The psychology underlying people's behaviour is as fascinating as the things they do. “Change blindness” is a case in point. Psychologists describe it as the inability of people to notice anomalies, differences and the unusual in their surroundings. The obvious, it seems, is not always obvious...For example, we seem to have an inherent inclination to overlook or rationalize as normal the weather abnormalities that arise from global warming. If this strategy doesn't serve to diminish the significance of an extreme weather event in our minds, we excuse it by extending the range of normality — a once-in-a-century event occurring once every ten years is deemed normal.
Read this blog post from Alexandra Morton, claiming that she and her research team have found ISA virus in farmed Atlantic salmon sold at three T&T Supermarket stores in Vancouver. (March 13, 2012)
Today I received ISA virus positive test results from the international ISA virus OIE Reference lab in eastern Canada.
The ISA virus positive fish were 5 Atlantic salmon I purchased from three different T & T supermarkets around the lower mainland and one chum salmon from the Vedder River. There is no evidence ISA virus harms humans.
These samples were in much better condition than the Rivers Inlet sockeye smolts that tested positive last year, and so further testing is underway to sequence the virus. Once completed this will better inform us of where this virus is coming from.
When my colleagues and I got ISA virus positive test results last December, the BC Minister of Agriculture and Lands, Don McRae said: “Reckless allegations based on incomplete science can be devastating to these communities and unfair to the families that make a living from the sea. Since Premier Clark is currently on a trade mission to China, I have personally asked her to reassure our valued trading partners that now as always BC can be relied upon as a supplier of safe, sustainable seafood..” Now we have ISA virus positive results from a Chinese supermarket chain in BC. The gills were intact in these fish and from speaking with the people behind the seafood counter we believe these fish were reared in BC marine feedlots. The CFIA will be able to tell us where they came from, or perhaps the market will let us know. If these fish were shipped in from outside BC they should not have had the gills left in them.
Read this story from the Winnipeg Free Press on a suspected outbreak of the deadly ISAv salmon virus at a Cook Aquaculture open net pen salmon farm in Nova Scotia. (Feb 17, 2012)
HALIFAX - Cooke Aquaculture says it has a suspected outbreak of the infectious salmon anemia virus at one of its fish farms in Nova Scotia.
In a statement today, the seafood company says it destroyed fish contained in two cages at one of its fish farming sites after routine tests and surveillance of its stocks on Feb. 10.
But the company declined to say where the outbreak is suspected.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is investigating, but it too declined to say where the suspected outbreak is located.
Con Kiley, director of the agency's aquatic animal health program, says the location can't be made public due to privacy concerns.
Kiley says the virus is not a human health or food risk, but according to the agency's website, it can kill up to 90 per cent of infected fish, depending on its strain.
He says tests will be conducted at a federal lab in Moncton, N.B., to confirm whether the virus is present.
The source of the infectious salmon anemia virus (ISAv) now being found in BC's wild salmon is almost certainly from imported Atlantic salmon eggs, the international trade that has provided coastal salmon farms with most of their stock. The salmon farming industry, of course, is still denying that ISAv is here, although evidence given at the Cohen Commission's extraordinary three days of hearings on December 15th, 16th and 19th essentially obliterates that defence...Documents presented at the Cohen Commission suggest that the arrival of ISAv coincides with the early importation of Atlantic salmon eggs to West Coast salmon farms.
The credibility of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has been compromised by its conflicting mandates of managing wild salmon and promoting salmon farming. Now we discover that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has its own conflicting mandates of suppressing pathogens while enhancing marketing opportunities for fish products. Consequently, when a viral disease is reported and the commercial value of fish is threatened, the CFIA assumes a defensive position by questioning the findings of the testing labs, by re-testing the degraded samples of infected fish with its notoriously inaccurate technology, and then recording "inconclusive" results as "negative".
Following the utter disregard shown in the final days of the Cohen Commission by the federal government for First Nations' rights, it is clear that the best opportunity to remove salmon farms from our coast is to follow the successful model being built to protect the province from oil pipelines and tankers. "The coalition is there already; its power has been demonstrated. All it would take would be for many of the same First Nations in the Fraser and Skeena watersheds to unite in opposition to salmon farms - with the full support of conservation groups, wilderness tourism operators and citizens, just as they have done with the Enbridge issue..."
Written by Damien Gillis
- Thursday, 22 December 2011
Watch this series of clips by independent filmmaker Craig Delahunt from the Cohen Commission, including a key hour of testimony from the final day of ISAv hearings and interviews with experts outside the Commission.
Written by Damien Gillis
- Tuesday, 06 December 2011
Read this bombshell report from the Chilliwack Times on the revelation of a 2004 report that shows a 100% ISA virus infection rate in 100 sockeye samples taken from Cultus Lake in 2004. A must-read!
"A seven-year-old unpublished report indicates 100 per cent of a
sample of Cultus Lake sockeye tested positive for a potentially deadly
salmon virus. The undated report (likely from 2004) produced at a
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) station in Nanaimo, tested wild
Pacific salmon-sockeye, chinook and pink- from various locations,
including Cultus Lake.
Twenty-two per cent of the salmon, or 117
out of more than 500 samples tested positive for ISA, with more than
half of the positive tests from the Fraser River. And more than
half of all the positive test results came from the 64 out of 64 samples
of Cultus Lake sockeye found with ISA virus." (Dec. 6, 2011)
Written by Damien Gillis
- Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Read this bombshell story from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on a recently leaked Department of Fisheries and Oceans report which shows ISA virus was found in several species of BC and Alaskan wild salmon in 2004. The report was deliberately covered up by DFO and is only now coming to light, years later.
"A 2004 draft manuscript, leaked out of Canada's Department of
Fisheries and Oceans, indicates that the deadly infectious salmon anemia
virus was identified eight years ago in coho, pink and sockeye salmon
taken from southern British Columbia, Southeast Alaska and Bering
Sea waters. Testing done in 2002 and 2003 'lead us to conclude that an
asymptomatic form of infectious salmon anemia occurs among some species
of wild Pacific salmon in the north Pacific,' said the manuscript. But a senior official at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans
recently rejected a request to submit the manuscript for publication." (Nov. 29, 2011)
Read Alexandra Morton's latest blog post, alerting Federal Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield to the biologist's recent discovery of more wild BC salmon infested with the deadly Infectious Salmon Anemia virus.
"Dear Minister Ashfield,
I would suggest you stop treating us like fools. Your attached letter is grossly inadequate. Download Initial Request for 2011-001-03100.pdf (440.4K)
Show us your Moncton test results because your lab is the only one that
cannot find ISA virus. I would also suggest you stop obsessing over
the quality of the River Inlet samples and go out and get your own
samples. You have an entire department at your disposal.
You can stop calling the 1st Norwegian tests a "negative" result. Be
more accurate and call them what they are - a weak positive. Download Report 021111.pdf (22.0K) You can't wave a magic wand and make black white." (Nov. 25, 2011)
The immediate panic subsided with the CFIA's recent announcement that re-testing of the sockeye samples did not find ISAv. Were the samples now too old? Had they been improperly stored? Could the original tests, done by one of the world's reference labs for ISAv, have been faulty? Were the CFIA's tests faulty? Why had the many tests done on farmed fish not detected ISAv? Why had the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) not been testing for the disease in wild salmon? Why did no federal agency have a protocol for responding to an ISAv emergency?
30 year-old William Housty's powerhouse presentation to the National Energy Board's Enbridge hearings in his community of Bella Bella. William describes the history, language and culture of his people in fascinating detail - and how the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline and Tar Sands supertankers transiting the waters of his people's territory would destroy their traditional way of life.
Highlights from this week's National Energy Board hearings in Bella Bella on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline and supertankers on BC's coast. Powerful testimony from three members of the Heiltsuk First Nation, sharing their experiences with the sea.rn
The Heiltsuk First Nation learned late Monday that scheduled National Energy Board hearings on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline will resume Tuesday in Bella Bella, following their cancellation Monday in the wake of a peaceful demonstration to which the Joint Review Panel overreacted.
Close to 2,000 people turned out on a rainy Monday afternoon in Vancouver last week to speak out against Tar Sands oil tankers on BC's coast. The occasion marked the 23rd anniversary of the disastrous Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. The crowd gathered at the Art Gallery to hear from guest speakers like 350.org's Bill McKibben and members of the Heiltsuk First Nation of Bella Bella, who coorganized the rally, along with ForestEthics and Greenpeace.
Rueben George of the Tsleil-Waututh (Burrard) First Nation and Ben West of the Wilderness Committee discuss Kinder Morgan's quiet plan to twin its existing Trans Mountain Pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to Vancouver - which would result in up to 300 supertankers a year plying the waters of the Burrard Inlet and South Coast.
Eleven year-old Ta'Kaiya Blaney of the Sliammon First Nation sings her hit song "Shallow Waters" to some 2,000 people outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. She tells the audience one year ago on this day she was chased from Enbridge's Vancouver office when she tried to present her song to company officials.
World renowned climate activist Bill McKibben of 350.org lent his voice to the "Our Coast, Our Decision" rally in Vancouver Monday. McKibben told the crowd of close to 2,000 outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, "This is one of these great moments in human history and you guys are absolutely at the white, hot centre of it."
Rafe Mair pulls no punches in this, the second of a two-part interview with BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix - grilling the potential future premier of BC on Liquid Natural Gas, fracking, the proposed Enbridge pipeline and salmon farms.
Marven Robinson, a spirit bear guide from the Gitga'at Nation of Hartley Bay, speaks to Damien Gillis in Prince Rupert the day after the big rally he helped organize against Enbridge on Feb. 4, 2012.
In the first of a two-part interview, Rafe Mair grills BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix on private power, Site C Dam and BC's flawed environmental assessment process. What will the NDP do with existing and future private river power projects (a.k.a. IPPs) if they form the next government - and where do they stand on Site C Dam?
The beating of drums echoed throughout the seaside community of Prince Rupert, BC, on February 4 as thousands of First Nations and BC citizens banded together to express their opposition to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway twin pipelines from the Alberta Tar Sands to nearby Kitimat on BC's central coast.
The various spokespeople for supposed "grassroots" pro-Tar Sands and pipeline organization EthicalOil.org have steadfastly maintained their campaign has no connection to the oil and gas industry or the Harper Government. But as the links between these groups continue to pile up, that contention becomes harder and harder to swallow.
In the wake of the bogus deal Enbridge attempted to foist on the Gitxsan people of Northwest BC last month to help pave the way for its controversial proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, the community has banded together in inspiring fashion - with camcorders and the Web as their weapons of choice.
Watch this series of clips by independent filmmaker Craig Delahunt from the Cohen Commission, including a key hour of testimony from the final day of ISAv hearings and interviews with experts outside the Commission.
See how the Gitxsan are banding together in a moment of crisis, following the unauthorized deal with Enbridge signed by rogue treaty negotiator Elmer Derrick.
