No Farm – More Lice: Sea West News in BC reports that the anti-salmon farm activists continue to distort the data to attack BC salmon farmers. They say that the activists have long weaponised misconception to vilify aquaculture. By oversimplifying complex ecological dynamics, they perpetuate the myth that when salmon farms are removed sea lice numbers drop and wild salmon numbers rise.
The latest data published by BC Salmon Farmers for the Broughton Archipelago during 2024 demonstrates that salmon farms do not drive sea lice levels of wild fish as the variability in the percentage of sea lice on wild salmon remains unchanged despite the removal of salmon farms in the area as shown in the following graph:
The activists got very excited in 2023 because sea lice numbers dropped as production fell as this fall appeared to verify their claims. However, as production fell further, sea lice numbers have not fallen further but have increased to above average levels. Chum salmon have shown a prevalence of 40,7% (average 32,1%) and pink salmon 40.3% (average 29.1%).
Sea West News have also provided a link to the Salmon Coast Field Station who have also reported the results of their sea lice data. None of the sites they sampled in 2024 had a salmon farm anymore. They say that of the pink and chum salmon examined, 65% had at least one sea louse and louse counts average 1.56 lice per fish. They say that levels of L. salmonis lice remained low as expected with the removal of the salmon farms, however, the generalised C. clemensi which is associated with Pacific herring was higher than in recent years. This they attribute to high herring numbers in the Broughton in 2024.
Whenever I have analysed data, I have tended to focus on L salmonis as this species is the one that mainly impacts salmon farms. However, the Salmon Coast Field Station dataset includes both species and thus it is interesting to look at infestation rates of wild salmon of both.
Since the Salmon Coast Field Station began sampling wild salmon in 2001, they have sampled just over 53,000 fish of which 60% carried no L salmonis lice. Over the same period, 85% of the fish were free of C clemensi lice.
In 2023, 2457 wild fish were sampled and 80% of the fish were free of L salmonis and 96% were free of C clemensi lice.
However, in 2024 with 3080 fish sampled, the percentage of fish that were free of L salmons fell to 51% which suggests that the Salmon Coast Field Station researchers claims that levels of this species remained low was being a little optimistic. By comparison the percentage of fish carrying no C clemensi fell to 63%. The Salmon Coast Field Station researchers may be right and this increase in infestation may be due to the presence of increased numbers of Pacific herring, but what has that to do with salmon farms?
I was interested to see that on social media, the boss of Mainstream Biologicals in BC who undertakes some of the counts has challenged Alexandra Morton of the Salmon Coast Field Station to a debate on why lice counts remain high after salmon farms are removed. He has suggested that they can sell tickets for charity.
Just as the Atlantic Salmon Trust charity auction has closed, this has prompted me to think that why can’t such a charity debate take place in Scotland. I would be happy to take on anyone from ASTR, Wild Fish, FMS etc etc. Surely, this is a better way to raise funds than auctioning off fishing trips aimed at catching our threatened wild salmon. I will report back but those reading this shouldn’t hold their breath in anticipation of a good night out.
Meanwhile, the fact that sea lice counts on wild salmon remain high after the closure of salmon farms should be of major interest to SEPA. However, the management of the Sea Lice Risk Framework is so dependent on their model rather than what is actually happening in the natural environment, that this news, like other real-life evidence, will not even be considered.
More workshops: Fish Farming Expert reports that the Atlantic Technology University in Galway, Ireland will be hosting the 2025 Gill Health Initiative Workshop. The first workshop was held in 2013 and are now held biennially in either Scotland, Norway or Ireland. The last workshop took place on Oslo hosted by the Norwegian Veterinary Institute.
I recently wrote about the Trinations Initiative held in Bergen this year to discuss the latest updates on fish heath.
There seems to be a regular workshop now about all aspects of fish health except sea lice. Given that sea lice are now regulated in both Scotland and Norway, it seems madness that those involved with sea lice would not get together on a regular basis to discuss the latest developments. I appreciate that there is a regular sea lice conference, although the 2024 meeting failed to materialise. However, having attended one of these meetings, it is more academic than practical and doesn’t allow any flexibility in discussions.
My experience is that those involved in sea lice research are only interested in discussing what they want to discuss and are reluctant to become involved in any wider discussions. Someone recently suggested to me that this is because the issue of sea lice has just become too combative, yet as I have regularly written, if those promoting a specific narrative then they should be confident to stand up in public and defend their position.
In reLAKSation no 1202, I did discuss one sea lice workshop that did take place and that was the one held during the recent MASTS meeting in Glasgow. This was very specific looking at new ways to identify sea lice larvae in the sea, although none of the methods promoted seemed really practical.
I only mention this workshop again because the Scottish Association of Marine Science (SAMS) who organised the workshop put out a press release which meant that it appeared as news on a number of industry websites.
Two points jumped out at me from this news story. The first repeated something that I had already written about. Fish Farmer magazine reported that Dr Kim Last of SAMS had said that
it is really important to understand the behaviour of sea lice larvae in the wild, specifically when and where they occur in the water column, which is challenging given their rarity.
The key word here is rarity. When are those who promote the existing sea lice narrative going to consider that the larvae lice, they claim are infesting wild salmon and sea trout are simply not present except in very small numbers. This is why there is such a reluctance to hold more workshops on sea lice because they refuse to accept the findings of several studies that here there is no such thing as a sea lice soup in the seas around the salmon farming area.
The second point of interest in this press release was a comment from Peter Pollard, Head of ecology at SEPA who is reported as saying:
As Scotland’s lead environmental regulator responsible for managing interactions between sea lice from fish farms and wild salmon and sea trout, we welcome scientific innovation aimed at cost-efficiently and accurately detecting and monitoring infective-stage sea lice in the sea
The inclusion of Peter’s comments was surprising because he did not attend the workshop although one of his staff did. Clearly as Peter says he is welcoming new technology that detects and monitors infective sea lice larvae in the sea, he too is reluctant to accept that sea lice larvae are a rarity in the sea, presumably because if he accepted this fact, it would render the sea lice risk framework worthless.
As we approach December 2024, it is nearly a whole year since I requested a face-to-face meeting with Peter. Anyone reading this can draw their own conclusions.
Darwin was right: It seems that Charles Darwin was right after all. It is those fish with the best adapted genes that survive as confirmed by a new report from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA). It seems that the fish with a farmed salmon genetic marker have been cleansed out of the famous salmon river Vosso.
During the period around 2016, the percentage of fish with a farmed genetic marker was 21.6% but by 2019, this percentage had fallen to 9.8% and by 2022, the percentage was zero. This means that any impact of escaped farmed salmon has declined much faster than anyone had predicted. Clearly, if farmed salmon exert a negative effect on wild fish, which doesn’t benefit growth in the river, the alleged negative genetic influence is lost quite quickly. This is what would be expected from Darwinian evolution. Unfortunately, those who object to salmon farming, for whatever reason, always want to imply that salmon farm escapes have an extremely impact on wild fish. Escapes are listed as the second greatest threat to wild salmon by the scientists at the Scientific Committee for Salmon Management, even though some of the members of the committee work for NINA. However, this long held view is hard to discard.
In their report written on behalf of the Norwegian Environment Agency, NINA conclude that salmon with mixed genes from farmed fish are less viable than wild salmon in the river Vosso but they still displace wild salmon in the river. In their summary they state that their observations point to a strong selection against salmon originating from farm escapees.
However, their findings are not all they seem. In response to widespread salmon declines, a living gene bank was established at Eidfjord south of Bergen in order to preserve the genetic diversity of threatened salmon stocks. The fish from Vosso and others were kept in land-based tanks. In 2000, fisheries scientists together with others started restocking the river with fish raised from the Vosso stocks at Eidfjord. Since the programme began, over 200 million fish raised from stock held at the gene bank have been released into the river.
Unfortunately, the fish collected for the gene bank were analysed at a time when experience of fish genetics was not as well developed as it is today, and it seems that the fish taken from the Vosso were not the wild fish they expected but were in fact fish carrying farmed fish genetic markers. It therefore appears that the authorities have spent nearly twenty years restocking the river with fish that might have previously interbred with fish of farmed origin.
However, as previously mentioned, even though 200 million fish have been restocked over the years from the living gene bank, the farmed genetic markers appear to have been cleansed out of the local fish population and at a rate much faster than anticipated.
Charles Darwin was right about natural selection, and it makes a lot of sense, unless the agenda is to blame salmon farms for all the problems of the wild fish sector. Maybe this news might encourage VRL to reconsider its claims that salmon farms represent the greatest threats t wild fish stocks.
Seriously: BBC News has reported that an animal rights group has been accused of undermining real issues by asking a pub to change its name claiming it is offensive to foxes.
The group PETA wrote to the owners of the Sly Old Fox in Birmingham saying the name is derogatory and they have asked for the name to be changed to the Clever Old Fox.
The group have been accused of trivialising animal rights issues, however they responded by saying foxes had an unearned reputation as a pest and this was partly due to the derogatory description of them.
Clearly, people from PETA don’t live near me as foxes are something of a pest by foraging in bins etc. I also suspect that the drinkers in the pub don’t care what the name of the pub is but whether it is a nice place to drink.
Of course, the real reason why PETA have asked for this change is to keep their name in the news. Animal Equality is another group that works hard to get its name into the media but rather than attacking pub names, it has focused its efforts on attacking the fish farming industry.
The groups latest effort is to join with Dale Vince and Wild Fish to challenge the Government on their ‘shocking’ decision to remove the word farmed from the salmon Protected Geographical Indication table.
Firstly, and in my opinion, Animal Equality’s decision to join with an organisation that represents the interests of salmon and trout anglers whose main aim is to catch and kill wild fish for sport by dragging them around cruelly with a hook in the mouth is rather dishonest. It seems that the rights of fish are only in question if they are farmed, are salmon and in Scotland.
Animal Equality say that removing the word farmed from the PGI will mislead consumers. I very much doubt it since it is unlikely that any consumer has seen a PGI label for salmon or ever will. Clearly, Animal Equality and Wild Fish have no understanding of the purpose of PGI or what it means and are simply highlighting a piece of news about a change to the PGI to launch yet another attack on the salmon farming industry.
It is very difficult to take these groups seriously, especially as they are not interested in anything but closure of the farms… and then perhaps sea lice numbers of wild fish will rise and then they will have no-one else to blame.