Panel fails to meet on salmon disease Lack of plan concerns some experts

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When a deadly salmon disease was found in a fish in an aquaculture pen in Cobscook Bay, state officials said they were on top of the situation and a special panel of fish health experts would be convened within 10 days.

That was nearly a month ago.

To date, no meeting of the state’s Fish Health Technical Committee has been scheduled, although the diagnosis of infectious salmon anemia (ISA) was made in mid-February and reported to the media in mid-March.

The committee is supposed to recommend whether changes should be made in the state’s wild salmon restoration and fish farming efforts. Such changes could range from new guidelines on how close together fish pens could be placed to killing more farmed salmon.

ISA is a flu-like disease that can kill fish. In 1999, the New Brunswick aquaculture industry lost or destroyed up to $40 million worth of salmon, a third of its output, because of the disease.

In addition to harming the aquaculture industry, ISA could pose a threat to efforts to restore wild salmon to rivers in Maine.

Last year, wild salmon in eight Maine rivers were added to the federal endangered species list. Five of the rivers are in Washington County and one, the Dennys River, drains into Cobscook Bay where the sick fish was found.

The fish infected with the disease was found in a pen off Treat Island, halfway between Lubec and Eastport, owned by a subsidiary of Atlantic Salmon of Maine. The 45,000 other young fish in the pen were killed as a precaution. The company lost $450,000 because of the incident.

Commissioner George LaPointe of the Department of Marine Resources said Monday that although the fish health technical committee had not convened, state officials have met with representatives of two fish farming companies to discuss the situation. He would not name them.

He said his staff was convinced that one company was doing everything right. They are still talking to the other company about its procedures, he said.

Maine’s $43 million aquaculture industry is dominated by three companies. Atlantic Salmon of Maine is the largest, with Stolt Sea Farm and Connors Bros. second and third respectively.

LaPointe said it was not possible to convene the committee within 10 days, as he initially said would happen, because of conflicting schedules and concerns among company officials about sharing information that the fish farms view as confidential.

He said he did not know when the committee would meet, but he was assured by a staff biologist that the state was “not losing time” by delaying the meeting.

“We want to make sure we fire for effect,” LaPointe said.

The situation will soon demand more attention as summer approaches, he said, because diseases like ISA are spread more quickly in warm water.

Andy Goode, the Maine director of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, a conservation group, said Tuesday that the lack of state action was “pretty troubling.”

“With all the black eyes the industry has gotten, they and the state should be taking all the steps necessary to ensure the public confidence,” he added.

In February, environmental groups, including Goode’s, blasted the state for taking seven weeks to notify federal officials that 100,000 salmon escaped from a fish pen in Machias Bay during a storm in December. That pen was also owned by Atlantic Salmon of Maine.

In this instance, the company notified the state of the ISA diagnosis, as required, on Feb. 15. The state notified the federal agencies in mid-March.

Although the federal fisheries agencies cited the spread of ISA as one of the reasons for the endangered species listing, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official seemed untroubled Tuesday by the lack of state action.

Although state, federal and industry officials are “scared to death of it,” they have all been on alert as the disease has progressed southward through Maritime Canada to Maine, said Paul Nickerson, head of the service’s New England endangered species division.

“I’m not sure what the urgency is,” he said when asked whether it was a concern that the state had not followed through on its commitment to convene the fish health committee, which includes members of the federal fish services.

Nickerson said he was certain that fish health experts in his agency had been contacted by state officials about ISA.

Another U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official was more concerned about the lack of action. Dan Kimball, an Atlantic salmon recovery specialist in New Hampshire, was surprised to hear that the fish health committee had not met because Commissioner LaPointe last month had said it would be convened quickly.

“I’m at a loss to know why that hasn’t happened,” he said.

He said there were no requirements under the Endangered Species Act that the state do anything to combat ISA, but that common sense would dictate certain actions should be taken to stem the spread of the disease.

For example, he said, all the fish in the pen should be killed and disposed of properly and the pen should be left fallow. The fish were killed, but Kimball said he did not know if the other procedures were followed.

In addition, he said he did not believe the state has a plan for dealing with ISA.

The lack of a state plan to combat a disease that was known to be heading this way, confounded Goode of the Atlantic Salmon Federation.

“One would have thought they already had a plan because they knew it was coming,” he said.