Here’s some news you probably could have lived without: British Columbia’s wild salmon stocks are apparently already suffering the effects of a deadly virus that are decimating salmon stocks in farms in Scotland and other parts of Europe.
While there isn’t yet a direct link to the millions of Atlantic Salmon eggs imported to the west coast by fish farmers, a bit of a smoking gun remains: this is a European strain of the virus, and until now, it hasn’t been seen on the west coast.
Read it and weep, Undergrounders (from the NY Times):
Farms hit by the virus, infectious salmon anemia, have lost 70 percent or more of their fish in recent decades. But until now, the virus, which does not affect humans, had never been confirmed on the West Coast of North America.
The researchers, from Simon Fraser University and elsewhere, said at a news conference in Vancouver that the virus had been found in 2 of 48 juvenile fish collected as part of a study of sockeye salmon in Rivers Inlet, on the central coast of British Columbia. The study was undertaken after scientists observed a decline in the number of young sockeye.
Richard Routledge, an environmental scientist at the university who leads the sockeye study, suggested that the virus had spread from the province’s aquaculture industry, which has imported millions of Atlantic salmon eggs over the last 25 years, primarily from Iceland and Scandinavia. He acknowledged that no direct evidence of that link existed, but noted that the two fish had tested positive for the European strain of infectious salmon anemia.
Note that the two infected fish (of 48) were netted 60 miles from the nearest salmon farm, suggesting the virus might already be well entrenched in wild populations. This mess might even be wholly man made — in a plot twist worthy of a made-for-TV movie, the virus was benign until it come into contact with “densely packed salmon farms.”
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, infectious salmon anemia virus morphed from a benign form in nature into a “novel virulent strain†when salmon stocks entered Norway’s densely packed salmon farms. Rather than getting picked off by a predator, a sick fish would undergo a slow death in a crowded pen, shedding virus particles.
See you paying a lot more for salmon…
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