Withholding salmon virus report draws fine

CALAIS – The state’s first criminal case against a Maine salmon farm has ended with Heritage Salmon Inc. agreeing to pay nearly $15,000 for failure to report the presence of a deadly salmon virus in the company’s fish pens in Cobscook Bay.

The violations of Maine fish health regulations took place last fall when Cobscook Bay fish farmers were under state orders to test their fish regularly for infectious salmon anemia, known as ISA.

Companies were required to report the results, whether positive or negative, to the Maine Department of Marine Resources within 24 hours.

On Jan. 7, DMR and the U.S. Department of Agriculture ordered Cobscook Bay fish farmers to remove all farmed salmon from Cobscook Bay and to let the cage sites remain unused until spring to prevent spread of the disease.

Heritage failed to report the results of tests for ISA, which included three positives, in October and November 2001.

The company, a division of Toronto-based George Weston Ltd., will pay the fines as part of a plea agreement that was approved Tuesday by 4th District Court Judge John Romei.

Romei approved a $1,000 fine for each of seven counts of failing to report test results and a $2,000 fine for each of three counts of failure to report the confirmation of an exotic disease.

The plea agreement also requires the company to pay an additional $1,920 in surcharges for a grand total of $14,920.

William Robertson, director of operations for Heritage Salmon, signed off on the agreement and the company was represented in court by Calais attorney Dennis Mahar.

Robertson did not return a message left at his office in New Brunswick on Tuesday afternoon.

The case against Heritage Salmon was filed in January and was the first time that DMR asked its law enforcement division, the Maine Marine Patrol, to conduct a criminal investigation of a salmon farm’s compliance with department regulations.

In an interview at the time, Andrew Fisk, the aquaculture coordinator for DMR, said the department considered the Heritage violations “extremely serious.”

ISA, which is not harmful to humans, but is deadly to Atlantic salmon, was first identified in Norwegian salmon farms in 1984. It decimated New Brunswick salmon farms in 1998.

The virus was detected in Maine – in a Cobscook Bay fish farm – in February 2001.

Over the next seven months, the virus continued to spread, resulting in the early harvest or killing of more than 1 million farmed salmon in the bay.

In September, DMR imposed a quarantine on the bay, and the emergency testing and reporting requirements went into effect.

Heritage failed to report the results of tests that were conducted from Oct. 19 to Nov. 21, including three positive tests for ISA on Oct. 30, Nov. 9 and Nov. 21.

The company reported the results of all of the tests on Nov. 26

By December, ISA had been detected at all but one Cobscook Bay salmon farm.

On Jan. 7, DMR and USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service ordered the slaughter of the remaining 1.5 million salmon.

At the time of the order, USDA committed $8.3 million a year for the next two years to cover losses to Cobscook Bay fish farmers and to pay for disinfecting equipment and epidemiological programs to eradicate the disease.

Cobscook Bay, birthplace of Maine’s salmon aquaculture industry, is home to 446 acres of salmon aquaculture leases – 26 of the state’s 44 salmon farm sites.

Pending the results of tests for the virus in the bay’s water, plants, fish and sediments, half of those farmers will be permitted to restock their cages this spring, but the remaining farms will lie fallow until the spring of 2003.

Fisk said Monday that cleanup efforts appeared to be going well and that DMR and USDA expected to make a decision on restocking within the next few weeks.

Still to be determined is which part of the bay will be restocked this spring and how many fish will be permitted on each site, Fisk said.