Fifteen members of Salmon Talks Lillooet staged a noon-hour protest at the local Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) office Dec. 13.

They voiced concerns about the effect of the aquaculture industry on wild salmon stocks and about DFO policies that they say fail to adequately protect BC’s wild salmon.

Similar protests to save the wild salmon were also held in Tofino, Nanaimo, Victoria, Vancouver and Chilliwack.

Salmon Talks spokesperson Bill Spencer told the News the protests were scheduled to coincide with the reopening of the Cohen Commission to hear three days of new testimony about the presence of Infectious Salmon Anemia virus in BC waters. Prime Minister Stephen Harper created the Cohen Commission after sockeye runs in the Fraser fell in 2009 to about one million from an anticipated 10 million.

The public inquiry into the collapse of the 2009 Fraser River sockeye salmon run was extended after SFU Prof. Rick Routledge announced two months ago he had detected ISA virus in wild BC salmon.

Government scientists subsequently said Routledge’s results couldn’t be confirmed and their own extensive testing for the virus came up negative.

The alleged presence of ISA in BC salmon stocks is controversial because ISA is known to be devastating to farmed Atlantic salmon. Opponents of the aquaculture industry have suggested farmed fish could spread the ISA to wild salmon with catastrophic results. The virus has been linked to the destruction of the salmon farming industry in Chile and Europe.

According to national and international media reports, several more reports of the virus have emerged in the past two months, including a draft paper suggesting that the virus was detected as early as 2002, but not revealed by the government, further angering farming opponents.

Salmon Talks Lillooet and its allies have demanded that the federal government:

- test salmon farming facilities for the ISA virus

- remove fish from open-cage-nets before juvenile wild salmon pass by next spring

- amend DFO’s mandate so the department is not charged with protecting wild salmon stocks while at the same time promoting salmon aquaculture in BC’s coastal waters

- stop any new fish farms on BC’s coast

In her Dec. 15 testimony before the Cohen Commission, Kristina Miller, the head of molecular genetics for DFO’s laboratory at Nanaimo, told the hearing that she had also received positive results when she tested for the ISA virus. She said that when she reported her work to a superior last month, she was asked why she had conducted the research at all.

“Nobody in the department talked to me about disease or ISA after that,” Dr. Miller testified.

She also testified that while her tests showed fish responded to the presence of the ISA virus, it was not clear that it caused them any harm. She told the hearing she had recently tested salmon tissue samples from 1986 and they also showed the asymptomatic form of ISA,

“Obviously we have not established that it causes disease,” Miller said.

The hearing was also told that when the samples tested in Miller’s lab were tested at a DFO lab in Moncton, NB, the results were negative for ISA.

Miller told the hearing she now feels shunned by her DFO colleagues.

“I’m pretty alienated in the department at the moment so the end result of all this is I’m not included in any conversations about any of this (ISA research),” said Miller.

Professor Fred Kibenge, who heads up the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island, said he believes there is evidence of the genetic material of ISA virus in BC salmon. “Whether it’s ISA or an ISA-like virus needs more investigation,” media reports quoted Kibenge.