With test results for the infectious haematopoietic necrosis virus still pending at their Bawden Point fish farm site near Tofino, officials from Mainstream Canada met with local first Nations leaders on Thursday to discuss how to improve communications.
On May 21, when the first of a fleet of salmon packers arrived in Port Alberni harbour carrying IHN-infected salmon taken from the company’s Dixon Bay farm, the off-loading operation caught Hupacasath and Tseshaht First Nation leaders by surprise.
While Mainstream Canada later apologized for not informing the local nations about the hastily arranged disposal, both sides agreed that there was a need to set up communication protocols to be used in the case of emergencies.
Mainstream spokeswoman Laurie Jensen said that was the goal of Thursday’s meeting, which took place at the Best Western Barclay Hotel.
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“We had an information session on what we are doing. We invited the local First Nations–some came, some didn’t–and we had our Ahousaht partners: the chief and councillors and the fish farm committee,” Jensen said. “We went through the process on the IHN outbreak. We talked a little about IHN and about ways to improve communications.”
The Dixon Bay site, which has now been depopulated of fish and will undergo decontamination, is located near the Megin River estuary in North Clayoquot Sound. For the Ahousaht First Nation, permanent closure of the Dixon Bay farm has been a long-term goal, but it does not appear that the current shutdown will hasten its removal from the salmon migration corridor, according to Wally Samuel, who serves on the fish farm committee.
“It is part of our agreement [with Mainstream] that the site will be restored to pristine at some point,” Samuel said. “But it takes time to remove and replace a site, so we’re being patient and impatient at the same time.”
Samuel said the various levels of government approvals required to set up a new site could take several years, judging by past history.
Jensen said unfortunately Mainstream does not have a pre-approved backup site.
“We respect their wishes for a pristine site but they also respect our wishes to find a replacement site,” Jensen said. As a result, she added, the matter did not even come up for discussion on Thursday.
The Bawden Point fish are all at a mature size from four to five kilograms, and will be harvested for market. Jensen said the site has shown trace levels of IHN infection but no fish have displayed symptoms of illness. According to scientists, the virus occurs naturally in wild sockeye salmon and does not pose a health hazard to humans when handled or consumed.
The samples taken from Dixon Point, however, showed high levels of IHN infection. Jensen said the fish collected by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency were those showing symptoms of the disease, but the vast majority of the Atlantic salmon were symptom-free.
All told, about 562,000 fish, weighing an average of 1.2 kg, were culled, transported to Port Alberni and composted according to provincial organic matter recycling protocols at the Earth Land and Sea facility, Jensen said.
Earlier this week, Mainstream released the lab report from the provincial agriculture ministry’s Animal Health Centre in Abbotsford. According to pathologist, Dr. Gary D. Marty, two batches of tissue and organ samples tested positive for IHN, but all samples tested negative for viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) and infectious salmon anemia (ISA) virus.
Don Hall, program manager for Uu-a-thluk, the Nuu-chah-nulth tribal council fisheries department, said the latter disease has been a major concern in recent years. While IHN naturally occurs in Pacific salmon, scientists have yet to establish whether an IHN outbreak at a fish farm site amplifies the level of IHN in the environment to where it poses a danger to wild fish.
It is already proven that migrating juvenile wild salmon can become infected and die from early IHN exposure, he said.
“On the other hand, ISA is not endemic to Pacific salmon, but it is present in farmed Atlantic salmon. It was ISA that wiped out the industry in Chile, where they were raising Pacific salmon,” Hall said. That potential for cross-infection between wild and farmed salmon stocks poses a threat that requires constant vigilance, he added.
Vocal aquaculture opponent and marine biologist Alexandra Morton said she is concerned that, according to her understanding, the aquaculture industry announced that it had developed an effective IHN vaccine back in 2005.
“Did they stop using it or has the virus mutated so that it is no longer controlled by the vaccine?” Morton said. “They said they had IHN handled, but this year, we’ve seen multiple occurrences in Clayoquot, in Washington State and, possibly, in Sechelt. As a biologist, that is worrisome.”
Jensen said while the Dixon Bay fish were vaccinated against a number of diseases, they were not vaccinated for IHN, and to her knowledge, the vaccine is not on the general market yet.
“IHN is a new vaccine. It’s being tested on the East Coast, but it isn’t here yet,” Jensen said.
The meeting comes just the day after the contentious Bill 37 Animal Health Act was pulled from the table in the B.C. Legislature. Critics objected strongly to provisions in the bill that would have–at first glance–imposed severe penalties for anyone releasing or publishing information from health inspections conducted by government agencies.
Alberni-Pacific Rim MLA Scott Fraser said the legislation, in effect, would criminalize whistleblowers and prevent the public from learning about potential health emergencies such as the Dixon Bay quarantine and the transport of hundreds of tonnes of infected salmon through Port Alberni.
Fraser said Section 16 (Protected Information), under which “a person must refuse, despite the Freedom of Information (FOI) and Protection of Privacy Act, to disclose” a range of information, such as the location of an inspection or the results of that inspection, was the most troubling.
“It was one of the most contentious sections of any bill I’ve ever seen,” Fraser said. “It exempted FOI, and the ability of the pubic to use it.”
On Wednesday morning, Agriculture Minister Don McRae announced an amendment to the bill he said would specify that the “persons” liable to the act did not include members of the public or the media. Fraser said the amendment merely meant that, while exempting the public and the media, it still imposed draconian punishments on whistleblowers.
“It was clear they obviously didn’t do their homework. They didn’t consult with any of the groups and with the experts like the Privacy Commissioner,” Fraser said. “Just hours later, they announced they were pulling the bill. Obviously, we’re having legislation drafted on the fly. Today, they’ve announced closure on 16 other bills. They won’t even go to the committee stage–that means they’re law.”
Fraser said the slapdash nature of Bill 37 should bring a note of caution about the 16 bills the government hoped to ram through Thursday without debate or discussion.
“Bill 37 was so poorly crafted they had to amend it and withdraw it on the same day. We’ve examined their other bills and found typos and grammatical errors. This is very poor form for any government,” he said, adding, “And Bill 37 did not go away–it has just been postponed to the fall session.”
The withdrawal of Bill 37 was a relief to Alexandra Morton, who attended the session in Victoria.
“Bill 37, that was going to put me in jail for two years just for talking about this, they just pulled it, so I’m back to hunting viruses,” Morton said. “The lawyers said it would not stand a constitutional challenge. I was preparing to do that, but the last thing I want to do is spend all the money I’ve been given on court time.”
