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The results of a new wild salmon study are skin crawling: 94 per cent of wild salmon fry in the Discovery Islands — to the east of Campbell River — had sea lice attached. The infected fry hosted an average of seven of the parasitic lice.
Sea lice on juvenile salmon can drastically reduce chances of survival, whose small bodies can not handle the damage caused by lice. By rubbing off fish scales and eating the mucus membrane underneath, the lice expose fish to water-born pathogens.
Further north in the Broughton Archipelago where five fish farms were recently closed, numbers are lower: 34 per cent of wild juveniles had an average of 1.3 lice. Nootka and Clayoquot Sounds on the west coast showed 87 and 94 per cent infection rates respectively.
The report was released Thursday, June 25 by B.C.’s First Nations Leadership Council, along with scientist Alexandra Morton who led the study. |
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The leadership council, made up of political leaders from three main First Nations associations in B.C., officially called for an end to ocean-based fish farms in B.C.
‘Namgis First Nation elected chief and hereditary chief Don Svanvik is glad to see other First Nations join the fight. His Nation lives on Cormorant Island in the Broughton Archipelago, and has fought against ocean fish farming for years.
The high numbers of sea lice this spring is a direct result of fish farms dotted along wild salmon migration routes, maintains the report. Adult salmon often swim home to spawn with lice attached, but when they die after laying eggs, the lice would also perish.
“Normally, when the little babies go out, they wouldn’t be swimming through all this lice,” Svanvik said.
However, fish farms provide a docile, year-round host for sea lice. The parasitic lice multiplies in farms, “and shed billions of larvae into the marine currents,” Morton wrote in the report.
“Imagine blood-sucking chickens hanging off you,” Svanvik said. |
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