The following is a statement from Alexandra Morton:

(May 17, 2012)  Justice Cohen ruled today that he will not reopen his Inquiry into the Decline of the Fraser Sockeye citing the amount of work the commission team is faced with to meet the twice-delayed September 30, 2012 delivery date. The Commission notes that they have heard evidence on disease.

The application to reopen the Inquiry was made by the Aquaculture Coalition (Alexandra Morton) after discovery that nearly 100% of BC farm salmon are testing positive for the Norwegian piscine reovirus.  Research published as recently as April 12, 2012 confirms association between this virus and a disease called Heart and Skeletal Muscle Inflammation (HSMI). The application to hear evidence on this disease was supported by the First Nations Coalition, the Cheam Indian Band and Conservation Coalition.

HSMI weakens heart muscle causing heart failure in salmon.  It has spread quickly through Norway. Norwegian scientist Dr. Are Nylund reports the BC farm salmon tissue he has examined is infected with the Norwegian piscine reovirus.  The only plausible explanation for presence of this Norwegian virus in BC farm salmon is that it arrived in the 30 million Atlantic salmon eggs imported into BC since 1986 by the salmon farming industry.

Nearly 100% of Atlantic salmon bought this spring from Fairway Market in Victoria, T & T markets in Vancouver and Superstores tested positive for this heart virus.  While Mary Ellen Walling of the BC Salmon Farmers Association is quoted saying they never see the affects of this virus, Dr. Gary Marty, the BC Provincial fish farm vet, says it is common, that he found it in 75% of the farm salmon he tested in 2010.

Despite the Province of BC finding this virus in farm salmon and its reputation for being highly contagious, Dr. Michael Kent of Oregon State University, ex-director of the DFO Pacific Biological Station never even mentioned it in his Technical Report Number One which he was hired to write for the Commission titled “Infectious Disease and Potential Impacts on Survival of Fraser River Sockeye Salmon”.

 “Which is it? Common or never seen,” asks Alexandra Morton, biologist, “This has become ridiculous. I don’t believe Dr. Marty’s test results referred to in the media recently were ever submitted to the Cohen Inquiry. Certainly, ex-DFO scientist Michael Kent never even mentioned this disease, even though up to 90% of Fraser sockeye are going missing after they pass Mission. Imagine trying to swim against Hells Gate with a virus that causes heart failure? How is that going to work out for you? In my view, this is exactly the same issue as DFO never mentioning to Justice Cohen that they found European ISA virus in 100% of the Cultus Lake sockeye.  The most lethal salmon virus found in 100% of the most endangered sockeye stock and DFO never told the $26 million commission we paid for into the loss of sockeye?”

It was Dr. Gary Marty’s employer, the Province of BC, that opposed the application to reopen the Inquiry. The piscine reovirus is carried in the flesh of the fish and so it could be washed down the drain into watersheds wherever farm salmon are sold and washed prior to cooking.

 “There are European viruses in BC farm salmon and they are spreading to wild salmon. The longer BC and Canada refuse to acknowledge this, the greater the risk these viruses will ignite an epidemic that will finish off BC’s wild salmon. I understand Justice Cohen being exhausted, but that is no excuse. DFO either lied on the stand when they said there was no ISAv in BC, or they hid it from their own people, ” says Alexandra Morton, “but fact is we never heard about it until the inquiry reopened and an independent scientist sent the secret report to the Inquiry.  This cover-up is so extensive it feels hopeless. Cohen just made his report outdated before it is even released. Communities should consider becoming farm salmon-free to prevent the spread of this virus into their watersheds.”

Morton continues to test for European viruses in BC until the money runs out.

Read this profile by the Globe and Mail's Mark Hume of marine biologist Alexandra Morton's decades-long struggle against the Norwegian open net salmon farming industry. (April 20, 2012)

Alexandra Morton sits at her kitchen table and tries to ignore the e-mails pouring in to the laptop open in front of her. She is looking out the picture window at Rough Bay, which is tranquil this morning, reflecting a vivid blue sky and the snow-capped mountains of northern Vancouver Island.

 “That's where I want to be,” she says wistfully, as if the sea, which washes ashore 10 metres from her tiny cabin on Malcolm Island, is somehow unreachable because of the life she has chosen.

Her idea of a perfect day is to rise at dawn and head out in her boat, Blackfish Sound, wandering until she finds a tide line where a rich seam in the ocean currents is marked by a ribbon of flotsam. Then she turns off the engine and drifts with a hydrophone hung over the side of the boat.

“You can hear herring. They sound like lemons being squished. You can hear the whisk, whisk, whisk of otter feet,” she says. “You can hear whales, and you can even hear the rocks rolling on the pebble beaches.”

But the days when she can escape to that idyllic world are few, says Ms. Morton, who is tied to her computer, afraid that if she rests, she may fail at her self-appointed task of removing open-net salmon pens from coastal waters.

Read story: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/one-womans-struggle-to-save-bcs-wild-salmon/article2409621/  

Check out the Tyee's "People's Order of BC" winners - including top vote-getter Alexandra Morton.

"And that's what we monkeys did here at The Tyee a couple of weeks ago. We launched a new award called The People's Order of B.C., a cheeky response to the controversy surrounding this year's actual Order of B.C. selections where we asked you to nominate and then vote for your favourites...Originally from Connecticut, Alexandra Morton is a marine biologist best known these days for her studies focusing on the impact of salmon farming in the waters off British Columbia. Not only did Morton garner the most votes, but she also garnered the most nominations -- 20 in total." (October 31, 2011)

Read article: http://thetyee.ca/Tyeenews/2011/10/31/Peoples-Order-Winners/

And now we're going to give it to some deserving folks (see below) and, yes, we're going to act like it means something.

Two items came across my desk yesterday that, taken together, illustrate just how embarrassingly backward our BC Liberal government is when it comes to matters of the environment.

One was a transcript from the BC Legislature, wherein NDP Fisheries Critic Michael Sather's concerns about the discovery of a deadly European strain of Infectious Salmon Anemia virus (ISAv) in wild BC sockeye are egregiously downplayed by his Liberal counterpart, Agriculture Minister Don MacRae. The other was a story in the Seattle Times, documenting the calls for emergency action from 3 high profile US Senators in neighbouring Alaska and Washington State over the very same issue.

Here's what Washington's Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell had to say: "We need to act now to protect the Pacific Northwest’s coastal economy and jobs. Infectious salmon anemia could pose a serious threat to Pacific Northwest wild salmon and the thousands of Washington state jobs that rely on them. We have to get a coordinated game plan in place to protect our salmon and stop the spread of this deadly virus.”

Now here's a transcript of what transpired in the BC Legislature on the same day US lawmakers were sounding the alarm - I'm including a significant chunk of this exchange because it so perfectly illustrates how out of touch this BC Liberal Government continues to be on the salmon farming issue, among many others:

M. Sather (NDP Fisheries Critic): The infectious salmon anemia virus has been discovered in wild salmon in Rivers Inlet. This is a potentially devastating disease that hasn't been reported before in the North Pacific. The Chilean farming industry was devastated by this same virus: $2 billion in losses, production cut by half and 26,000 people laid off.

We have a lot more to be concerned about here in British Columbia as well. We have our world-renowned sport-fishing industry, our commercial industry and our First Nations food fishery.

Now, Dr. James Winton, who leads the fish health research group at the Western Fisheries Research Center in Seattle, called this outbreak a "disease emergency." My question to the Minister of Agriculture is: does he agree with the assessment of Dr. Winton?

Hon. D. McRae (BC Liberal Agriculture Minister): Well, we've got another example of spinning media headlines and fearmongering from the opposition.

The reality is this. The lab results were sent to PEI. They were not following protocol when, instead of actually contacting CFIA, they went directly to SFU, which in turn went to the media.

When CFIA then, in turn, said, "We'd like to do our test samples," and said, "We'd like to test the fish," well, unfortunately, I'm advised that the tested-positive results at the PEI lab were destroyed, and therefore, not available to CFIA....

....M. Sather: Well, in my time in this House that has got to be one of the worst answers I have ever heard. The minister is really making a mistake in going this route.

Those fish were tested by the World Organisation for Animal Health. Now, if the minister wants to quibble with the worldwide body that's responsible for fish health, go ahead — fill your boots — but you're making a big mistake. And you're making a big mistake about not taking what's happening to our fish, our wild fish, our salmon farm fish in this province…You're not taking it seriously, Minister, and you ought to be ashamed and apologize right now.

Mr. Sather is right. Dr. Fred Kibenge, who did the testing, is a man of peerless credibility on this matter. Out of the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of PEI, he runs one of only two labs in the world approved by the OIE (the world animal health organization) to report ISAv. It is his lab that diagnosed and reported the Chilean outrbreak of ISAv several years ago. Mr. Sather is correct to suggest that questioning Dr. Kibenge's credentials is a dead end for those who are foolish enough to pursue it.

As to Mr. MacRae's other insinuations, I interviewed salmon biologist Alexandra Morton - who has been working with Professor Rick Routledge of SFU, who collected and forwarded the samples - by phone this morning and here's what she told me about the testing procedure:

This past Spring, Prof. Routledge, concerned about low numbers of out-migrating smolts in the area of Rivers Inlet, collected 199 smolt samples to be tested at a later date. He had no idea at the time some of these fish would come back positive for ISAv.

The fish were stored in a freezer through the summer. In October the hearts of 48 of these fish were removed by Prof. Routledge's assistant and sent directly to Dr. Kibenge's lab (each test costs upwards of $40 and this is an operation with little to no funds, so only a quarter of the fish were tested). Under these circumstances, the heart was the most reliable piece of tissue on which to perform the testing.

Now, these are very small fish with very small hearts, so Dr. Kibenge used up all the tissue in the testing process. This contradicts what the BC Liberal Agriculture Minister alleged yesterday - that the samples were "destroyed", which implies a cover-up of some nature. That's simply not the case. As soon as the test results were confirmed, Dr. Kibenge alerted the CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency), as per his legal responsibility.

Furthermore, earlier this week, officials from the CFIA showed up at Prof. Routledge's SFU lab and confiscated the remaining 151 untested fish from the lab's freezer. We can only assume they now have these fish in their possession, hearts and all.

All Prof. Routledge appears to have done is collected fish samples, where neither senior level of government would, and forwarded them to the top expert in North America for testing - which, in turn, revealed the devastating fact that a European strain of the deadly ISAv in now infecting BC's wild sockeye.

Those are the facts.

Here are some more facts that shed light on the Province's defensiveness. It is the BC Government that has been responsible for auditing fish health on salmon farms, up until the transfer of aquaculture jurisdiction to the federal government in January of this year. Incidentally, there is no evidence of any auditing process by any government body since April 2010 - when the fish farmers told the Province they no longer "required" its services (i.e., "Go away.") And because fish health auditing is not a licensing requirement for the farms, they got away with it.

One man, Dr. Gary Marty, was responsible for the autopsies of fish from the farms in BC. The only person he ever showed his results to was Dr. Mark Sheppard, formerly of the Province as well. It was Sheppard who acted as the buffer between the raw data and what other government bodies and the public got to see.

The point is that much of what we're discussing here is on the BC Government's watch - which, like I say, may help explain their appalling defensiveness on the ISAv matter.

One other note, the person responsible for testing wild fish health in BC, Dr. Christine MacWilliams, asserted recently at the Cohen Commission on collapsing Fraser River sockeye, that if ISAv ever did show up in BC, it would be coming from fish farms - not from the wild. The fact that this is most definitely a European strain of ISAv should remove all doubt that this disease now hitting BC's wild salmon comes from the fish farm industry.

What is gauling in the BC Agriculture Minister's response to this crisis is his government's utter disregard for the Precautionary Principle. US lawmakers are correct in their response - it's time to go into emergency mode, not to bicker about testing protocols and worry about butt-covering.

Alexandra Morton is now calling for Dr. Kibenge to be provided the resources to come out to BC and set up an emergency lab on Vancouver Island to begin testing all species of wild and farmed salmon, as well as herring.

That's a sound recommendation which both federal and provincial governments would do well to adopt post haste.

This is no longer a matter to leave to our backward, incompetent, self-interested BC Liberal Government. This is an international issue of grave import, as our neighbours to the south and north are reminding us. We have a duty to work with them to address this matter with the utmost sense of urgency.

As Michael Sather said, unlike the devastation of Chile by ISAv - which I personally documented in 2009 in my film "Farrmed Salmon Exposed" (Chile chapter begins at 2 min mark) - we have much more than the destruction of the aquaculture industry to worry about. This is about our wild salmon, which my colleague Rafe Mair aptly refers to as "the soul of our province."

Read this story from the New York Times on the recent discovery of wild Pacific sockeye infected with the European strain of the deadly ISA virus.

"A lethal and highly contagious marine virus has been detected for the first time in wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest, researchers in British Columbia said on Monday, stirring concern that it could spread there, as it has in Chile, Scotland and elsewhere. Farms hit by the virus, infectious salmon anemia, have lost 70 percent or more of their fish in recent decades. But until now, the virus, which does not affect humans, had never been confirmed on the West Coast of North America". (Oct. 17, 2011)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/science/18salmon.html

Read Mark Hume's take in the Globe and Mail on yesterday's pivotal session at the Cohen Commission into disappearing Fraser sockeye.

"Brock Martland, associate commission counsel, set the stage for a free-wheeling debate when he opened with 'a big question,' asking the panel if they thought DFO could successfully both regulate and promote the aquaculture industry, while protecting wild salmon stocks. 'I don’t believe that’s possible ... those two [mandates] are in conflict,' shot back Ms. Stewart, who believes the industry damages wild salmon by spreading sea lice and disease. She said the regulation of fish farms should be handed off to some other federal agency, such as Agriculture Canada or Industry Canada, while DFO should be charged with managing and protecting wild salmon." (Sept 7, 2011)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/cohen-inquiry-debates-dfos-ability-to-regulate-and-promote-salmon/article2157383/?from=sec431

Read this report from Black Press' Jeff Nagel on the first of two days for Alexandra Morton on the stand at the Cohen Commission into disappearing Fraser sockeye.

"Morton said returning Fraser sockeye began to nose-dive in 1992, the same year many salmon farms began operations on the migration route. 'In the biological world, you rarely get patterns this bold,' she said. She also noted Harrison Lake sockeye are an anomaly among Fraser River runs in that they have bucked the downward trend and done surprisingly well. That run migrates around the west side of Vancouver Island, avoiding the main cluster of salmon farms on the east side, she said."

http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_north/campbellrivermirror/news/129430898.html

Yesterday, on the penultimate day of the Cohen Commission's hearings on aquaculture and diseases, Alexandra Morton finally took the stand. To say the event lived up to its billing is an understatement, as the Inquiry often characterized by technocratic tedium was jolted to life in its final rounds.

At the heart of the conflict lay the pattern of breathtaking industry-government collusion and secrecy that has characterized the aquaculture issue for decades - to a degree even I didn't fully fathom until now.

Joining Morton and Living Oceans Society's Catherine Stewart (who acquitted herself admirably) on the stand were two industry reps: Clare Backman, Director of Sustainability for Marine Harvest (now there's an oxymoron), and Mia Parker, formerly of Grieg Seafoods, but now of DFO.

The Commission's lawyer introduced Ms. Parker saying, "I'm not asking you to wear your DFO hat today, as that would be confusing.”

It's actually simpler than it sounds. It's called a conflict of interest.

And yet, charting this pair's career paths does require a modicum of concentration, lest one gets lost in the whirlwind of the industry-government revolving door.

You see, Backman used to work for the Province, back when it had jurisdiction over aquaculture. More specifically, he was instrumental in selecting sites for fish farms on the coast. Then, in 2002, he went to work for the industry, ending up at Marine Harvest. Parker, on the other hand, worked for the industry up until recently, whereupon she transferred to government - specifically, designing aquaculture regulations under the new management regime of DFO (Morton and her lawyer Greg McDade forced this change of jurisdiction in 2009 with a landmark legal victory at the BC Supreme Court).

The problematic nature of this arrangement - from the public's perspective - was evident when McDade, representing Morton at the Inquiry as well, asked Backman to commit to a higher level of fish health data reporting. Backman responded, "We’ll comply with whatever the license requirements are."

Those would be the license requirements Ms. Parker is now helping to author. Are you with me so far?

In another telling exchange, we heard about a disease referred to as marine anemia, or plasmacytoid leukemia, that was ravaging Chinook farms in the late 80s and early 90s - a pathogen that apparently can jump from farmed Chinook to wild sockeye. This disease was one of Dr. Kritsti Miller's prime suspects for the mystery virus afflicting millions of Fraser River sockeye with pre-spawn mortality - that which she conceded may hold the answer to the whole mystery the Commission is seeking to solve.

When Morton's lawyer Greg McDade attempted to enter a summary by his client on the subject into the record, he was met by an instant chorus of objections from counsel for the Federal Government, the Province and the aquaculture industry, respectively. I observed no less than eight objections between them within minutes.

At one point, McDade fired back, “I don’t know why counsel for the Province is trying so hard to keep this evidence from being presented.” By this point, I'd wager most members of the audience could venture a hypothesis or two on that subject.

In the end, Justice Cohen tabled the matter for a later date - indicating he wanted to read this summary document before reaching a final decision on its inclusion in the Inquiry's public record. However, that didn't stop McDade from going through several key pages with Morton on the record, expanding on some matters I covered in detail in last week's column - such as the correlation between the timing of locating these farms on the Fraser sockeye migratory route, circa 1992, and the productivity of said wild fish falling of a cliff.

Of particular note were the Province's fish health audit records, recently made public for the first time through the Commission (this after counsel for the Campbell/Clark Government initially argued against disclosing them, before finally backing down early last week). McDade zeroed in on one specific data set, which showed that on a particular Chinook farm located in the pathway of migrating juvenile Fraser sockeye in the Discovery Islands area near Campbell River, 23 out of 24 fish sampled bore symptoms of marine anemia.

And yet, somehow no disease outbreak, or "fish health incident", as it is referred to, was publicly reported or investigated further.

And why not? Because the decision of whether to report it rests in the hands of the fish farm company's own veterinarians - as this exchange demonstrated:

McDade: So if your farm vets don’t make a diagnosis, it doesn’t get reported.

Long pause

Backman: That’s correct - because in their opinion it doesn’t exist.

McDade: So if 23 out of 24 of these fish die of those symptoms, it doesn’t exist.

You got that right. The disease doesn't exist unless the industry says it does!

Backman's rationale, amid courtroom gasps: "Yes, it’s important it gets into the public domain, but it’s also important it doesn’t get taken out of context." In other words, best err to the side of secrecy and the industry's interests.

If you're concerned by what you're now reading, consider what the Commission heard about the PhD thesis of a recent expert on the stand at the Commission, Dr. Craig Stephen, of the University of Calgary (a PhD student at the University of Saskatchewan at the time of the paper). In 1995, Stephen wrote: "Evidence supporting the hypothesis that marine anemia is a spreading, infectious neoplastic disease could have profound regulatory effects on the salmon farming industry."

On the stand at the Commission years later (two weeks ago), Dr. Stephen would second-guess his own conclusions. And he's not alone.

Another expert scientist, Dr. Michael Kent, before the Commissioner's very eyes, backtracked on no less than 10 papers he'd published on marine anemia in journals over a decade.

Is it possible these scientists would rather disavow years of their own research than concede this disease in farmed fish could be related to the mystery virus Dr. Miller is pursuing? A virus which may in turn be "the smoking gun" for collapsing Fraser sockeye runs, as Miller recently told the Commission? If so, talk about taking one for the team!

Morton suggested that in light of Dr. Kent's astonishing reversal on his own oft-published research, he should be going back to all those publications and retracting said articles - a reasonable request, given Dr. Kent's own testimony on the stand (testimony which included him suggesting at one point that ocular tumours sent to the Smithsonian cancer registry may have been nothing more than some misdiagnosed inflammation that he really didn't examine all that closely at the time).

And yet, it was somehow Ms. Morton's credibility that was on trial on this day - as Canada's counsel suggested her summary of this disease story was "full of hearsay and speculation", while the industry's lawyer impugned her professional conduct, going as far as to accuse her of breaching her code of ethics as a Registered Professional Biologist. Through it all, Morton bravely, calmly stood her ground.

Under the hail of objections as Greg McDade attempted to get Morton's summary document on the record, his client boiled it all down to one salient point for the Commissioner: “The only thing I want you to take from this is that Dr. Miller needs to be able to do her work – someone who is an expert in disease needs to be free to look at this.” (The Commission also heard of the enormous obstacles Miller's research is facing at its most critical juncture, including having her funding pulled - through political interference by the Harper Government).

The fact is, throughout the aquaculture and disease hearings of the past several weeks, most of the Commission's scientific experts either work for or have worked for the industry or government - a point Morton made clear in the final, heated exchange of the day.

The lawyer for the Aboriginal Aquaculture Coalition (i.e., representing First Nations with a working partnership with the industry) asked Ms. Morton why her perspective differs so greatly from the phalanx of industry and government scientists who have one by one maintained salmon farms have nothing to do with the plight of Fraser sockeye. Morton remained cool under fire, replying that unlike all of them, "I don’t work for a university, the government, the industry, or a First Nation – I’m completely independent."

The lawyer, Stephen Kelliher, shot back, with a heavy dose of sarcasm: "So you're pure, then. You're the only one who isn't corrupted?" Morton simply smiled and replied, "Perhaps," as the increasingly raucous gallery erupted in cheers.

And that was the kind of day it was at the Cohen Commission. A fitting emotional climax to what was easily the most exciting and revealing - while also frustrating and appalling - day of the Inquiry. The same panel, including Morton, returns to the stand today for the Commission's final public session before closing arguments in November.

One day left and it feels like we're only just now really getting somewhere.

Read this blog from Alexandra Morton as she prepares to take the stand at the Cohen Commission into disappearing sockeye.

"I can see how the Fraser sockeye got where they are today. I want to know if Salmon Leukemia is infecting the Fraser sockeye. I want to know why only the runs that pass salmon farms are collapsing and rebounding in unpredictable patterns. I don't see DFO accepting this responsibility. Dr Mike Kent - ex-DFO retracted ten years of his own work on this disease when he was on the stand. Then Dr Mark Sheppard, DFO said he does not think it exists and will never report it even when presented the clinical diagnosis. Dr. Marty BCMAL also does not think it exists even though he has reported the symptoms in 587 farm salmon. Dr. Saksida was on the stand yesterday she says it does exist. Dr. Miller, DFO is trying to confirm all this and DFO has taken away her funding to work on sockeye!!"

http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2011/09/today-i-am-on-the-stand.html

Read this blog by Alexandra Morton on another recent development at the Cohen Commission - the charge that she and others observing fish farms up close are somehow trespassing in open waters.

"How dare these Norwegian corporations suggest 'unwanted trespass'!!!! If we do not stand up to this now, they will erode our freedoms until we are all serfs of the corporations. The ocean waters of Canada are not the private property of anyone! The chiefs of the Broughton have given me their blessing to travel freely through their territories. I rarely get angry anymore - it takes too much energy to stay in this fight - but this is so fundamentally wrong it needs strong opposition." (Sept. 5, 2011)

http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2011/09/unwanted-tresspass.html