Scientist questions study by salmon farming critics
Opinion
Odd Grydeland
When Alexandra Morton- the media-savvy protester of all ocean-based salmon farming- received her “Honourary Doctorate” from the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver last year, her only academic credential was a title of “Registered Professional Biologist” (RPBio), issued by the British Columbia College of Applied Biology. According to this organization’s web site, “A professional biologist must not engage in dishonourable or questionable conduct that casts doubt on the biologist’s professional integrity or competence, or bring the profession of applied biology into disrepute”.
Many professional scientists and researchers in Canada and elsewhere who are familiar with Dr. Morton’s activism against salmon farming in British Columbia are questioning her qualifications for any scientific title or sponsorship. Her latest tirade of suggestions that the wild sockeye salmon runs in British Columbia are seriously affected by diseases caused by virus from imported Atlantic salmon eggs just doesn’t hold water, as the B.C. salmon farmers have been using mainly in-house brood stock- selected from stocks imported decades ago. Only eggs from certified disease-free sources have been allowed into B.C. for a long time, and no “exotic” diseases have ever been found, despite on-going scientific monitoring.
The latest report produced by Dr. Morton and her collaborators- including Dr. John Reynolds from the very university that gave her the honourary doctorate- and reported on by FishfarmingXpert in November last year- now has another critic. Robert Wager from the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry section of the Biology Department of the Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo recently suggested that “Sea lice science raises questions of advocacy” in The Daily News;
When does science become advocacy? That is the question I continue to ask the authors of the latest paper that claims fish farms are generating large amounts of sea lice. Emotive language and lack of complete citations seem to suggest the latest paper by Price, Morton and Reynolds is more anti-fish farm advocacy than science. For reasons known to the authors, two key research papers on sea lice from other scientists were not cited or apparently considered.
The first, a 2009 paper in aquaculture found sea lice on 60% of all salmon around the Gulf Islands. The interesting thing about the non-cited paper was the fish with this high level of sea lice were at least 100 kilometres from the nearest fish farm. Clearly sea lice are a natural part of our oceans and levels far higher than those reported in the latest paper happen without any input from fish farms.
The second 2009 research publication showed pink and chum salmon were very efficient at shedding sea lice and only suffered any significant effects when pink or chum were much smaller than reported and when sea lice levels were 10 times those found in the Price paper. When one considers these two non-cited papers it becomes clear the claims of fish farm-generated sea lice leaves a great many questions and most certainly does not directly link fish farms.
One final point is the research by Price et al was sponsored, in part, by the Pacific Salmon Forum. Everyone wants to protect wild salmon. The science of sea lice is very complicated and many very dedicated scientists are slowly unravelling this mystery. Grandiose claims of fault are not science but sensationalism of science.
