Post-Intelligencer – The U.S. government should independently test samples of West Coast fish found with infectious salmon anemia, or ISA, rather than trusting Canadian government scientists, senators from Washington and Alaska said in a letter Wednesday.
“We should not rely on another government — particularly one that may have a motive to misrepresent its findings — to determine how we assess the risk ISA may pose to American fishery jobs,” said the letter, signed by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, both D-Alaska.
The letter was sent as a Canadian laboratory confirmed the presence of ISA in the gills of a Chinook and a chum salmon taken Oct. 12 in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley, not far north of the Washington-Canada border. Infectious salmon anemia had earlier been established in a Coho salmon taken the same day.
“The chum was silver-bright and likely just arrived in the river. The Chinook was severely jaundice. Did these two fish just become infected and is that why it was only detected in their gills?” independent B.C. marine biologist Alexandra Morton asked on her blog.
Morton helped collect the fish, which were sent for evaluation to the World Animal Health reference laboratory for the ISA virus, on Prince Edward Island.
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