Broughton Archipelago: A Paradise Poisoned for Profit
Personal observations of the ecological damage caused by a large industrial netcage salmon farm established on the prostine wilderness coast of B.C.
Alexandra Morton, a scientist who has studied the whales and other sea animals of the Broughton Archipelago, located near Vancouver Island's Robson Bight, for some 14 years, watched in despair as fish farms spread ruin through a once lovely marine wilderness. Years ago, she and the few other residents of the area welcomed the first small netcage operation even taking jobs there.
"There is no evidence, anywhere in the world, that wild and (net cage) farmed salmonid stocks can co-exist."
"Today," she wrote recently, "residents are so disgusted by farms, and there are very few whales to report. I am thankful I arrived before the farms and experienced this wilderness, because I am now reluctantly recording its death....
Morton presents a litany of small but frightening disasters. In 1991, IBEC, a U.S.-based company, brought Scottish Atlantic salmon to its Broughton netcages. They were infected with a disease called furunculosis, and that year the provincial coho hatchery at nearby Scott Cove disease free for nine years lost 28 per cent of its brood stock to the same sickness.
A coincidence, said the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), but refused to tell Morton if the same strain of the virus had caused both fish kills.
In 1993, Scanmar, a Scandinavian-owned fishfarming company, introduced Atlantic salmon carrying a particularly virulent strain of furunculosis, and it spread within days to B.C. Packers' farms. "Wild chinook stocks feeding between the two farms vanished and haven't been seen since," says Morton. "Thriving fishing lodges that brought employment have closed. The hatchery coho returned to their streams infected with (the disease)."
Schematic diagram showing some adverse environmental impacts of netcage salmon farming.
Coincidence, said DFO. B.C. Packers bought up Scanmar's operations. The list of disease outbreaks, toxic algae blooms and vanishing native fish went on while fish farmers blazed away at seats and other possible predators, night lights drew wild fish into the pens as feed and underwater noise devices drove whales and porpoises away from their traditional feeding grounds.
"In despair over the situation," Morton wrote, "I mailed out approximately 10,000 pages of letters to governments, scientists and others worldwide who were watching places they love die because of salmon farming."
"Some people have told me those letters prompted the provincial salmon aquaculture review that's presently winding up, and that should make me feel hopeful. However, draft recommendations produced by that review are deeply disturbing."
"Despite then-DFO director (Pat) Chamut's admission that bringing Atlantic salmon into B.C. 'guarantees' introduction of exotic pathogens, the review recommends that the imports continue. It also recommends that some Pacific stocks be domesticated and farmed, which, unfortunately, is equally as damaging as bringing in Atlantics. Bred to tolerate drugs, pesticides, flesh colorants (farm-salmon flesh is grey; the pink you see is a chemical additive) and an overcrowded, stationary existence, domestic salmon are genetically different from their wild counterparts."
"If B.C. wants wild and farmed salmon, the farms simply need to be moved into tanks on dry land, as other countries are pressuring their farmers to do."
"When they escape and interbreed with wild stocks, essential wild genes disappear. Norwegian fish geneticist Kjetil Hindar warns that this type of damage is irreversible and is today destroying Norway's wild stocks."
"Why have so many politicians, and bureaucrats with DFO and various provincial ministries, defended such an unprecedented threat to the beloved wild salmon of this coast? Wild salmon head out to sea as babies, returning to feed us with the richness of the North Pacific stored in their flesh. What more could we want from a fish?"
"How about their habitat?"
"If people could be weaned off wild salmon and taught to accept farm salmon, salmon-rearing watersheds could be clearcut, massive water diversions could be permitted, mining tailings could be dumped in rivers, oil exploration could flourish unimpeded, and so on."
"Perhaps wild salmon require more than politicians can afford to give them. If B.C. wants wild and farmed salmon, the farms simply need to be moved into tanks on dry land, as other countries are pressuring their farmers to do."
"There is no evidence, anywhere in the world, that wild and (net cage) farmed salmonid stocks can co-exist. This is not surprising: most nearby wildlife dies in the presence of corporate farming practices..."
"I feel an enormous sense of failure as I look on the vast wilderness I first encountered so many years ago. Despite my efforts, despite so many people's efforts, it is dying."
"We are poisoning our health and the health of our coast with a food we grow and eat. Choose wild fish and help preserve them both," concluded Morton.
