During our recient visit British
Columbia, Echo bay, we noticed some books for
sale sitting on the counter by Alexandra Morton. It then dawned on me
that this is where Alexandra Morton lives. She gave up city life to come
live here and study the whales. I’ve read her books and they really
opened up my eyes to how fragile the environment is up here. She is a
well know marine mammal scientist and writer and has devoted her life to
the study of the orcas and now more recently to the devastating effects
fish farming has had on the survival of wild salmon and how that loss
effects the whole living system here.
I sent Her an email & ask if She would write a short note to boaters that
we could post on our site.
Dear Alexandra,
I'm a great fan of your work and study and feel passionately about the
environment too and what is happening along the BC Coast. I am
beginning to write our episode on our visit to Echo Bay this summer and
wanted to somehow write about what you and many people in your area, like
Billy Proctor are doing to enlighten the world about the plight of the
salmon and how it effects every living being. But my words are not precise
and it's such an important message that I feel incapable.
Wondered if you might consider just writing a short message to the
boaters, the cruisers, and the many that don't live in your area but could
spread the word and learn from what you know. It would be so much more
powerful than what I could possibly say....
I so thank you for all your great work and if there is anything I can do
to help you let us know.
When salmon
farming first came to my community of Echo Bay 20 years ago, I thought
they would be good for Echo Bay, attracting new families, good for the
wild salmon by reducing commercial fishing and good for me providing
shelter in storms as I wandered the area in my small boat. But they were
the storm.
Today salmon
farms provide no employment or families to my community, and they are
having serious impact on wild salmon here as they have everywhere.
Furthermore they displaced the fish-eating families of orca that I came
here to study (Morton and Symonds 2002).
The situation
is simple, industrial scale farming belongs in a quarantine setting. No
one today would allow wild migratory birds to alight among
battery-reared chickens. Avian flu would spread like wildfire. When
animals are crowded and fed in an unnatural manner; bacteria, viruses
and parasite populations explode. Farmers use drugs to suppress disease
long enough to get their livestock to market. While there are many
rising concerns about this type of farming, salmon farms are unique in
their access to the natural environment. Farm fish are held in net pens
that allow free-flow of pathogens between wild and farm salmon. Once
inside the pen, disease flourishes because farm fish are stationary,
crowded and genetically similar. This is called disease amplification.
Some scientists call salmon farms disease culturing facilities (Bakke
and Harris 1998).
Nature is
fastidious about disease with an arsenal of predators to remove
contagious individuals. The wild salmon is a nomad, always moving into
clean water. In the fall adult salmon arrive inshore, most carrying a
few sea lice. These salmon and their lice all die freshwater. Nature
has cleaned house and set the stage for the next generation! Pink and
chum salmon leave the rivers only about 3 cm long, weighing less than ½
a gram and have no protective scales. Their purpose is to feed in
sheltered marine waters and grow as fast as possible before the young
Coho chinook come out in mid-May to gobble them up and grow as well.
Pink salmon are vital to Chinook and Coho.
Today
wild salmon pass lice to farm salmon and instead of dying those lice
reproduce all winter so the young tender wild salmon are met by billions
(Orr 2007) of young lice in the spring. A salmon can handle about 1
louse per gram of body weight. At less than ½ a gram these fish cannot
survive a single louse (Morton and Routledge 2005). In a paper I
co-authored last year we found 95% of juvenile pink and chum salmon were
killed by sea lice from salmon farms in the area of Watson Cove, Tribune
Channel, near Echo Bay (Krkosek et al. 2006).
Pink
and chum salmon are not the only wild salmon affected by sea lice. I
also find heavily infected Coho. Norway, Scotland, Ireland and Iceland
are all working hard to protect wild salmon from farmed salmon. Iceland
has outright banned salmon farms from 95% of their coast to protect
their sport fishery on wild salmon. Norway is creating farm-free zones
around important rivers. But somehow her in British Columbia the very
same salmon farming companies refuse to accept that their sea lice are
damaging wild salmon stocks. Both the Federal and Provincial
governments are following their lead and also deny impact is occurring
(Sea Lice Science a World Apart
www.raincoastresearch.org).
There are
solutions. We need to adhere to the model in which wild salmon thrive
and separate the enormous farms (up to 1 million fish per farm) from the
young wild salmon. While most countries dedicated to farming salmon do
not have abundant wild salmon that is not the case in British Columbia.
If we want both, the farms will have to be effectively contained. This
can be done (www.farmedanddangerous.org)
but investment in the technology has been slow. As long as the
provincial and federal government allow BC salmon farms to use the ocean
as a flushing device many tons of fecal waste, parasites, bacteria and
viruses will waft out of the farms daily. They say closed containment is
too expensive but for whom as it stands now the public is paying the
cost. Nature will separate farmed and wild salmon, it is underway, the
only question is will we take control of this dynamic, put farmed salmon
in closed containment and benefit from both?
If you have
concerns about salmon farms, please write to the Fisheries and Oceans
Director General Paul Sprout, and the Provincial Minister in charge of
salmon farms, Pt Bell. Any place on earth that still makes clean air,
water and food as well as beauty must be defended for future
generations.
Good cruising
to you,
Alexandra
Morton
Febuary 3,
2007
