TO: Alaska's salmon

SUBJECT: Look alive, troops!

Dear Anadromous Alaskans,

We The Concerned aren't sure whether salmon read the papers, but if you haven't heard already, some recent news might be causing you some dismay. We imagine you already feel somewhat alarmed all the time anyway, seeing as how your lifecycle demands that you throw yourselves into waters that are deadly to you.

But recent news from Canada and Washington, D.C., may make you wish you had hired better lobbyists.

Last week, a group of researchers in Canada made an announcement that, for the first time ever, wild Pacific salmon were found carrying the virus known to cause Infectious Salmon Anemia. Two individual smolt taken from Rivers Inlet, British Columbia, were later confirmed by another lab to be carrying ISA, the same European strain that devastated commercial salmon farms in Chile. Researchers also conclude that the young salmon must have contracted it from adults, indicating that the virus has been in the wild for quite some time.

It sounds like really scary news, but not a lot is yet known about it all. Turns out, according to scientists that study you, there is a big knowledge gap about ISA, including its effect on or distribution among wild Pacific populations.

A single study was published in 2003 indicating that you're naturally too strong to succumb to a disease that decimates your weak, farm-raised Atlantic relatives. Other evidence presented to Canada's Cohen Commission on the Fraser River sockeye collapse indicated that some salmon there had shown symptoms of the disease since 2006, but cases weren't confirmed. So far, there is no evidence that ISA kills you or has been the cause of any lost runs.

But you, as well as many of The Concerned, surely know how nature works. Generations upon generations of evolution made organisms who and what they are today. Viruses are famous for mutating. ISA has a high potential to mutate, experts believe, and efforts to eradicate it have so far failed. 

Canada's salmon aquaculture industry is understandably worried. If ISA establishes itself and spreads, as it has elsewhere in the world, their businesses might end up ruined.

Senators from Alaska and Washington state have sponsored an agriculture appropriations amendment that would make investigation of the potential threat ISA poses to you a priority for U.S. government agencies. Seeing as how the virulent strain of ISA that devastated Chile's industry in 2007 was likely exported there in eggs from Europe, and B.C.'s aquaculture industry has imported more than 30 million eggs from Ireland, Iceland and the U.S., all the worry in the Pacific Northwest might be too little too late. Then again, it might be OK. Better start taking your vitamins now just in case.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill might also be a little late to the other fight they're undertaking on your behalf this week -- squashing FDA approval for human consumption of "Frankenfish" otherwise known as genetically-modified marine organisms -- not that they should stop trying. The "fish" is known by the brand-name AquaAdvantage, and Congress aims to prevent its sale across state borders.

Those salmon-like farm goods, through genetic manipulation, mature much faster and grow larger than ordinary, farm-raised Atlantic salmon. In fact, it turns out you're related, in a way. One of the genetic components, the growth gene, comes from Pacific chinook salmon. That must make family reunions a bit awkward.