Alex’s astounding ignorance of science showcased yet again in error-riddled pox claims

Hi! We’re back. Did you miss us?

While we’ve been gone, it appears our favourite anti-salmon farming activist has slid a little further into insanity, and taken her little cult with her.

Today she made this astounding claim on her Facebook page, based on a Google Translate version of a Norwegian news article.

“Pox virus just discovered in farmed Atlantic salmon…. millions of Atlantic salmon have been imported into BC for salmon farming and no one knew to screen for this virus. THIS is one of the greatest dangers associated with salmon farming – importation of new viruses.”

OK first thing here, Alex, is that this virus was NOT just discovered. Are Nylund in Norway first described salmon gill poxvirus seven years ago.

Second thing is, no one has seen the lesions linked to this virus in BC farmed salmon.

It is clear, Alex, as you continue to make exceedingly ignorant and simplistic statements about viruses and diseases, that you do not understand how they work.

Let us explain it to you, as we would to a child.

• Viruses exist everywhere in air and water. They are tiny little things. There are more of them on Earth than any other kinds of animals, even bugs.
• They infect things and make copies of themselves.
• Sometimes they cause diseases. Most of the time, they do not.
• Scientists, people who collect information and do lots of tests and actually verify and offer up their results for other scientists to check, discovered that in Norway there’s a virus called the salmon gill poxvirus.
• The scientists found, after doing lots of tests to show that their first result wasn’t just an accident, found that the virus was in a lot of farmed salmon that died at once.
• The scientists found that the virus was linked to some unique-looking boo boos that the dead fish all had.
• All this information led the scientists to conclude that the salmon gill poxvirus can be very bad for farmed salmon, and that a good way to tell if your fish have it is by looking for the unique boo boos.
• Farmed salmon in BC are examined all the time, and no one has ever found the unique boo boos that the scientists in Norway found.

Hopefully that’s simple enough for even Alexandra Morton to understand.

Oh, and the third thing with this, Alex, is that no one is importing salmon eggs into BC anymore. Farmers all have their own broodstock programs and don’t need to bring in eggs from other countries. So quit fear mongering that old chestnut.

But we know she won’t. She needs a new fundraising cause to get through the wet, dark winter. Bug hunting for a virus that doesn’t exist would be a perfect thing to do, all she has to do is get people scared enough to open their wallets and give her untraceable donations, then go buy a few “utility” grade fish from grocery stores and send samples to her favourite lab for testing. It’s a few days work, tops. Then she can kick back and relax for the winter.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will actually be working for a living, and salmon farmers will be busting their butts in sopping wet storms to make sure their fish are healthy.

Because that’s what they do. Raise healthy fish in a healthy environment.

And even though Alex doesn’t seem to understand this simple fact, it’s still true: healthy farmed fish pose no risk to wild fish.