Grieg Seafood is expecting lab results within days after last week's discovery of the IHN virus at a coho salmon farm in Jervis Inlet, as are concerned officials.
"We expect to get results back late this week or early next week," said Stewart Hawthorn, managing director with Grieg Seafood. "The lab's pretty busy just now because of the load of samples being taken out of our area."
Grieg Seafood said it first discovered IHN, or more precisely infectious haematopoietic necrosis, at its Ahlstrom Point farm, May 18, during a routine test of its coho salmon stocks.
That discovery led the company to impose a voluntary quarantine, one that was followed up with an official lockdown by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on May 22.
As fish native to the province, coho salmon are generally less at risk for contracting IHN compared to their Atlantic counterparts. This is due to their having a stronger immunity to the virus, according to fish pathologist Gary Marty of the B.C. Animal Health Centre.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency will have the final say on what happens to the farm's fish population should lab results yield a positive result.
Last week, a Tofino fish farm culled its Atlantic salmon population after discovering IHN at a Clayoquot Sound farm.
Besides destroying the fish, another possible solution could simply be to send them to market for human consumption, as the virus is not dangerous to people.
"Mainstream [owners of the Clayoquot Sound farm] characterized the Atlantic salmon outbreak as code red. When we see it in coho salmon, which are native to B.C, it's maybe code yellow," Marty said. "We're concerned, we're not sure. We need to confirm it before we move further."
Marty added that officials will also keep a close eye on nearby operations, like Totem Sea Farms, which has a licence for St. Vincent Bay that includes Atlantic salmon, among others.
For salmon virus researcher Alexandra Morton, worries are more focused on the possibility that an outbreak could have disastrous consequences on the sockeye currently emerging from the Fraser River.
The outbreak could indicate that vaccines guarding against IHN have lost their effectiveness, Morton said.
"Finding IHN in coho is alarming because they aren't really known to be affected by it," she explained. "If this thing has mutated so that the vaccine isn't working, we really don't know what it's going to do."
Novartis, a major producer of IHN vaccines, could not be reached for comment by press time Thursday morning.
"More vaccines are in the pipeline, with researchers actively pursuing several viral pathogens of salmon and other fish species," read a section of their website on IHN.
Grieg Seafood said that as of May 23, no signs of any fish health concerns had been documented at the site, including unusual death rates.
