Ottawa silences scientist over West Coast salmon study

Photo: Marlies Jordan

Top bureaucrats in Ottawa have muzzled a leading fisheries scientist whose discovery could help explain why salmon stocks have been crashing off Canada's West Coast, according to documents obtained by Postmedia News. The government released 762 pages of documents relating to the Miller study to Postmedia but many passages and pages were blacked out before they were released.

The documents show the Fisheries Department wanted to publicize Miller's study, which raises the spectre of a mysterious virus killing huge numbers of Fraser River salmon before they reach their spawning grounds.

LINK (The Vancouver Sun)

Could it be the migrating salmon are picking up the virus as they pass the fish farms?

A virus that has killed millions of salmon in Chile and ravaged the fish farming industry there was probably brought over from Norway, a major salmon producer has acknowledged.

Since 1984, when it was first diagnosed in Norway, the I.S.A. virus had an outbreak in every major salmon-farming region in the world except British Columbia, said Don Staniford, the global coordinator for the Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture.

LINK (Via:The NY Times)

Comments

[BrownTroutSniffer]

too bad that when science doesnt agree with policy that you get blacked out passages that could help the entire ecosystem and wild fish populations and hurt fish farms. when dollars are up against science, dollars win