Sea lice science raises question of advocacy
By Robert Wager, The Daily News, December 13, 2010
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 unraveling this mystery. Grandiose claims of fault are not science but sensationalism of science.
Robert Wager
Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo
