Feds Nix Rescue Plan to Scoop, Move Salmon
Researcher Alexandra Morton may try it anyway.
Morton: 'Watching these fish being destroyed.'
The federal government rejected an application Friday by biologist Alexandra Morton to evacuate wild salmon out of the path of Broughton Archipelago fish farms, putting the outspoken researcher in a precarious position: risk a $100,000 fine, or let migrating juvenile pink and chum salmon run a gauntlet of farms she says will ensure their destruction.
Morton had applied to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) for a licence to transport salmon as part of her widely publicized plan to ferry young Ahta River pink and chum salmon past two fish farms operating in their migration path.
"I must advise you that the department does not support your proposal to capture and transport Ahta River juveniles past the fish farms in the area," wrote Paul Sprout, Regional Director for DFO's Pacific Region in a prepared statement. "...the department believes that the capture, transport and release of these fish has the potential to do more harm than good."
But even before Morton had read these words, she was already considering breaking the law if the decision did not go her way.
"It's difficult to communicate the feeling of watching these fish be destroyed year after year," she told The Tyee on April 2. "I know that down the line, I will want to know I've done everything I can to save these fish. I really don't want to do this without a permit, but yes, I am willing."
The death of the Meetup
Ask Morton why she is willing to face such penalties -- including an additional $100,000 and up to a year in jail for each subsequent offence -- and talk inevitably turns to the death of the Meetup River last year.
The Meetup appears on most maps as the Viner River, a chum salmon stream that snakes across Gilford Island in the heart of the Broughton Archipelago, a cluster of islands set against the B.C. mainland east of Queen Charlotte Sound, not far from Port McNeill.
"I've been following the Viner chum since 2001, and every year they emerge from the river and swim straight into the path of this fish farm just west of the Burdwood Islands," she says. "They get infected with sea lice from the fish farm and die."
Viner chum have always run a precarious gauntlet on their path to the sea. In a run that once numbered 70,000 fish, they historically migrated into the waiting nets of the Alert Bay seine fleet at the mouth of the river, or were chased down by G-clan -- a pod of northern resident killer whales that returned to Viner Sound each spring to feast.
But the seiners and the killer whales are gone. Last fall, when just 89 chum spawners returned to the Viner, Morton officially declared this once-great salmon river dead. But with that pronouncement came a desperate plan to scoop up tiny salmon fry as they emerged from a nearby salmon river in the spring of 2008, transporting them beyond the fish farms.
"I've focused on [moving fry from] the Ahta River only right now, because I love that river, but all of the rivers here need this," she says of her medevac plan. "My hope was that if I could concentrate on just one river, DFO just might let me start doing this."
But with today's announcement, DFO will not allow her to move forward legally, making an already complex plan that much more complicated.
First plan to medevac fry
Morton originally planned to capture salmon as they emerged into the open ocean from the Ahta River using a 125-foot beach seine; one end of the net would be tied to the shore, and a speedboat would rive in a large circle to release the net. The net would be drawn increasingly smaller until a small pool remained full of baby fish. She planned to move them by bucket into a boat equipped with a water tank designed to continually refresh with fresh ocean water.
She had already identified an area to release the fry where the salinity of the water is very similar to that at the mouth of their natal Ahta River. Before the release, she planned to hold them in a pen to assess if any have been killed or injured, in order to alter the methodology or abandon the venture all together.
"One thing I had been discussing with DFO [in advance of the decision], is that it's probably not wise to take them all [from the river], just in case something I do is a problem. I want to work it out with them to take half or less. And I'll leave the others so I can study them as they go past the fish farms, so we'll know what happened to them too."
Desperate times, desperate measures
There are about 30 leases and at least 20 active fish farms across the Broughton Archipelago, most of which are situated on the migratory path of wild salmon as they emerge from their natal rivers each April and May into the ocean. Once in marine waters, they will hold for up to several weeks to grow, feed and adapt to the salt water.
It is during this time that fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago harbour the largest numbers of sea lice. Although these lice occur naturally on wild salmon, the concentration of up to 700,000 adult salmon on a farm can create an unnatural breeding ground. Morton says the juvenile wild fish that must migrate past such farms would never be otherwise exposed to such numbers of lice and are unable to survive the exposure of a single louse.
Morton's desperate response to sea lice is in part based on her own research, including a December 2007 study she co-authored in the journal Science, which concluded that pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago could face imminent extinction.
"The louse-induced mortality of pink salmon is commonly over 80 per cent and exceeds previous fishing mortality," concludes the peer-reviewed study. "If outbreaks continue, then local extinction is certain, and a 99 per cent collapse in pink salmon population abundance is expected in four salmon generations."
The province has considered sea lice a serious problem in the Broughton Archipelago since at least February 2003, when Agriculture Minister Stan Hagen announced that all B.C. fish farms had to monitor and treat sea lice, in response to the drastic declines in wild pink salmon that historically spawned throughout this area.
Marine Harvest, the largest aquaculture company in the world and largest farmer in the Broughton, has at least 10 farms in the area. They dispute the findings of the Science paper, and have published advertisements in Vancouver Island papers beginning April 3 that they show sea lice is not a problem for wild salmon in the Broughton Archipelago.
"When you've been so brash as to claim extinction in four years, one becomes desperate to manipulate the situation," says Marine Harvest Canada spokesman Ian Roberts of Morton's medevac plan. He added that that the Science paper has been discredited by "20 leading scientists," although The Tyee has confirmed that no peer-reviewed science has appeared to refute this study to date.
Whacking sea lice with Slice
In February of 2008, Morton and a diverse coalition of First Nations, commercial fishermen, eco-tourism operators and environmentalists met with Agriculture and Lands Minister Pat Bell to request a provincial strategy of fallowing or emptying fish farms in the path of migrating fry salmon.
Minister Bell responded during the first week of March with a call for increased chemical treatments of lice-bearing farmed salmon, including a louse biocide known as Slice, which has recently emerged as the sea lice treatment of choice in B.C. waters.
Slice is controversial because it is not an officially approved drug for application for pest control; fish farmers must apply for an emergency application permit from government veterinarians. Environment Canada has historically voiced concerns over the "unknown fate" of Slice in the ocean -- where it is deposited on the sea floor as a component of farmed salmon feces or in unconsumed feed. The federal government has also warned that sea lice can develop resistance to the drug over time.
Marine Harvest says it has been harvesting fish farms in time for the spring wild salmon migration, and that it uses Slice very conservatively in the Broughton. On March 31, Marine Harvest announced it had completed its 2008 sea lice control program, harvesting at least four farms and applying Slice to the rest.
Alexandra Morton concedes that Slice treatments have reduced sea lice on the wild salmon she observes, but not enough to spare the pink fry that often measure an average three centimetres and cannot withstand the attack of a single louse.
She also disputes Marine Harvest's statistics about low average sea lice abundance as misleading, because the farmers only measure the number of lice found on adult fish inside the pens, and do not consider sea lice spread and reproduction in the adjacent marine environment.
"If there are 600,000 farm fish at a site and 75 per cent of them have sea lice, then that's 450,000 lice. If every female louse has 250 babies every two weeks, that's about 56 million lice larvae coming from that single farm every two weeks. And that spells serious trouble for migrating juvenile wild salmon, unless something else can be done."
Related Tyee stories:
- A Fish Farm Critic Vindicated
New research bolsters Morton's claims of sea lice devastation. - Ministry Fish Farm Biologists Won't Be Penned
None joined expert body Libs created for 'public interest.' - Push North for Fish Farms Blocked
Gitxsan Nation thwarts planned 'critical mass' of farms. A Tyee Special Report.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
ME2
06-04-2008
DISGUSTING POLITICIANS
One cannot possibly express enough praise for the work Alexandra has done on this issue or for the doggedness with which she has withstood the wide variety of dirty tricks both the fish farmers and governments have subjected her to.
Her hewing to the Scientific Method and tireless gathering of supportive data has brought her the tremendous support she now receives from fisheries science colleagues worldwide.
What a damn shame that everything environmental today is subject to the whim of politicians whose every value must support their short-term, self serving economic objectives.
RickW
06-04-2008
Such a striking resemblance......
....between the old Stalinist belief in socialist man's supremacy over nature, and the right-wing fundamentalist belief (as represented by our current federal leader) in Christian man's supremacy over nature......
Jeffrey J.
06-04-2008
Life Without Wild Salmon
Canadians need to ask themselves what BC would be like without wild salmon. Because the aggressive industrial policies explicitly adopted by the Harper and Gordon Campbell governments have dropped protection of salmon from the radar screen. Fisheries policies are pro-industry, pro-fish farm, pro development. They map well with oil and gas extraction. They fit with hydro power and river dams. Wild salmon are in the way. If citizens do nothing, wild salmon are doomed. If people speak out, organize, lobby and support Alex Morton, then democracy and wild salmon may prevail. Alex has launched a great website which is well worth going to. http://www.adopt-a-fry.org/.
As always, thanks so much Tyee for remaining a "free press" in these difficult times.
Van Isle
06-04-2008
One wonders why that the
One wonders why that the fishfarm industry hasn't gone over to other methods of producing fish? The present method is uneconomical, cumbersome, and bad for the enviroment more ways than one.(Hey, just look crud that is put into the fish pellets, it'll make you puke). If you ask a person who works for the industry about fish ranching with various pacific salmon species, you either get a blank look in response or a convoluted answer about uniform sizing and marketing. I guess it's the same reason as everything else is, in our corporate-welfare-bum/follow-the-money economic system. Hmmm, wonder how much the industry gives in all political donations and receives back in all forms of tax grants/incentives/exceptions? (that could make you puke too)
mopled
06-04-2008
Another agenda
I think the reason for the Feds abandoning their mandate goes beyond the immediate greed of forestry and mining interests.
A population control agenda has been going on for years (Club of Rome, etc.) Getting rid of a wild food resource would be a no-brainer.
alive
06-04-2008
Long live the establishment!
The feds have their own "experts" thank you!
Since when have they ever listened to people in the field?
They even seem to ignore advice from their own employees if they are in the lower ranks!
Canis Latrans
06-04-2008
The most dramatic....
The most dramatic reassessments of virtually all people's thinking, certainly over my long lifetime is having to go on right now-. including my own of course. If it fails to go on and the appropriate human action to follow, nature will heal its wounds and get on about its further evolution quite well without us-, no doubt.
I wish I felt more optimistic. Welll, I am about nature-, just considerably less so about us.
DPL
06-04-2008
One wonders why that the Van
One wonders why that the Van Isle says. It's pretty straight forward. It's called more profit as is. They care nothing about the locals, the wild fish and it might well be the reason fish farms arn't cluttering up many other countries pieces of oceans. Hell they even ignore the standing committee set up to investigate farm fish.The part that burns us up is most of the stuff gets sold somehwere else pesticides, drugs stay here.
ME2
06-04-2008
How did we wind up in this mess?
Cook Inlet on the Alaska Coast produces more salmon than the whole of BC combined.
Alaska has banned fish farms.
Alaska has far more stringent logging regulations than we regarding fish streams and rivers.
Alaska and the US have far stronger environmental regulatory agencies than either BC or Canada (despite Reagan and Bush)
Americans also have many powerful environmental NGOs which have managed to interact and cooperate with gov't and industrial interests, without losing their integrity or being decoyed.
Alaska has long been regarded as an "Anti-environmental" State (Murkowski)
Go figure.
bpither1
06-04-2008
The DFO live in a cocoon.
The DFO live in a cocoon. These are the same folk who destroyed the fishing industry in Newfoundland by not listening to coastal fishermen who could see the diminishing of cod stocks.
Read COLLAPSE by Jared Diamond and you'll get a pretty good idea as to how self indulgent belief systems can remain unimpaired even as the last wild fish dies.
History shows how humans can dream up a host of reasons why we would defend our actions even if negative consequences lie right in front of our nose. Imagine what kind of logic would have induced the final cutting down of the last grove of trees on Easter Island thus ensuring the subsequent ecological and social disruption.
It's my right!
Technology will find a way to grow new trees!
God told me to do it! [b]
In addition it can only get worse if the powers who decide what should be done live in a world where they do not need to care. Diamond visited the Netherlands where one half of the population belong to some kind of environmental organisation and was told that since one third of Holland is below sea level, rich and poor will suffer equally during a flood.
So you better become interested in the politics of global warming if you can't move your home out of harm's way.
Gary
07-04-2008
I was wondering where this
I was wondering where this fat cat bureaucrat had his office. Is it in some ivory tower in Ottowa? I think so.
Do these people even read the studies that are presented to them? How can anyone in their right minds think that taking something out of harms way and reintoducing it where there is limited or no harm be worse that the status quo? Not only should those migrating salmon be transported but so should the spawning fish. And furthermore the fish farms should finance this move, totally.
Name
07-04-2008
So why are all the other stocks dying?
Look, there's no doubt that sea lice from fish farms are harming outmigrating smolts and the "solution" of just pouring masses of pesticides into the environment is highly questionable.
Morton has done great work to bring these issues to public attention, but when you start confusing advocacy and science, the results are usually not good.
For example, if the sea lice from fish farms are the primary cause for the demise of Viner chum, what's responsible for the demise of all the other depressed chum runs on the coast that don't contend with fish farms? Or the severely depressed wild chinook runs, most of which don't contend with fish farms? Or Coho? What's responsible for the lowest runs of Fraser sockeye in decades that are forecast for this year?
What's causing all the problems for the Skeena stocks up on the north coast, where there have never been fish farms (and hopefully never will be, now)?
The latest evidence is pointing to some problem much bigger than sea lice going on recently in the ocean. Which is not to discount that sea lice -- like urban development, agriculture, forestry, mining, fishing, industrial pollution, mountain pine beetles, some IPPs, hatchery practices and everything else -- are not contributing to the cumulative impacts that threaten wild Pacific salmon.
But why are salmon not returning even where there is pristine or near-pristine freshwater habitat and no fish farms?
Unfortunately, acknowledging that the Broughton farms are only one piece of a much bigger puzzle means sharing the spotlight with scientists working quietly in the lab and in the field (vs. in the media) on other issues. Which is a problem if you've gotten to like being the centre of attention.
KWD
07-04-2008
How did we wind up in this mess?
This may not be an answer to the question but comparing Alaska to BC, at any level, (economic, politcal, demographic) is risky.
BC has about 12 times the density as Alaska. Alaska’s largest city has about 260,000 folks while metro Vancouver is about 2.3 million.
Alaskans survive mostly on oil and seafood exports. It’s a primary resource based economy. And per capita wise, they've still got lots of primary resources.
BC survives on marijuana, taking in each others laundry (serivce sectors), immigration of old money, environmental desecration and selling political bafflegab (tourism).
Forestry in BC is dying a slow painful death, it’s a ‘has been’ industry. Many wild fish stocks are nearing the point of no return. Mining is still a significant economic component. The oil and gas industries will be major players.
Alaska doesn’t have fish farms because they still have a whack of easily accessible wild fish.
Politically, our 'leaders' are little more than front men for U$ corporatism. They will do as corporate America dictates.
Given enough time, and if climate change is happening the way some folks claim, Alaska will soon have to deal with the same issues as BC. When that time comes, it will be interesting to see how effective the environmental groups will be at keeping industry from wreaking the same havoc on wild fish stocks and forestry as it’s done in BC.
Name
07-04-2008
Comparisons with Alaska
Yes, in drawing comparisons with Alaska, one should also look at what is happening in the US south, where things are even worse than BC despite (mostly) similar policies to Alaska's.
The Alaskans are already reporting shifting patterns of migrating salmon in their waters, and the recent emergence of problems in the Skeena suggest it may just be a matter of time before they start to suffer as well.
We also have to look to the other side of the North Pacific where Russia, China and Japan are pumping up hatchery outputs exponentially, releasing billions of extra salmon out into the ocean. Yes, it's a giant feeding ground, but every pasture has its limits.
KWD
07-04-2008
wild salmon loss is a global issue
"Yes, it's a giant feeding ground, but every pasture has its limits."
My point exactly. Whether it be fur,fish, fowl or human; the relative abundance of energy supplies plays a leading role in the distribution, abundance and survival of life on this planet.
Sam Salmon
07-04-2008
"why are salmon not
"why are salmon not returning even where there is pristine or near-pristine freshwater habitat and no fish farms?"
The short answer is warmer than normal ocean temperatures.
As little as 1/10th of a degree Celsius means little phyto and zoo plankton for outmigrating smolts to feed on-if you're at all interested do a search on condition in the Alaskan gyre.
Most smolts have 48 hours to find the food they need upon hitting saltwater-if they don't feed they perish.
Ironically the past 2 years have been quite good but the earlier year classes of smolts were hit hard by poor conditions thus the abysmal returns last year.
This and next year are predicted to be at least as bad if not worse.