Wild pink salmon on Canada’s Pacific coast. Photo credit: Barry Kovish.
A plea for wild salmon
from Alexandra Morton, marine biologist
Alexandra Morton in an independent marine biologist who lives in the Broughton Archipelago. In 2001 she alerted the world to a highly unusual out-break of sea lice on young salmon found near lice-infested salmon farms in the area.
Farming is a practice nearly as ancient as history. Fish farming is thousands of years old and a mainstay in some Asian cultures. There fish were fed part of the crops, producing protein and fertilizing the soil. This was an ecosystem-based model where wastes were used and food created.
Fin-fish aquaculture on the BC coast breaks fundamental natural laws thus creating havoc wherever they are sited. Salmon are carnivores, thus fish stocks in the South Pacific are being heavily fished to feed this industry. The living product is dyed pink and treated with various chemicals to ensure the fish live long enough to harvest. These synthetic fish are easily infected by wild pathogens that multiply at a deadly rate among the stationary, crowded and genetically similar livestock. While natural predators are excluded, the net cages allow farm diseases to spill out into the wild. And, this is the crux of the problem.
Sea lice infestation on Broughton Archipelago smolt. Photo credit: Jeremy Sean Williams
Sea lice are one of these pathogens, though these farms are producing serious viruses and bacteria as well. As a biologist living among 26 salmon feedlots the impact is obvious. Annual algae blooms of Heterosigma and Noctiluca turn the water red-orange, a warning light flashing “overload, overload!” as fecal waste overwhelms the balance. The fish-eating population of killer whales abandoned these fouled waters (Morton and Symonds 2002). Viral outbreaks of diseases like IHN waft among vital herring and salmon stocks, and sea lice threaten to bring the wild salmonid nations to extinction (Morton et al 2004).
Sea lice are natural, but die in fresh water. As a result the lice carried to the coast every fall on migrating adult salmon do not infect the young salmon going to sea in the spring. The industrial salmon farms however, have given sea lice a haven to over-winter near the rivers. By spring millions of lice are billowing out of the farms. Europe is putting a stop to this, but BC refuses.
The only person that can stop this is you. I am failing badly as the salmon farm industry apply for more and bigger farms and seek to position their industry the entire length of this coast in front of every major salmon producing river we have.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Stop buying the product, tell your friends to stop buying it, until it is produced safely for you and our fish.
Alexandra Morton • Echo Bay, BC • August 2005
