Fears a salmon virus outbreak might decimate wild Pacific salmon the way it did Atlantic salmon pen-raised in Chile and Norway appears to have been premature or overblown, according to Canadian scientists. One of that country's top fish scientists this week told the Cohen Commission, which is charged with investigating the decline of red salmon in the Fraser River, that she now believes infectious salmon anemia (commonly called ISA) or a variant has been carried by wild Pacific salmon for at least 25 years. 

In October, researchers from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia caused a stir when they revealed they had found ISA in Canadian red salmon. Their tests results, however, could not be confirmed. Still fears about ISA lingered, and then rose to new heights in November when the Seattle Times picked up an old and never published doctoral thesis noting the discovery of some variant of ISA in the Pacific. The Times ran with a story headlined, "Canada kept detection of salmon virus secret.''

The information in the study had been leaked to fisheries and environmental reporters. Fisheries pathologists for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game who read it reached much the same conclusion as that delivered to the Cohen Commission this week -- that there was a strain of ISA long dormant in the Pacific.

The Times story noted this possibility, but played heavily to "wild-fish advocates (who) long have feared the arrival of infectious salmon anemia (ISA) virus, a pathogen linked to aquaculture that has killed millions of farmed salmon in Europe and Chile. They say it could mutate and devastate wild fish stocks.''

The Times story added that the Canadian "researcher's work surfaced only this week after she sought and was denied permission by a Canadian official to try to have her old data published in a scientific journal....Word of the earlier research raises new questions about the Canadian agency charged with assessing the risk. Environmentalists in Canada and some U.S. politicians worry that Fisheries and Oceans Canada may be ill-equipped to aggressively deal with the risk because it's responsible both for protecting the country's wild fish and for promoting British Columbia's salmon farms." Canadian officials promptly took a beating from Pacific wild salmon advocates and some U.S. lawmakers.

At the time, they said they just wanted a chance to examine the old data before reaching any conclusions. Scientist Kristi Miller from the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans reported to the Cohen Commission this week that she studied samples of Pacific salmon tissue dating back to 1986 and found evidence of genetic material for the ISA virus in many of those samples. "I clearly believe there is a virus here that is very similar to ISA in Europe," the Vancouver Sun quoted her telling the Cohen inquiry. The Cohen Commission is trying to determine what caused the collapse of Fraser River red salmon stocks in 2009.

On the subject of ISA, the commission heard not only from Miller but from three other leading authorities on fish viruses. Professor Fred Kibenge from the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island said more study is needed to determine whether what Miller has found is really ISA or simply an "ISA-like virus.'' Alaska's chief of fish pathology, Ted Meyers, has suggested it could be a long established ISA-like virus that mutates into ISA in Atlantic salmon. The scientists do not seem particularly worried, but there has been considerable public fear. The Los Angeles Times suggested earlier this month the Canadians might have engaged in a "Salmongate" to cover up ISA.