The ‘experts’ in the farmed fish industry said it couldn’t happen here. Well, it has.
BC Coast Featured
Written by Rafe Mair
Here is the story from salmon biologist Alexandra Morton:
Infectious Salmon Anemia virus has been found in two young sockeye salmon. Sheer reckless, negligent behaviour has loosed a highly infectious fish farm influenza virus into the North Pacific. I have been told over and over by industry and government that this could not happen, but they were wrong. No one has any idea what Infectious Salmon Anemia Virus (ISAV) will do in the North Pacific. We were told that it could not infect Pacific salmon, that enough tests had been done to assure us that it was not here and would not get here. Well here it is in two young sockeye. Are they the only 2 salmon in the North Pacific with ISA virus, or are they among 100s, or millions? No one knows yet. Government and the salmon farming industry are at best dangerously incompetent. Humanity is well aware that moving viruses around has caused enormous misery and death. We make horror movies about this, and yet there is no sign of a learning curve here. We have put a highly infectious marine influenza virus into the ocean we depend on. So incredibly foolish.
Read the rest of the story, here…
http://thecanadian.org/k2/item/1064-catastrophic-isa-disease-found-on-bc-coast
And this…
“This is potentially very big. It’s of big concern to us,” said John Kerwin, who supervises the fish health unit at the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife. “It’s a disease emergency,” said James Winton, who directs the fish health section of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Western Fisheries Research Center in Seattle. Deadly salmon virus raises concerns in Washington, BC
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/10/18/2233854/deadly-salmon-virus-raises-concerns.html
More: Ashley Ahearn of EarthFix talks to David Montgomery, author of King of Fish about Sick Wild Salmon earthfix.kcts9.org/water/article/earthfix-conversations-sick-wild-salmon/