Viruses from salmon farms are low risk to wild fish
Salmon Farm Science, August 3, 2012
Viruses from salmon farms are not likely to harm wild salmon.
The idea that salmon farms can “amplify” a natural virus to the point that it will harm wild salmon is pure speculation not backed up by facts.
Since salmon farmers are having trouble with the IHN virus right now, let’s talk about this virus specifically.
IHN is an RNA virus, which replicate themselves very quickly. In fact, RNA viruses replicate so quickly that a single infectious particle can reproduce itself three times a second!
However, RNA viruses do not “proof-read” themselves during the replication process like DNA does. Skipping this step allows for more rapid replication but leads to a high level of errors — mutations — when RNA viruses reproduce.
his sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn’t it? IHN gets into a salmon farm, where there are lots of hosts, replicates a huge amount of itself and mutations are inevitable. Isn’t something terrible inevitable?
No, it isn’t. There is no reason to assume that any of those mutations will make the virus suddenly more harmful to the infected farmed salmon, or to the wild fish swimming by.
In fact, research suggests that most of those mutations are random noise. A normal virus population is full of mutants which do nothing to alter the virus’ overall survival strategy (infect a particular host, replicate, repeat).
To read the full blog and access embedded links go here: http://salmonfarmscience.com/2012/08/03/viruses-from-salmon-farms-are-low-risk-to-wild-fish/
