Sea lice in the eastern Pacific

1. Sea lice in the eastern Pacific

2. Gravid Lepeophtheirus salmonis Only known to live on salmon Appears to damage juvenile salmon Gravid Caligus clemensi can live on many fish species Appears not to damage fish Note size difference There are the two species of sea lice commonly found on farmed and wild salmonids in B.C.The issue is with L. salmonis. These lice belong on adult salmon armored with scales. The natural system endeavors to keep this louse away from this phase of salmon.

3. Norwegian research found a young Atlantic salmon or sea trout can bear approximately 1 louse for every gram of the fish’s weight. Their smolts, all of which inhabit freshwater for a year or more, appear able to survive 10 salmon lice so Norway controls sea lice on salmon farms with drugs to attain this balance. Is this a solution for B.C.?

4. No, because all Atlantic salmonids enter saltwater at a much bigger size than our pink and chum salmon and this is the crux of our problem pink fry = 0.3 – 0.4 grams March - April The impact of sea lice is host size dependant. The smaller the fish the fewer sea lice it can bear

5. All available research (Norwegian and B.C.) suggests: At 0.3-0.4 grams pink and chum fry are much too small to survive a single adult louse

6. Salmon farms use nets to hold Atlantic salmon populations of 700,000 to 1.3 million fish.... When these farms are sited on migration routes used by pink and chum salmon at their smallest and most vulnerable size, fry are infected before they can tolerate the parasite.

7. Pink and chum go to sea before growing scales. Here a young louse on a juvenile pink salmon has eaten through the skin to expose the flesh. This is very common.

8. Pink and chum fry … Are clearly too small to host sea lice

9. In the natural system sea lice die in freshwater over the winter, by spring the majority of sea lice which traveled inshore on spawning salmon are gone. Today the sea lice passed to farm salmon reproduce all winter. By spring billions of larval lice are being produced on farm salmon near the rivers where there should be none

10. Here is what I have learned

11. My first study was to report L. salmonis, the salmon louse, on juvenile Pacific salmon. 98% of this run never returned. (Morton and Williams 2004)

12. We found far more lice near farms with adult fish than near farms with smolts and even fewer where there were no farms

13. My next study found virtually no sea lice near Prince Rupert, Rivers Inlet, Smith Inlet, where there are no farms, a few lice near the salmon farms in Bella Bella and many lice in the Broughton Archipelago, but only near the salmon farms. This Broughton run failed by 87%

14. Temporal patterns of sea lice infestation on wild Pacific salmon in relation to the fallowing of Atlantic salmon farms • North American J. of Fisheries Management • Morton, Routledge and Williams • Running head: Fallowing salmon farms reduces sea lice • *Alexandra Morton, Raincoast Research, no street, Simoom Sound, B.C., V0P 1S0, Richard Routledge, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University • Rob Williams, Raincoast Conservation Society, Pearse Island, B.C., V0N 1A0, Canada My third published paper reports when Broughton salmon farms are stocked, there are many sea lice and pink stocks collapse, when the farms are fallow there are few lice and pink runs rebound The run treated to the fallow returned much larger than the broodyear, the first positive return since the sea lice epidemic began See following graphs

15. 2002 mean number of lice per pink or chum, each color is a different age louse, blue is oldest Note many copepodids This cohort of pink salmon collapsed by 87%

16. 2003 The farms on the major fry out-migration route were fallowed (Provincial pink salmon action plan) The number of lice per fish collapsed when farm salmon were removed and this cohort rebounded

17. 2004 The fallowed farms were restocked and sea lice numbers rose again These salmon should be returning to the Broughton now, but there are very few Glendale, Kakweikan, Ahta, Viner Wakeman, Kingcome

18. My fourth study compared survival of lice-infested vs lice-free pinks and chums The lice - infested fish died at a much higher rate than the lice -free fish, this work is in press and will be published in January.

19. Even as the infected fry fed aggressively, they withered and died. DFO has argued that sea lice do not lower condition factor. My fifth study out in a couple of weeksreaches the opposite conclusion. This fish is doomed… and it does not take many lice to kill them as you can see here

20. Sea lice on juvenile Pacific salmon are a very serious matter

21. This chum fry has an infection which is both mature, with gravid females, and continuous, with newly settled juvenile lice on ventral side This fish will not survive

22. I don’t study Coho or Chinook smolts, but I see many like this trying to return to freshwater. This fish is seriously compromised

23. It is important to note that there are now several different teams working on sea lice

24. And we are all seeing the same thing

25. The controversy is with the interpretation.DFO has refused to do certain critical analysis of their data, they admit their study was NOT designed to discover where the sea lice in the Broughton are coming from and they have not published anything on this issue and yet they argue salmon farms are not the source of lice f

26. The media pretends my work conflicts with DFO’s, however, on closer analysis you will find my sea lice numbers per fish are nearly identical to DFO’s, the conflictis manufactured. Compared to whales sea lice are easy to study. I am hosting graduate students and there will be more and more papers coming out on this, but we need to act before crucial salmon stocks are irrevocably damaged.

27. Sea lice are not a problem only in the Broughton Archipelago

28. This spring I examined salmon on a major migration route for the Fraser River sockeye, the most valuable salmon run in Canada. This work is under review

30. This situation is critical. I feel the level of denial by government and industry is irresponsible and damaging to the farmers themselves. There are solutions to this issue, but we are not moving towards them. For this reason I have charged DFO, the Province and salmon farmers with release of sea lice under the Fisheries Act. Dec. 6th is the decision date on whether this case will go forward

31. Sea lice are real

32. Pink salmon are not a preferred orca food resource, but the pink salmon fry are an essential food resource for juvenile chinook and Coho and this means sea lice on pink salmon will affect killer whales

33. Anything affecting salmon affects the orca. You will be hearing the Broughton pink returns are “fine” this fall. This is not so. Three rivers appear functionally extinct. The other rivers maintained at broodyear levels which were considered an 87% decline.

34. It is time for real progress The farms must be removed from the major fry migration route in the Broughton Archipelago. In addition, all areas used by salmon weighing less than 1 - 2 grams should be considered high-risk areas for salmon farm siting. No one is trying get rid of aquaculture, it simply needs to move out of crucial habitats into closed containment.

35. Alexandra Morton You have my permission to distribute this wildorca@island.net