I
was dismayed by a recent news story on CTV on the escape of farm fish into
native fish waters. I was dismayed by: 1) the ecological impacts of this
accident; and 2) the incomplete and inaccurate reporting.
Misleading Reporting by CTV
In late December 2019, a fire at the Mowi fish farm in BC
waters near Port Hardy resulted in the escape of over twenty thousand Atlantic
salmon. The news story by the CTV media proved biased, incomplete and erroneous—and
ultimately dangerous.
CTV
reported that “environmentalists and indigenous groups” were concerned that the
escaped Atlantic salmon “presents ecological and environmental risks to an
already fragile wild salmon population.” But CTV failed to verify or refute
these opinions with evidence-based statements by environmental scientists:
government or academics with real expertise and authority.
CTV did talk to a “so-called” expert to counter the position
of the environmentalists: a vet (Dr. Hugh Mitchell), who works for the fish
farm: “[Atlantic salmon] are brought up on prepared fish pellets from since
they start feeding …They don’t know how to forage. They don’t know how to find
rivers and reproduce. They get eaten by predators or they die of starvation
after they escape.” (see below for proof against this). A vet does not have the expertise of a fish biologist or oceanographer / ecologist
or geneticist—all of who would better understand the potential impact of
released exotic species to native species. CTV ended its story with a remark by
the managing director of Mowi who said, “Data would suggest there’s a very low
risk to the [Atlantic] salmon making it to any rivers and an even lower risk of
them establishing successful populations within the BC environment.”
Where was
this data to prove the Mowi director’s claim? CTV provided no substantiation or valid
refutation; nor did CTV provide a more robust inquiry into other potential
risks such as impact of disease. Why weren’t unbiased authorities at DFO, UBC, Uvic, or Simon Fraser
University consulted for their expertise instead of a vet who works for the
aquaculture industry?
Other News Reporting
The Vancouver Sun, which also covered this story,
showed more balance in its reporting. However, the in its DFO reaction, the Sun
did not address the issue directly: “Among the feedback the federal government
has received through early consultations on the legislation is a need for a
more effective risk management framework and support for Indigenous involvement
and rights in the sector.”
The Georgia Straight used the right word—claimed—to describe Mowi’s unsubstantiated statements:
“The company claimed that
the escaped fish are easy prey because they are ‘unaccustomed to living in the
wild, and thus unable to forage for their own food.’” The Straight also
balanced that claim with another by Ernest Alfred of the ‘Ngamis First Nation
and videographer and wild-salmon advocate Tavis Campbell, who suggested that
the presence of Atlantic salmon in ocean water “presents a serious threat to
native Pacific salmon through transfer of pathogens and other associated
risks”. While The Straight did not follow through with
scientific verification, they provided relevant historic precedence: “After a
larger number of Atlantic salmon escaped from a Washington state fish farm near
Bellingham in 2017, these species were found as far away as the Saanich Inlet
and Harrison River.” Hardly the weaklings described by Mowi and Mitchell.
Global News provided a historic examination of the
August 2017 net pens collapse in the waters off northwest Washington to
demonstrate the seriousness of the potential impact: “Up to
263,000 invasive Atlantic salmon escaped into Puget Sound, raising fears about
the impact on native Pacific salmon runs. The incident inspired Washington
state to introduce legislation that would phase out marine farming of
non-native fish by 2022. Groups like the Pacific Salmon Foundation have called
for the B.C. and federal governments to do the same in Canada.”
Declining Pacific Wild Salmon
Wild
Pacific salmon have been declining for decades off the BC coast and streams,
according to DFO. A genetic
study reported in the journal Conservation Letters suggests that
sockeye salmon returns have dropped by three-quarters in the Skeena River over
the last century. Human
interference is primarily responsible, which
includes habitat destruction, diversions for agriculture and hydro-power, over-fishing,
and climate change. Habitat destruction—both quantity and quality—has occurred
mainly through logging, road construction, urban development, mining,
agriculture and recreation.
Added
to that list is the aquaculture industry that uses Atlantic salmon, an exotic
to the Pacific Ocean. A recent study conducted by the Strategic Salmon
Health Initiative (SSHI) revealed that the piscine reovirus (PRV) found in
farmed Atlantic salmon is linked to disease in Pacific Chinook salmon. The SSHI
is an initiative made up of scientists from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans
(DFO), Genome B.C., and the Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF).
The
findings show that the same strain of PRV, known to cause heart and skeletal
muscle inflammation (HSMI) in farmed Atlantic salmon, is causing Chinook salmon
to develop jaundice-anemia, a condition that ruptures red blood cells, and
causes organ failure in the fish. The disease could pose a serious threat to
wild salmon migrating past open-net fish farms in coastal waters in B.C.
Concerns
about the decline of Pacific salmon after the Big Bar landslide in the Fraser
River near Kamloops have prompted scientists to suggest this could result in
the extinction of multiple salmon runs by 2020. The federal Liberal government
has pledged to transition BC’s open-net pen salmon farms to closed inland
containment systems by 2025.
All
this corroborates the serious risk of Atlantic salmon farming. Accidents must
be expected. They always occur. Risk analysis must include the certainty of
this inevitability—just as water engineers must account for 100-year storms,
which do happen.
Need for Better Risk Management
(Type I and Type II Errors in Risk Assessment)
The
scientific method relies on accurately measuring certainty and therefore
reliably predicting risk. This means accounting for all biases and errors
within an experiment or exploration. In my work as a field scientist and
environmental consultant representing a client, we often based our formal
hypotheses in statistics, which considered two types of error: Type I and Type
II errors. Type I errors are false positives: a researcher states that a
specific relationship exists when in fact it does not. This is akin to an alarm
sounding when there’s no fire. Type II errors are false negatives: the
researcher states that no relationship occurs when in fact it does. This is
akin to not sounding an alarm when a fire is blazing.
The reason
why remarks made by vet Mitchell and Mowi are so dangerous is because they make
assumptions that are akin to not sounding an alarm when there is a fire; they are
committing a Type II error. In risk assessment, this is dangerous. In news
reporting, this is irresponsible.
When reporting on science-related issues with associated
risk, media must ultimately seek out evidence-based science through scientists
with relevant knowledge (e.g. an ecologist—not an economist or a vet—for an
environmental issue). It is fine to start with claim and position; but science reporting
must conclude with fact and truth.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is
co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown
College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua /
The Way of Water”
was published by Mincione
Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction
book “Water Is…” by Pixl
Press (Vancouver) was selected
by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year
in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada.
Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” will be released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in May 2020.
