Deadly salmon virus not found in B.C., but scientists plan surveillance programs
By: Tamsyn Burgmann and Keven Drews, The Canadian Press Dec. 2
VANCOUVER - Scientists in British Columbia, Washington state and Alaska are developing separate surveillance plans for a salmon virus that has yet to be officially detected in north Pacific waters.
Cornelius Kiley, director of National Aquatic Animal Health at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, said Friday that while his agency can't confirm the presence of infectious salmon anaemia in B.C. waters, the surveillance plan will add to the knowledge around diseases and viruses in fish and fish health.
Ted Meyers, Alaska's chief fish pathologist, said several federal agencies and laboratories in the U.S. Pacific Northwest are developing their own surveillance plan to test for the virus.
"We're working on a plan, a surveillance plan," he said. "I'm sure most folks will probably want to have that plan in place by next fall and fit that into the routine surveillance of other fish pathogens, and we'll probably start to do at least a low-key look for ISAV in our own wild stock salmon."
Canadian officials have scrambled to offer assurances that Pacific salmon are untouched by the virus, a strain of which has devastated stocks in Europe and Chile.
Alarm has mounted since a Simon Fraser University scientist announced in October that tests had found what appeared to be evidence of the influenza-like bug, and subsequent other potential cases were raised.
Prompted by the issue, a federally appointed inquiry investigating the decline of B.C.'s Fraser River sockeye planned to reconvene for new discussions three days later this month.
Earlier this week, an unpublished, leaked report authored by a post-doctoral student at Fisheries' labs in Nanaimo concluded more than 100 instances of an asymptomatic form of the virus had been found in samples of wild salmon taken between 2002 and 2003.
That prompted a U.S. senator to call on Canada to communicate relevant research better.
Federal Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield released a statement Friday saying the country's "reputation has needlessly been put at risk over the past several weeks because of speculation and unfounded science."
"Canada's current practices and procedures to protect our wild and farmed salmon industries from disease are in place and working," he said.
Last month, SFU fish-population statistician Rick Routledge found test results in two of 48 sockeye smolts appeared to indicate positive findings for the European strain of the virus. The findings were reported under law to the CFIA.
But the scientists at the briefing Friday said those findings were from screening procedures only.
They were "presumptive positives" that required confirmatory testing, said Peter Wright, national manager of research for Fisheries.
Numerous other tests at three labs in Canada and Norway could not replicate the findings.
Kiley said a comprehensive plan to keep close watch over the fish has been developed by the CFIA, but has yet to be discussed with stakeholders and implemented.
That plan suggests the "best window of opportunity" to collect wild fish — the period that would give scientists "the best representative sample and the best opportunity to pick up this virus and perhaps other viruses" — is between March and November 2012, Kiley said.
"We continue to work on designing a comprehensive surveillance plan that will help to assist everyone in concluding whether there is virus or not in that part of British Columbia," Kiley said.
"It hasn't been found to date."
Meantime, Meyers reminded people that "the sky is not falling," and if the virus is present in Alaska or Washington, it may be an indigenous wild strain because it's not in any of his state's aquaculture species, especially Atlantic salmon.
He said Alaska has been conducting aquaculture operations for more than 50 years and has never had a problem with the virus.
"In your own country, there in B.C., they've done an extensive survey for the pathogenic strains of ISAV and not found it," he said. "That's good."
Meyers echoed the call for greater co-operation and communication between U.S. and Canadian scientists.
"Basically they're all our stocks of fish," he said. "We all share them.
"We all have commercial fisheries on those stocks and they all mix together in the same ocean. So we're in this together, so to speak."
Alexandra Morton, a well-known critic of B.C.'s salmon farming industry, remained unconvinced Friday by the statements of Canadian officials and said she will now conduct her own tests for the virus, much like the tests she has conducted for sea lice.
"I don't think that they really have enough information to say that infectious salmon anaemia virus is not in British Columbia," she said.
Morton said she has already tested 15 B.C. rivers and will send those samples to labs in Prince Edward Island and Norway.
She called a surveillance program "great," but said Canadian officials will have to win the confidence of critics by using labs that can actually find the virus.
Mary Ellen Walling, executive director B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, said the industry has had a monitoring program in place since 2002, has not found the virus. Results have been provided to a provincial fish-health data base, she said.
Walling said the industry has invited federal fisheries and CFIA officials onto the farms to conduct more tests, but she was critical of the federal fisheries department, saying it hasn't had a comprehensive fish-monitoring program in place for wild species.
"We think having a good program for wild fish-health testing is important and it's important for our farmers but it's also important for the capture fishery," she said.
Walling also wanted to warn individuals about making any unsubstantiated claims that the virus is linked to the industry, noting such claims could lead to "potential market impacts" like closed borders to wild and farmed products.
"If we were to start to see trade issues as a result of these accusations of ISA in our stocks, we've got a very well organized and documented program of testing that demonstrates we don't have ISA in our fish, but the capture fishery doesn't have the same," she said.
"There's some serous potential implications here, and no ISA has been found."
