A new study out of Simon Fraser University has drawn a link between sea lice from salmon farms and the health of wild salmon in B.C.’s oceans and rivers.
According to SFU researchers Brendan Connors and Larry Dill, along with anti-salmon farming activist Alexandra Morton, the new study suggested that sea lice from salmon farms could have a significant effect on mortality rates in pink and coho salmon populations.
“I don’t know if I would go so far as to call our study seminal, but it shows that once you consider all the available information, there is support for a negative relationship between lice on farms and the productivity of adjacent pink and coho salmon populations,” said Connors.
The study contradicts a similar report published last year that found no relationship between the productivity of pink salmon and the number of sea lice on farmed salmon in the year pinks entered the ocean.
The new study re-analyzed the data collected for the 2010 study, but looked at pink as well as coho salmon before the emergence of salmon aquaculture.
B.C.’s salmon farming industry employs more than 6,000 people and indirectly contributes more than $800 million to the province’s economy every year.
The study comes amid a new round of evidentiary hearings during the Cohen Commission, which was established in 2009 to investigate and report on the decline of sockeye salmon stocks in the Fraser River.
More than 30 witnesses, many of them federal scientists, environmentalists and aquaculture experts, are expected to testify in front of the commission in Vancouver in the coming days.
Joel McKay
Twitter:jmckaybiv