Department of Fisheries and Oceans scientists ignored a request from their colleague Kristi Miller to better explain why they rejected testing of fish-farm salmon for a virus recently identified in sockeye.
The revelation was made during testimony on Tuesday at the Cohen Commission inquiry into the 2009 collapse of Fraser River sockeye.
Both Stewart Johnson, DFO head of aquatic animal health, and Christine MacWilliams, DFO fish health veterinarian, told the inquiry they did not respond to Miller’s July 29 emails. The emails asked them to elaborate “on your reasoning for not initiating any testing of aquaculture fish (specifically Atlantic salmon) for the parvovirus we have recently identified in high prevalence in wild sockeye salmon populations.”
Miller, head of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory in Nanaimo, is due to testify at the inquiry today about her team’s discovery that viral pathogens may be weakening Fraser River sockeye. While that discovery was published in January in Science, one of the world’s top research journals, Miller has not been allowed to talk publicly about the discovery on orders from the federal government’s Privy Council Office.
In her email, Miller said she expected to be asked at the commission today why there has been no testing of farmed salmon for the virus.
Johnson said he believes fish farms will now be providing samples for testing of the parvovirus, although he could not provide a date when the fish-farm testing will start.
MacWilliams said she had cautioned more research on the parvovirus was needed before asking industry to start testing salmon.
Both Johnson and MacWilliams were responding to questions from Tim Leadem, a lawyer for the Conservation Coalition, which represents seven environmental groups including the David Suzuki Foundation and the Georgia Strait Alliance.
Leaden was one of several lawyers who grilled four disease experts at the inquiry on Tuesday, where salmon farming was put on the hot seat.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the inquiry after sockeye returns to the Fraser River collapsed in 2009, falling to about 1.5 million from an anticipated 10 million.
Everything from climate change, disease, sea lice from salmon farms, toxic algae blooms and a lack of food in the ocean has been implicated. However, scientists have not been able to pinpoint explicitly why the sockeye stocks have been declining in the past 20 years.
In a sometimes testy exchange with anti-salmon farming lawyer Gregory McDade, Oregon State University professor Michael Kent said fish farms are not the primary source of the demise of the sockeye salmon based on the evidence so far.
Environmentalist Alexandra Morton, an observer at the inquiry, said in an interview that Kent did not properly take into account the effect of fish farms in his assessment of pathogens that can harm sockeye salmon.
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