Halifax and Vancouver:  The Canadian government is receiving 10% royalties from sales of the world’s first genetically modified (GM or genetically engineered) animal, a GM Atlantic salmon.

Vancouver:  Environmental groups are applauding the B.C. government’s recent decision to conduct a review of fish processing plants, following revealing video of virus-laden bloodwater being discharged into the ocean. 

After the video and initial lab results were released publicly, the fish farming industry said that discharge from fish processing plants was disinfected prior to release to the environment.

Vancouver: Reports are surfacing today of an oil spill that apparently occurred early Wednesday morning near Port Mellon in Howe Sound, near the site of the Howe Sound Pulp and Paper Mill when a derelict barge sank. It is presently unclear how much oil was aboard; early estimates place the visible spill at 200 litres.

In a new study published today in the online journal Plos One, Alex Morton and co-authors Drs. Rick Routledge and Molly and Fred Kibenge trace the Norwegian variant of piscine reovirus (PRV) in samples of wild salmon. Sampling from regions where salmon have little chance of passing a salmon farm disclosed very low levels of the pathogen (5%); while Fraser River stocks were as much as 45% infected.  Significantly, the rate of infection was highest in the lower reaches of the Fraser River, as compared with the Upper Fraser where infection rates dropped 50%.

VANCOUVER - A review of the provincial Animal Health Laboratory and its fish health program is long overdue, according to two B.C. conservation organizations.  While critics claim the investigation is unwarranted, Watershed Watch Salmon Society and Living Oceans Society point to a well-documented history of concerns with the lab’s fish health work.