Many wild salmon populations in B.C. have skilled substantial declines during the last three many years. New UBC analysis printed at the moment may also help chart a course in the direction of higher safety of untamed salmon.
The research, led by UBC college of forestry member Arthur Bass and utilizing knowledge generated by the Strategic Salmon Well being Initiative, assessed dozens of pathogens in hundreds of Chinook and Coho salmon sampled over a decade alongside the B.C. coast.
For the primary time ever, researchers had been capable of establish the pathogens most intently linked to survival of free-ranging Pacific salmon within the ocean: Tenacibaculum maritimum, a bacterium that causes ulcerative illness in salmon and different cultured marine fish worldwide; and piscine orthoreovirus (PRV), a virus that causes illness in Pacific and Atlantic salmon worldwide, however whose affect on salmon in B.C. is vigorously debated.
“This is the first empirical evidence that PRV is negatively impacting wild Pacific salmon in B.C.,” says Dr. Bass, a postdoctoral researcher at UBC’s Pacific Salmon Ecology Conservation Lab. “These two pathogens are common on salmon farms in B.C., and recent studies provide evidence of transmission from farms to wild salmon.”
“Many studies show that high ocean temperatures impact salmon survival, but this new research shows that in some cases pathogen presence can be more important,” notes the research senior writer Kristin Miller-Saunders, a molecular genetics scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and an adjunct professor of fisheries at UBC.
The analysis was funded by the Pacific Salmon Basis, Genome BC and DFO and printed at the moment in FACETS.
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