More ISA in BC

Two of Alexandra Morton's recent posts on ISA are well done, concise documents on ISA in BC salmon. BC, DFO and the CFIA are doing nothing. At some point some very expensive lawsuits may be launched against all three. We are watching a potential tragedy unfold, with no one in charge doing anything other than saying it is not happening.

More ISA Virus Test Results, Ap 10, 2012: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2012/04/more-isa-virus-test-results.html

It notes, among other things:

There are four milestones in detection of ISA virus (salmon flu) in salmon:
1- visual sign in the organs
2- PCR positive result
3- sequencing the virus
4- finding the live virus and culturing it.

Culturing it can prove exceedingly difficult as Dr. Fred Kibenge noted when he was the lead OIE lab covering the ISA outbreak in Chile. It produced a $2 billion loss, but no cultured live virus.

Do look at Dr. Gary Marty's small table (of the BC test system), as in fairness, you need to know that ISA testing is not simple and conclusiveness needs to be statistically significant: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/Exh%202078%20-%2022-JaundiceSyndromeNotISAV%20copy.pdf

Also published on Ap 10, 2012, Morton summarizes the Cohen testimony and other notes in a timeline in Backgrounder: ISA Virus Results/Testimony in BC: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2012/04/salmon-flu-infectious-salmon-anemia-virus-isav-infectious-salmon-anemia-isa-was-first-discovered-in-salmon-feedlots.html

I crunched through the papers on the Owikeno sockeye collapse, and while several other plausible scenarios could explain why the third largest commercial sockeye harvest in BC collapsed in the early 1990s, it has never come back, and is consistent with ISA/fish farm lice as an explanation. The smolts are small and are not dying in freshwater:

http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/ffip/McKinnell_SM2001NAmJFishManag.pdf.