Hello Dr. Kyle Garver,
Over the past 6 years you have become the lead DFO Science virologist propping up the assertion that the foreign virus PRV is not causing any disease in salmon in BC. As I uncover the record, your statements appear at every turn to discredit reports by other scientists that PRV is causing disease and significant harm to wild salmon. I hope that you will reconsider.
The spring of 2016 was highly problematic for the salmon farming industry as information on the disease risk from PRV surfaced amid a lawsuit arguing it was illegal to transfer PRV-infected farm salmon from hatcheries into net pens.
In April 2016 a Norwegian lab informed you that the PRV samples you sent to them caused the fish disease HSMI. At the same time other DFO scientists (Miller/Di Cicco) reported the disease HSMI was in a Cermaq farm, Venture Point, in the Discovery Islands.
In response to the Cermaq results, the Department of Justice requested an adjournment of their appeal against the legal decision I won that required the Minister to reconsider whether or not PRV infected fish should be allowed to be transferred from hatcheries into salmon farms. If PRV was a "disease agent" this would be illegal.
DFO staff including Jay Parsons, Carmel Lowe and Wayne Moore were struggling to massage the news that a highly infectious disease was in at least one farm on the Fraser sockeye migration route in Okisollo Channel. A heated argument raged in the comments of documents that DFO planned to post on their website. In the end, despite the strength of the science that the virus PRV was causing the salmon disease HSMI in BC salmon farms, the Miller/DiCicco findings were buried under layers of uncertainty that you helped to manufacture.
On June 2, 2016 you contributed an edit stating:
“Utilizing laboratory studies, … PRV can reach high levels…without causing disease… suggesting PRV in British Columbia is of low virulence…” (See email)
You did not reveal that the study the Rimstad laboratory did for you found that PRV from BC is causing the disease HSMI, a finding that strongly supported the Miller/DiCicco findings.
Even if you did not believe Rimstad, Miller or DiCicco, your position as senior virologist for the Government of Canada, should have required you to provide thorough reasoning as to why you did not believe these scientists. Allowing a foreign virus to spread is a very serious issue.
The January 19, 2017 a document signed by Chris Watson, legal council for Marine Harvest, provided to the Federal Court of Canada in Morton vs the Minister of Fisheries provides context. He said Marine Harvest had been testing for PRV in its hatcheries since 2010 and that "PRV has been found in all but one of Marine Harvest's hatcheries". Watson went on to state that prohibiting transfer of PRV-infected fish into the company's farms along the BC coast "… would severely impact Marine Harvest." (see pages 81, 82, 192)
Without your contradictory statements, as DFO Science's senior virologist, I believe the Rimstad/Miller/DiCicco findings would have been accepted by the Minister and all those infected farm salmon since 2016 would not have been transferred into ocean pens on BC's wild salmon migration routes.
Atlantic salmon in Mowi Midsummer farm exhibit highly distinctive HSMI-type behaviour in 2017
Your ongoing participation in the construction of the alternate reality that PRV in salmon farms is not a risk to wild salmon continues.
In July 2022, you partnered with Cermaq (ACRDP 18-P-01) on PRV transmission in salmon farms. You report that 51/64 of the farms you tested were infected with PRV, but you don't offer test results for the hatcheries where those fish came from. You conclude:
"This study confirmed PRV-1 infections of commercially produced Atlantic salmon in Western Canada are acquired at sea." (page 13 of PDF)
How can you "confirm" the PRV in farm salmon is coming from the ocean, when you don't provide results for the other possible source – the hatcheries? To definitively show that the virus was coming from the ocean, shouldn't you have reported test results for those fish while they were still in the hatcheries? With Cermaq as a partner, access to these hatcheries was possible?
I hear statements that PRV no longer exists in farm salmon hatcheries, however, this is not the case in Norway. If PRV was so easy to eradicate from BC hatcheries, why did the industry fight the Namgis and myself in court for the right to continue transferring PRV-infected fish into BC waters? And when they lost those lawsuits, the Minister of Fisheries reaffirmed PRV was not causing disease and the transfers were never stopped, in part, I believe, because you were willing to advise DFO that PRV does not cause disease in salmon in BC.
This virus is now in the Skeena, the Fraser, the Columbia, all along the BC coast and in farm salmon in supermarkets throughout BC. (See paper)
Earlier this spring you found 'live' PRV is still escaping into the ocean via the blood water from farm salmon processing plants and that it is highly infectious. Your lab injected it and bathed young salmon in it and saw that they became infected. Did you brief the minister's involved – George Heyman and Joyce Murray? Or did you terminate further work on this, shelve these explosive results and quietly allow this infectious virus to continue to flow? Certainly Minister Heyman's staff seem unaware of these results.
Dr. Kyle Garver, I believe it is wrong to provide guidance to federal and First Nation leadership that the foreign virus PRV is not a risk to wild salmon. Work by many scientists continues measuring just how widespread and damaging this virus is to wild salmon that are exposed to salmon farms. As people with experience depart from the DFO Aquaculture Management Division, you are increasingly a lone voice repeating – PRV is low risk to wild salmon. It is not.
I can only hope you will either reconsider your position on PRV risk to wild salmon based on the strength of the science, or step aside and allow the scientists brave enough to report what this virus is doing to this coast to be heard by the leadership we are depending on to rescue wild salmon from the brink of extinction.
Thank you for considering these words, I will be following up on this.
Alexandra Morton