Migration of salmon past farms to be studied?
One of Dr. David Welch’s main claims to fame is the establishment of the Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking project (POST), where fish of various species are equipped with sensors inserted in the peritoneal cavity, allowing the tracking of the movement of these fish over longer periods and distances. The technology has evolved to the point that now fish as small as about 12 cm in length can be used, allowing for a contemplated study of out-migrating Fraser River sockeye salmon in British Columbia, which has been the subject of much discussions and a governmental inquiry over the past number of years. Dr. Welsh believes he can design a $15 million (~€ 11.3 million) research project that can “once and for all” put the debate about salmon farming and its alleged impacts on wild salmon to rest, as Stephen Bocking of the Environmental and Resource Science/Studies Program at Trent University explains, referring to a recent article in the Globe and Mail;
Scientists have been studying the environmental impacts of salmon farming in British Columbia for more than 20 years. They have examined a series of issues, among them the impacts of organic waste, escaped Atlantic salmon, and sea lice. Most recently, the Pacific Salmon Forum sponsored a substantial research program on sea lice, salmon farms, and wild pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago.
Throughout, the expectation has been that science could help resolve the controversy about the industry. But it hasn't turned out that way. We now know much more about the ecology of salmon farming than we did 20 years ago, and some of this knowledge has fed back into better farming practices and regulations. But as public statements by both supporters and opponents of the industry indicate, debate about the industry continues as fiercely as ever.
Now, though, as the Globe and Mail reported on February 5, some west coast scientists are suggesting that a new scientific technique may determine "once and for all" whether salmon farming is damaging wild salmon stocks, and may even, perhaps, help resolve the salmon farming controversy. The hope is that this technique will provide the basis for a "clear decision" on whether farm impacts are unacceptably large, and an appropriate regulatory response. The strategy is to tag large numbers of salmon with acoustic transmitters, and then track them as they travel up the coast. By following the salmon as they travel past fish farms, and comparing what happens to them to control groups, scientists will be able to determine whether these farms are having an impact on the health of wild salmon populations.
This is interesting on several levels, not least for historians of science: it continues a history of ecologists devising experimental field practices that are able to generate results that will be widely seen as credible. I talk about this in an article in the Journal of the History of Biology that came out a few months ago. This proposal is also interesting as an expression of the hope that science can help resolve an environmental controversy. In this case, the hope is that, as the Globe suggests, this study may "end the war over fish farms". This hope has a long history: if only scientists are able to generate results with a sufficient level of precision, they will be able to resolve an environmental debate, and bring harmony to a contentious issue.
The problem is that there is an equally lengthy history of these hopes being an illusion. Climate change is only the best-known example of this: increasing scientific knowledge of exactly how we are affecting the global climate has obviously not generated consensus on what to do about it. In this issue as in others, the opposite has been the case: more knowledge has led to greater polarization. Social scientists and historians have described in substantial detail how this happens, but the basic point is that when there are deep economic or political divisions, opposing parties will always be able to find more to debate, and more scientific evidence, or scientific uncertainties, to support their arguments.
Of course it makes a great deal of sense to do more research on the impacts of salmon farms. But we need to be realistic about the prospects of finding a scientific resolution to what is essentially an economic, political, and cultural debate about salmon farms. Science can help us understand important questions about salmon farms, but solving conflicts requires acknowledging that the answers lay elsewhere.
