from the provincial fish farm vet (Download BCP002864 ) and 5 wild salmon that have recently tested positive via PCR in your reference lab (Download Report 021111.pdf (22.0K)) (Download Ref Lab form for Laboaratory results submitting data to OIE - BC Sockeye salmon smolts - complete.pdf (319.5K)).

Can you define what constitutes a “suspect” case. Reading your OIE ISA information (Download OIE ISA1.pdf (298.8K)) it appears BC may be a suspect region, but I do not see it listed on your WAHID site. Such a designation might help mobilize effective response based on the negative experience other regions of the world have suffered due to spread of ISA virus. There seems an initial grace-period during which the virus remains low-virulence, after which time it has become highly virulent, contagious and damaging.

Can you advise on what exact steps we should take to better understand if ISA virus is in BC waters and how we can best protect this region from the type of epizootic that occurred in Chile? I feel there is a valid urgency to address whether preventative measures should be initiated. Reports on the Chilean experience where some people thought ISA virus was present, but it was not confirmed and then became a serious epidemic serve as a warning.

Can you also confirm that Dr. Fred Kibenge’s lab in Canada remains a reference lab for Infectious Salmon Anemia virus?

Thank you,

Alexandra Morton

PS. read the next blog post following right after this one...

Mail from Alexandra Morton - Open Letter to Minister Ashfield

Open Letter to Minister Ashfield

I would suggest you stop treating us like fools. Your attached letter is grossly inadequate.Download Initial Request for 2011-001-03100.pdf (440.4K) Show us your Moncton test results because your lab is the only one that cannot find ISA virus. I would also suggest you stop obsessing over the quality of the River Inlet samples and go out and get your own samples. You have an entire department at your disposal.

Yesterday I received yet another set of positive ISAv results for salmon of the Fraser River.Download Report231111[13].pdf (15.9K)

You can stop calling the 1st Norwegian tests a "negative" result. Be more accurate and call them what they are - a weak positive. Download Report 021111.pdf (22.0K) You can't wave a magic wand and make black white.

I want to see Dr. Gary's Marty's PCR results. Don't just tell us he tested 5000 fish and got a negative, you need to tell us what segment and what probe, we need details because you are risking our fish with your actions.

As for Dr. Laura Richards, she personally petitioned to waive the Canadian Fish Health Protection Regulations in 2004 so Atlantic salmon eggs could pour in from an unapproved hatchery. That is why her words are meaningless to me. Download 2004 Fish Health1[1].pdf (2176.3K)

There is no reason BC would not have been contaminated by ISAv. Your department left the door wide open! You did not include ISAv on the hatchery import forms, likely because no one can actually sign a document saying there is no ISAv in Atlantic salmon eggs - the virus is that widespread. Your department did not even make ISAv a reportable disease in salmon farms, even as the same companies as use BC waters triggered a massive ISAv epidemic in Chile. This is unconscionable.

Shame on you. As we face grave uncertainty over introduction of the most lethal salmon virus known, you give the salmon farming industry a million dollars to go to trade shows so they can peddle their wares while we pay for the consequences.

In my opinion, Mr. Ashfield you, predecessors and key members of your department belong in court for reckless behaviour risking the most generous gift the people of British Columbia receive every year. You are not here to see communities of people, whales, eagles, bears come to life when the salmon come home. They are much too valuable to be risked by vacuous statements by the likes of you. Either stand up strong and fight for our fish or step down Mr. Ashfield.

Hundreds of British Columbians go into the rivers every year to fight for the wild salmon. We work for the wild salmon because we understand their value and we are not going to let you take this away from us. As hundreds of thousands of sockeye salmon died every year in the Fraser River, before spawning, your department would not give your own scientists the money to find out why and when they came up with a very strong theory you starved them further for funds and locked their voices away from the media. And yet you throw money to the foreign owned salmon feedlot industry.

Please resign and take your senior Pacific Region staff with you. Remove the Pacific Biological Station from political clutches so that they can do the work that needs to be done. We need some people at the helm who want wild salmon to survive and you sir have shown no such ability. Step away from our fish.

Dr. Alexandra Morton

Mail from Alexandra Morton

Hello Wild Salmon People;

The aquaculture hearings begin on Monday, August 22, with hearings on disease.  The legal teams have submitted the material they would like question the witnesses with.  Thus we have tipped our hands, we know what we are up against.  Justice Cohen gets to decide whether documents will be admitted into evidence.  He will decide what the witnesses need to answer to.

On the first panel are four experts in salmon disease.  

Dr. Stewart Johnson, Head of Aquatic Animal Health, DFO, is responsible for understanding the health of the Fraser sockeye.  

Dr. Michael Kent, is a professor at Oregon State University, who used to work for DFO. During that time  he wrote several scientific papers on Salmon Leukemia.  Salmon Leukemia has two other names - Plasmacytoid Leukemia and Marine Anemia. We have already seen evidence that Dr. Miller, the scientist apparently muzzled by the Privy Council, suspected this disease was responsible for the 18-year decline and crash of the Fraser sockeye.  Plasmacytoid  Leukemia arrived on the Fraser sockeye migration route in the early 1990s in Chinook salmon farms. It killed so many farm salmon it threatened the survival of the smaller companies that were operating at that time.  Kent and others tried to figure out what it was. They put it through screens, measured its bouyancy, tested its ability to infect, and arrived at the conclusion that it must be a virus. it did infect sockeye and to a lesser extent Atlantic salmon.  For some reason they never completed this work, leaving this disease difficult to diagnose.

Dr. Christine MacWilliams is a Fish Health vet for DFO's Salmon Enhancement Program.

Dr. Craig Stephens is Director at the Centre for Coastal Health & Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. Co-incidentally he did his PhD Thesis on Plasmacytoid Leukemia!  In a paper he coauthored in 1995 he wrote:

• “Evidence supporting the hypothesis that marine  anemia is a spreading, infectious neoplastic [cell proliferating] disease could have profound regulatory effects on the salmon farming industry” Stephens and Ribble (1995). With Dr. Kent he wrote that the environmental conditions created by intensive aquaculture may have facilitated the emergence of marine anemia. (Stephen, Ribble and Kent, 1996).
• In a statement in his Thesis at the U of Saskatchewan 1995 he wrote: we should be in "...preparation for the possibility of marine anemia becoming a problem for other farmed and wild species."
• Dr. Stephens did publish on a method of diagnosing Salmon Leukemia by examining the kidney. This has been helpful to the salmon farming industry.

Justice Cohen has provided us an interesting panel of experts.  As these hearings proceed it will be a detective effort.  The best fit answer is going to have to explain an 18-year decline of only the sockeye that migrate along eastern Vancouver Island, while other neighbouring runs were unaffected, even increasing.  It will have to account for the 2010 return and a seemingly good run this year. DFO has deemed the 2011 run big enough that several fisheries have been opened.  And the answer will have to fit the timing, behaviour and condition of the Fraser sockeye over this time period.

I am going to try and write blogs as often as possible to keep you informed. We are encouraging a media outlet to live-stream the hearings to a website.  We will also be distributing daily briefings to the public.  First Nations of the Fraser River and the coast will be holding a rally on the 30th. All of this information will be kept updated at www.salmonaresacred.org . 

If any of you can offer support it would help enormously. You can donate via pay pal at www.salmonaresacred.org or send a check to Pacific Coast Wild Salmon Society, Box 399, Sointula, BC V0N 3E0

Stay tuned for a great detective effort into the future one of the last and most generous natural resources on earth - the Fraser sockeye.  Show up if you can, because it is going to make a difference for the witnesses to have your support.

The fish have shown us they can survive with us, now it is time for us to do our part.

Alexandra Morton

http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/