BC Salmon Farm Forced to Cull 560,000 fish

Atlantic salmon farms around Vancouver Island have begun testing and formed a special outbreak management team after an IHN virus outbreak at one farm led to a site quarantine and the cull of more than half a million fish.

IHN usually kills a fish within a week of exposure and can kill up to 100 percent of an infected population.

LINK (via: The Winnepeg Free Press)

Here is what happened when the IHN virus made it's way into Chilean hatcheries.

Wild B.C. salmon test positive for 'lethal' virus linked to fish farms

Fish farms, the gift that just keeps on giving.

Wild sockeye salmon from B.C.'s Rivers Inlet have tested positive for a potentially devastating virus that has never been found before in the North Pacific.

Infectious salmon anemia is a flu-like virus affecting Atlantic salmon that spreads very quickly and mutates easily, according to Simon Fraser University fisheries statistician Rick Routledge.

ISA can be fatal to Atlantic salmon, especially those confined in fish farms. Its effect on wild sockeye is unknown.

The virus detected in sockeye smolts by the Atlantic Veterinary College in P.E.I. — Canada's ISA reference lab — is the European strain of ISA, the same virus that devastated fish farms in Chile four years ago.

LINK (Via: The Vancouver Sun)

Scientists in Washington state are already working to improve testing for the marine virus as a precaution.

If the virus news was not grim enough.....

Environment Canada isn’t sure it can fully protect wild fish stocks if it approves the commercialization of a hatchery of genetically engineered salmon eggs.

B.C. developer touts salmon-rearing tank over fish farms

“I came out of the net industry and appreciate all of the issues of rearing salmon in net cages” said Richard Buchanan, CEO of Vancouver-based AgriMarine Holdings, citing disease, sea lice, fish escapes and waste deposits that contaminate shellfish.

Buchanan says his system will prove that healthy salmon can be produced for about the same cost, and with less environmental damage, as salmon grown in marine net cages.

Net farmers are skeptical that fish can be raised in tanks as economically as in net pens.

LINK (Via:The GLobe and Mail)

Bacteria near salmon pens becoming resistant to antibiotics

Bacteria around open net pen salmon farms are developing a resistance to antibiotics, a two-year study in B.C.’s Broughton Archipelago has found.

“They are not actually resistant, but, if we do these special tests, we can see the (tolerance for antibiotics) is higher than you would expect it to be,” said Dr. Michael Kelly, who headed the research.

LINK (Via: The Vancouver Sun)

Scientists one step closer to fully sequencing the salmon genome

I wonder what kind of new frankenfish the aquaculture industry will be able to develop once they have the keys to the entire salmonid genetic code.  

Genome BC partnered with the Chilean Economic Development Agency, InnovaChile, Norwegian Research Council, Norwegian Fishery and Aquaculture Industry Research Fund to form the International Cooperation to Sequence the Atlantic Salmon Genome (the Cooperation).

LINK (Via: SIFY News)

Target no longer selling farmed salmon

I had no idea they were in the fish business to begin with...  read more @ twincities.com