Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Radio - At the request of the Pacheedaht, Ditidaht and Huu-ay-aht First Nations, BC is deferring old-growth logging in the Fairy Creek watershed and central Walbran areas.

Roy L Hales/ CKTZ news - One of Cortes Island’s biggest employers, Hollyhock, is reopening for in-person sessions on June 25th.

“We open with one of our most popular local presenters, Bill Ophoff, who does Discover Cortes. I am really excited to open 2021 with Bill, who has been at Hollyhock for almost 30 years,”said CEO Peter Wrinch.

“We’ll be opening the dining room. I don’t even know how long we’ve had buffet style dining, but we’re moving to plated service. We purchased a custom stretch tent from Shady Spaces, in Cumberland, so people can eat outside. People can also sit out on our beachfront deck. There will be heaters for cooler days.

They are also offering more options for outdoor gatherings.

Hollyhock is also promoting itself as a tourist destination for short term holidays.

“We know that people in the city want to come to beautiful places like Cortes Island. When it feels safe to do so, this could be a real respite for folks” explained Wrinch.

He described Hollyhock’s business model as one of the hardest hit by the pandemic. It is similar to a hotel, with dining, and also brings people together for group sessions.

“So our big thing has been, how can we maintain any kind of business levels with restrictions? Luckily we’re seeing BC turn a corner and the restrictions are lifting.”

Hollyhock currently has 592 registrations and Wrinch says they might reach 1,000 by the end of the year.

Prior to the Pandemic, there were 1,800 to 2,000 visitors during an average year.

There is another side to Hollyhock’s business story. They launched on the internet 15 months ago.

“As of today, Monday, we had 627 registrations for virtual programs during 2021. Our virtual programs for this year are already exceeding last year,” said Wrinch.

All photos courtesy Hollyhock

Roy L Hales/CKTZ news - On June 8th, Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan announced the guiding principles of what may be largest government action to save pacific salmon stocks in Canadian history.

“Pacific salmon stocks are in steep decline due to climate change, habitat loss and other increasing threats. Coastal First Nations, stewardship organizations and harvester groups have been calling for urgent, dramatic action to save these populations and today our government is launching the new $647.1 million Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative,” she said.

This program is to rest on four key pillars: Conservation and stewardship; Enhanced hatchery production; Harvest transformation;

and Integrated management and collaboration.

While the challenge is great, the government says it will work with a wide range of Indigenous partners, harvesters, recreational fishers, stakeholders, and communities who depend on Pacific salmon.

“Together, we can do this,” said Jordan.

The announcement comes at a time when the Liberal party has declared  a "state of electoral urgency," a procedural move that allows it to speed up the nomination processes for candidates in the next federal election. According to the CBC, speeding up the pace of recruitment is the latest sign that there may be an election this fall.

Max Thaysen, acting Director of the Friends of Cortes Island, and Aaron Hill, Executive Director of the Watershed Watch Salmon Society share their perceptions of this announcement.

Photo credit: close-up of Chum Salmon face courtesy Watershed Watch Salmon Society

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - “Our results suggest that sea-louse counts reported by the salmon farming industry are lower than the true abundance of parasites on their fish. When the federal government audited a sea-louse count, the industry’s mean counts for that month increased by a factor of 1.18 for L. salmonis and by 1.95 for C. clemensi.” - Sean Godwin et al, Bias in self-reported parasite data from the salmon farming industry.

Dr Sean Godwin is the lead author of eight of the fifteen scientific papers listed on his website. The bulk of these explore interactions between wild and farmed salmon. One of the most troubling, published in the journal Ecological Application, is a survey that showed Fish farms underreporting sea lice during the months they are not audited by Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

“The period of study in that paper was 2011 to 2016. It involved every salmon farm that operated in British Columbia during that time. What we found was that when DFO Auditors were there to check in on the salmon farm counts, the industry counters were higher …,” he said.

Godwin said that while this is not true in every single case, it is the overall trend.

“Once we took into account all these other things that upset sea lice numbers - like temperature, salinity, location and all these things - there was this really obvious effect across the board. When DFO Auditors were there, the accounts were higher and when DFO Auditors were not here, the counts were lower.”

The BC Salmon farmer’s Association emailed a previously published statement, “ …The report by Sean Godwin et. al is presented as a direct comparison of sea lice data collected by salmon farmers and submitted to the DFO with audits conducted by the DFO. However, that’s not what it actually does. Rather, the study’s authors created a complex model themselves to try and estimate what sea lice counts should have been in the past, and report on variance from their own model to actual sea lice counts. The model feels rushed, and is based on assumptions that aren’t clear in the study and don’t reflect a number of complex variables including the reality of ocean conditions.”

To which Godwin responded, also by email,“The same trend we identified is present in the raw, publicly-available count data (i.e. -absent any modelling). The average industry louse counts are still ~15% less for L. salmonis and ~50% for C. clemensi when auditors are not present.”

“ … This analysis began in 2017 as part of my PhD thesis, and has taken the better part of 3.5 years to complete to our satisfaction and go through the thorough peer-review process in a leading scientific journal (to which we first submitted the manuscript last October).”

“ … Our study does not compare industry counts during audits to DFO audit counts, nor do we ever present it as doing so – we know DFO already does this … We were instead curious about what happens to industry's own counts when auditors are not present. Our use of a statistical model (fit to real industry counts) was designed to account for factors known to affect sea lice (e.g., treatments, seasonality, etc). Our use of a statistical model was in-part an honest attempt to find explanations other than industry bias.”

There is much more in the podcast

Photo credit: Tavish Campbell

Photo

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Radio - The following report contains trigger words which some may find offensive and opinions which are not necessarily shared by Cortes Radio, its Board, staff, volunteers or listeners.

At this point, Cortes Currents is aware of 14 Discovery Island residents who made the trek to Fairy Creek and there could easily be dozens more.

Four of their stories: Hiway Hippy; Lonnie & Ralph Keller; Maureen Williams.

Photo credit: Campfire by Liv Unni Sødem via Fklickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Deep water temperatures in fjords along BC’s the Central coast have increased 1.2–1.3°C over 70 years, a recent report shows.

“These are big changes for the ocean. They are changes that can shift shift ecosystems and impact species. Oolichan, for example, don’t like being in waters that are warmer than 8°C and in some of the inlets we don’t see waters that are colder than 8°C anymore,” said Jennifer Jackson of the Hakai Institute, lead author of a study of Rivers, Knight and Bute Inlets, as well as the Douglas Channel.

She added right now the big three climate change variables that scientists are watching are warming, the loss of oxygen and acidification. They are all interlinked. Warmer waters do not hold as much oxygen, which leads to more acidification.

“The loss of oxygen trend that we are seeing in the coastal waters is really large, it is about 20% in deep water over the past 70 years. It will often put these deep waters into a realm where there is not enough oxygen for most animals to survive. It can shrink their habitat,” explained Jackson. “In the 1950s, 60’s and 70’s there was always enough oxygen throughout Bute Inlet, or Knight Inlet or Rivers Inlet, but during the last ten years there are sometimes months at a time when there isn’t enough oxygen below, say 300 metres.”

Sea Stars, zooplankton, most fish species, prawns and crabs are among the species affected by this change.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - he new daily average of COVID 19 cases per 100,000 people has dropped to zero throughout most of Vancouver Island, according to the latest data from the BC Centre for Disease Control.

The exceptions are Greater Nanaimo, where the number has dropped to 2, Greater Victoria, where the rate is now 1, and the Southern Gulf Islands, where the rate is also 1 per 100,000 people.

The average daily rate of new cases per 100,000 people in Greater Campbell River, the Comox Valley and the rest of North Vancouver Island is zero.

This data is for the week of May 25th to 31st.

Another data set, also from the BC Centre of Disease Control, shows one case in the Greater Campbell River Area and 7 in the Comox Valley during the week of May 23 to 29th.

The most up to date data, released by Island Health at 4 PM on Wednesday, June 2nd states there are still 5 active cases in North Vancouver Island.

There are a total of 52 active cases on Vancouver Island, 90% of which are in South or Central Vancouver Island.

According to yesterday’s joint statement, from Dr. Bonnie Henry and Adrian Dix, Minister of Health, there were two new cases on Vancouver Island.

A reporter asked whether it is time for BC to adopt a regional, rather than province wide, approach to COVID.

“I believe one of the things that has allowed us to manage this pandemic in the way we have, and to keep our overall numbers low, is a co-ordinated provincial approach. We have seen the numbers decrease as the testing capacity increases, as the public health teams are doing their work, as our businesses are opening and changing around the province in sync,” replied Dr Henry.

“I don’t feel that there is a differential risk rate right now. We are having low levels of transmission in parts of the province. We’ve had a couple of new cases in the North, a couple of new cases in the Interior, but where the population is, is where we are seeing most of it. This approach has really served us well and I think we should have a continued approach unless there is good evidence not to.”

She also reported that 3,365,286 doses of vaccine have been administered in BC and more than 71% of the population has received its first dose.

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -The aquaculture sector’s response, to Alexandra Morton's report that there were low sea lice counts in the Discovery Islands arrived yesterday.

A spokesperson for Cermaq Canada emailed, “We have once again this year hired an independent environmental monitoring organization to conduct wild fish sampling in the Broughton Archipelago, the Discovery Islands and the Clayoquot Sound region. We will not have the results of this work for several weeks, so at this point, and with no access to current data, we do not have any data with which to compare the results of the 2020 wild juvenile salmonid monitoring results. Once we have those results, we will be sharing them on our website at https://www.cermaq.ca/public-trust/public-reporting. As you will see, we have been completing this work annually since 2015.”

A spokesperson for the BC Salmon Farmer’s Association responded to Alexandra Morton’s statement the sea lice numbers in the Broughton Archipelago were lower in 2020 (now that some of the farms have been removed). She claimed that “last year, some of the highest levels of sea lice were found in the Broughton area where salmon farms have been removed.”

She sent me a link to the 2020 sea lice report from the Broughton Archipelago, where its says that sea lice were on 22.8% of the salmon tested. A chart for the years 2016 to 2020, shows that 2020 had the lowest numbers for the prevalence and abundance of the sea lice Lepeophtheirus salmonis in Chum Salmon, but it was a middling year for Pinks. This is the sea lice Morton says everyone is watching.

2020 had the second highest number for the prevalence of the sea lice Caligus clemensi on both Pinks and Chum, and the second lowest for abundance.

These are industry statistics; Morton’s sea lice numbers are much higher.

In a previous interview, Dr Andrew Bateman explained why the Pacific Salmon Foundation believes open net fish farms should be removed from the Discovery Islands.

However Bateman also said that if the open net pens were not on migration routes it was a different topic, and he did not know enough about Cermaq’s semi-closed containment system to comment. 

Carmaq’s spokesperson replied, “We agree that the health and welfare of wild salmon populations is the priority. We are trialing the semi-closed containment system in the territory of the Ahousaht Nation in Clayoquot Sound, and one of the benefits experienced in Norway, and we are seeing similar results here in Canada, is the elimination of lateral transmission of sea lice between wild and farmed populations. We will be releasing further trial updates in the coming weeks.”

“As a company, we will continue to look for new innovation and technology which will improve the sustainability of salmon farming, reduce the impacts of our farming operations and create shared value and opportunity for local communities and organizations. The United Nations has shared that in order to sustainability meet the growing demand for protein, we will need to farm our oceans. Farmed salmon has one of the lowest carbon footprint of any farmed proteins, and is a healthy and sustainable choice. Cermaq Canada believes that farmed salmon has a role to play in supporting wild populations through knowledge sharing, capacity building and resource lending with local enhancement and restoration organizations, and support for ocean clean up and habitat restoration and enhancement.”

Photo of salmon steak courtesy BC Salmons Farmer's Association

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -The aquaculture sector’s response, to Alexandra Morton's report that there were low sea lice counts in the Discovery Islands arrived yesterday.

A spokesperson for Cermaq Canada emailed, “We have once again this year hired an independent environmental monitoring organization to conduct wild fish sampling in the Broughton Archipelago, the Discovery Islands and the Clayoquot Sound region. We will not have the results of this work for several weeks, so at this point, and with no access to current data, we do not have any data with which to compare the results of the 2020 wild juvenile salmonid monitoring results. Once we have those results, we will be sharing them on our website at https://www.cermaq.ca/public-trust/public-reporting. As you will see, we have been completing this work annually since 2015.”

A spokesperson for the BC Salmon Farmer’s Association responded to Alexandra Morton’s statement the sea lice numbers in the Broughton Archipelago were lower in 2020 (now that some of the farms have been removed). She claimed that “last year, some of the highest levels of sea lice were found in the Broughton area where salmon farms have been removed.”

She sent me a link to the 2020 sea lice report from the Broughton Archipelago, where its says that sea lice were on 22.8% of the salmon tested. A chart for the years 2016 to 2020, shows that 2020 had the lowest numbers for the prevalence and abundance of the sea lice Lepeophtheirus salmonis in Chum Salmon, but it was a middling year for Pinks. This is the sea lice Morton says everyone is watching.

2020 had the second highest number for the prevalence of the sea lice Caligus clemensi on both Pinks and Chum, and the second lowest for abundance.

These are industry statistics; Morton’s sea lice numbers are much higher.

In a previous interview, Dr Andrew Bateman explained why the Pacific Salmon Foundation believes open net fish farms should be removed from the Discovery Islands.

However Bateman also said that if the open net pens were not on migration routes it was a different topic, and he did not know enough about Cermaq’s semi-closed containment system to comment. 

Carmaq’s spokesperson replied, “We agree that the health and welfare of wild salmon populations is the priority. We are trialing the semi-closed containment system in the territory of the Ahousaht Nation in Clayoquot Sound, and one of the benefits experienced in Norway, and we are seeing similar results here in Canada, is the elimination of lateral transmission of sea lice between wild and farmed populations. We will be releasing further trial updates in the coming weeks.”

“As a company, we will continue to look for new innovation and technology which will improve the sustainability of salmon farming, reduce the impacts of our farming operations and create shared value and opportunity for local communities and organizations. The United Nations has shared that in order to sustainability meet the growing demand for protein, we will need to farm our oceans. Farmed salmon has one of the lowest carbon footprint of any farmed proteins, and is a healthy and sustainable choice. Cermaq Canada believes that farmed salmon has a role to play in supporting wild populations through knowledge sharing, capacity building and resource lending with local enhancement and restoration organizations, and support for ocean clean up and habitat restoration and enhancement.”

Photo of salmon steak courtesy BC Salmons Farmer's Association

Roy L Hales / Cortes Currents -The wireless vs fibre optic debate is about to heat up on Cortes and Quadra Islands.

TELUS intends to erect cell phone towers on both islands during 2022, and the Connected Coast project will wrap up this fall.

>>> Last Mile Schedule

Cortes Island Regional Director Noba Anderson outlined the last mile schedule for cable:

“In the next week or two you’ll be receiving communications from the Strathcona Regional District about the roll out of this last mile fibre optic connectivity to your home. The intention is that mid June through July, they will be doing ‘house-drops.’ Bringing it from your pole, or the end of your driveway, literally to your house, like your hydro or telephone.”

“It will be optional, but free. You don’t have to connect up to it. If you want the house ‘house-drop’ now, you can connect up to it next year, or in ten years, or never.”

“Over the course of the later summer/fall, we’ll be running the wires down the public road system.”

Anderson added, “I would like to get all of that infrastructure in and all the funds received from senior government before we have cell phone towers, just so there isn’t any concern about us being considered ‘served’ for internet connectivity and for whatever reason some of the funding revoked.”

>>> The wireless vs fibre optic debate

She expects the wireless vs fibre optic debate on Cortes to be “a really hot one that I don’t look forward to being in the middle of.”

“Some people think cell phone connectivity is just basic safety. Lives are lost because of it (not being in place), businesses require it and it is paramount to civilization. Others believe that the 5G that will come with these towers is cancer causing. It is everywhere in the world and lets have a pocket of sanity where that doesn’t exist.”

“I know that beliefs are held very strongly on both sides of that continuum and so I want a very significant and meaningful consultation where TELUS shares with us what they are intending on those towers, and where people have an opportunity to be heard and hear each other. If, indeed the community wants cell phone towers, I will support it and the Regional District will support it.”