Salmon farm class-action suit survives a B.C. challenge

It's tough to keep up with all the action on the salmon farm issue, but the proposed class-action suit by the Kwicksutaineuk/Ah-Kwa-Mish First Nation is worth watching.
The First Nation is asserting fishing rights in the Broughton Archipelago. And it's arguing the provincial government is hurting the interests of members by allowing salmon farms, which it says hurt wild salmon stocks.
There is a long way to go before the court approves the class action suit, let alone delivers a judgment on the issue.
But the province lost a preliminary bid to have the suit tossed in a B.C. Supreme Court ruling here.
The judgment notes the supporting materials for the bid to certify a class action include an affadavit from Fred Whoriskey, who will provide evidence for the First Nation.
The name might be familiar. In 2007, the government appointed Bill Smart, the special prosecutor in the Glen Clark case, to act as a special prosecutor on a file involving allegations that sea lice from salmon farms were damaging wild stocks. Smart concluded the farms were likely damaging wild stocks. He recommended against proceeding because it was unclear if their actions were against the law. His key expert was, yes, Fred Whoriskey. You can read more in these two columns from 2007.

By the by, I highly recommended the Recent Judgments section of the B.C. Superior Courts website. Judgments from the B.C. Supreme Court of Appeal are posted almost daily. Browsing them offers a direct view of the justice system - you'll marvel at how much of the courts' time is taken with divorces and insurance claims - and a lot of useful bits of information. (I learned, for example, that a paramedic injured in a crash estimated his continuing income, with overtime, would have been over $100,000 a year.)
You'll also be impressed, I think, with how sensible the judgments are in criminal cases.

Government's silence on sea lice and wild salmon a problem

Sea lice are quite creepy. They look like little tadpoles - maybe one-quarter of an inch long. And they attach themselves to salmon and other fish and suck their blood.
It's usually not a problem. A few lice don't hurt a fish.
But for several years, researchers have been finding that salmon farms changed things. The concentration of fish in a small area meant dense sea lice populations as well. And the lice didn't just stick around. If a migrating wild salmon passed through the area, it encountered much denser populations than in the rest of the ocean.
And too many sea lice - particularly on a three-inch young salmon - can kill. (It's not a B.C. problem. European fish farms have faced the same issue.)
The industry and government have denied the problem exists. The industry has tended to attack the researchers.
The province has ordered a few farms fallowed during migration periods. But it's pro-industry. The government has had an all-party legislative committee report on aquaculture for eight months now without responding in anyway to the recommendations.
But the evidence of the sea lice problem has been piling up. Last year, when an environmental group laid charges, the Attorney General's Ministry appointed a special prosecutor to decide whether they should go ahead. Bill Smart - the special prosecutor in the Glen Clark case - sought independent scientific advice. The fisheries expert, Frederick Whoriskey, concluded salmon farms were creating a sea lice problem that was killing pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago. A single farm produces more than 50 million sea lice eggs a year, he found.
Smart concluded that sea lice from salmon farms were harming the wild fish. He decided not to go ahead with the prosecution because it wasn't clear that was against the law.
The industry went on the attack; the government ignored the independent prosector's report.
This month, a research study published in the journal Science found the sea lice from salmon farms in the area threaten wild pink salmon with extinction. Local pinks could be gone within four years, the researchers reported.
This was a peer-reviewed study; other scientists had to assess its legitimacy before it could be published.
Research can always be disputed. The provincially funded Pacific Salmon Forum says its research shows no connection between fish farms and sea lice on wild salmon.
But the findings published in Science can't sensibly be ignored. Risking the future of wild salmon stocks, given the evidence, would be reckless.
The question is whether the industry and the government will see it that way.
The industry's reaction so far has unfortunately been to deny a problem. Accepting the risk would open the door to potential solutions. The authors of the Science article note that relocating the fish farms to deeper waters or away from wild salmon migration routes would help.
The provincial government has seemed frozen. It handed the whole problem off to an all-party committee of MLAs, with an NDP majority, which held hearings. Its report was done in May.
Agriculture Minister Pat Bell said the government would have a new aquaculture policy by the fall. But so far, nothing.
The industry provides needed jobs in coastal communities and the farmed salmon fetches about $240 million a year. The economic impact is significant.
But opposition has moved beyond the environmental movement. A coalition of some 100 ecotourism businesses says the sea lice damage to wild salmon threatens their $1.4-billion industry. It bought a full-page ad in The Globe and Mail this fall to press the federal and provincial governments for action.
And the future of wild salmon is one those issues that goes beyond fishermen and coastal communities.
There are lots of factors in the vanishing salmon, from climate change to development to logging practices.
But sea lice are part of the problem, according to solid research. The government is going to face increasing pressure to deal with the issue.
Footnote: The legislative committee called for governments to help the industry to move to "closed containment" systems instead of mesh pens. But the salmon farmers say practical technology doesn't exist. The committee also offered common sense measures like removing environmental protection from the Agricuture Ministry, was is charged with promoting the industry.

Battling researcher proves a sea-lice point

VICTORIA - Alexandra Morton has taken some serious abuse for her research showing that sea lice from fish farms were killing wild salmon.
“Questionable research methods,” critics said. “Blatant misrepresentations.” Unqualified and biased.
Turns out she was right. The question now is what are the federal and provincial governments are going to do about it?
Morton lives in the Broughton Archipelago, the dense scattering of islands off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island. She moved there to study whales 27 years ago and has been doing research ever since.
In the last few years she has been alarmed at the spread of sea lice from salmon farms on to migrating wild salmon. The sea lice are like blood-sucking tiny tadpoles. On a five-kilogram Atlantic salmon in a net cage, they’re a nuisance. On a wild salmon as long as your little finger, they’re life-threatening.
Morton didn’t just work up a theory. She did the research, spent the days and weeks on the ocean. Her work has been peer-reviewed and published.
But the critics kept sniping. The provincial government ordered some fish farms along the migration emptied for a few months as a precautionary measure. The industry continued to say Morton was wrong. Governments said nothing was proven.
So Morton launched a private prosecution under the Fisheries Act, charging a company and federal and provincial governments with releasing sea lice into the salmon habitat, harming the wild fish.
Private prosecutions rarely go ahead. Generally, the Crown takes over the case and stays the charges.
This time, because the province was charged, an outside lawyer, Bill Smart, was named special prosecutor. He decided to hire an independent science expert to review Morton’s research and look at the allegations.
And the expert, Dr. Frederick Whoriskey of the Atlantic Salmon Federation in New Brunswick, found she was right.
Morton alleged the salmon farm was releasing millions of sea lice a month. Whoriskey calculated the farm would produce 55 million sea lice eggs per year. Studies had found 95 per cent of sea lice off a section of Ireland’s coast came from salmon farms.
Morton charged that sea lice from the farm infected passing young salmon. Whoriskey, after reviewing her research and studies from around the world, concluded that is also true.
And Morton alleged that the pink salmon smolts were vulnerable to sea lice and many were killed. There hasn’t been a definitive study, Whoriskey reported, but sea lice infestations have found to weaken and kill young salmon.
Whoriskey summed up. “The evidence shows that sea lice in the Broughton Archipelago are infecting and killing pink salmon,” he found.
And the independent expert also commented on her research. “Ms. Morton and her colleagues have carefully and diligently executed their scientific work,” he wrote. It meets “the globally accepted procedure for good science.”
Smart, the special prosecutor, said Morton’s charges were sound and raised an important public issue. “It appears to us that there is validity to Ms. Morton’s assertions that sea lice from fish farms are having a deleterious effect on the pink salmon population in the Broughton Archipelago”, he reported. “There may be debates about the extent of the problem or risk, those debates cannot obscure the existence of the problem itself.“
Smart still decided the prosecution shouldn’t go ahead because convictions were unlikely. The law prohibits the release of harmful species, but the sea lice weren’t really released. And the company could argue that it had obeyed all the governments’ rules.
But he noted that while he had to apply a strict test in deciding whether to go ahead with case, governments don’t when it comes to “addressing the potential environmental consequences of fish farms.”
Morton won the important victory. An independent review by the government’s own prosecutor found the evidence showed the fish farms are hurting wild salmon stocks.
Now it’s up to government to say what it’s going to do about that reality.
Footnote: Meanwhile, the legislative committee looking at the aquaculture industry is heading back out for another round of hearings this fall. The committee, which has an NDP majority, has been hearing completely contradictory and equally passionate views from the industry’s supporters and opponents. It’s trying for an interim report before the end of the year and a full report next May.