Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Now that most of the fish farms have closed down, sea lice numbers in the Discovery Islands have plummeted 95%.
“Most of the salmon farms are empty; All of the one south of Chatham Point are. Sea lice levels have plummeted over 95%. The Pink and Chum Salmon look gorgeous. This is due to the MInister’s decision and the seven First Nations who prohibited her from restocking the salmon farm,“ said independent biologist Alexandra Morton, who returned home to Sointula Friday afternoon.
Cortes Currents first learned of that there was no longer a sea lice problem on Wednesday, May 26th, when Angela Koch of Sierra Quadra gave the Strathcona Regional District Board a report from the Okisollo channel, which separates Quadra from Sonora and Maurelle Islands.
“On Sunday I talked to a couple of people who monitor, they test the smolts for sea lice every year. They said they’ve seen a 95% reduction in sea lice. So last year each smolt that they caught had an average of 9 sea lice on them. This year, there was a total of 9 sea lice on 50 fish,” she said.
These findings follow on last years report that the number of sea lice in the Broughton Archipelago, where fish farms are closing down, was significantly lower than areas where fish farms are still active.
“Those are my numbers,” said Morton.
Since April 1st, Morton says she has examined over 1,000 fish in the Discovery Islands and another 400 to 500 in Nootka Sound and Esperanza on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, “where the story is very different.”
“Last year, 50% of the farms went over the 3 adult lice limit. This was a limit that was set in 2003, by the Provincial Government, to protect wild salmon. The sea lice outbreak was horrendous. The sockeye had an average of 9 lice per fish, which we know from the DFO’s own research would have had profound impact on them,” she said.
Morton cited a 2018 study by Dr Simon Jones and two other scientists from the Pacific Biological station in Nanaimo, “which found that when young sockeye get infected with sea lice, basically they couldn’t keep the salt out of their bodies. They had a huge glucose spike, which is a serious stress response.”
One of the areas that Morton visited was the Okisollo channel which separates Quadra from Sonora and Maurelle Islands.
“One of the things that I realized now, with the farms all out of the Okisollo Channel, which is a very short body of water with a narrow ending at both ends, is that all three Norwegian companies were operating in that little body of water. There were four farms.This is the highest density of salmon farms anywhere on this coast and it is the only place where all three companies decided to operate side by side. You could not have picked a worse place because millions of salmon from the Fraser River funnel through those waters,” said Morton.
“I’ve been doing this work on and off since 2005, with the incredible assistance of Jody Erickson and Farlyn Campbell from Sonora island. Those two are incredible fishermen. They have these nets that we use to collect the fish. Sometimes we look at them alive’ sometimes we have to freeze them. In any case, I have looked at a lot of fish since 2005: a thousand this year, hundred last year. The difference is so obvious, there is no mistaking it.”
