I arrived at Salmon Coast Field Station with one wet leg. Chris was polite enough not to mention it.
Launching the rowing boat that I used to get from Billy’s place to the S
Chris is one of two Station Coordinators of the facility he describes as a kind of hotel for research scientists – and occasionally artists – who come to the Broughton Archipelago to pursue their work. The hotel analogy isn’t quite accurate – you have to apply to get in.
The Station was founded by local scientist and conservationist Alexandra Morton but she has distanced her activist activities from it so that the work produced by the Station is independent and unbiased. According to Chris, the data produced by the Station points towards the veracity of Morton’s most controversial cause regardless – that the open-pen farming of Atlantic salmon in the area is doing significant damage to wild salmon stocks.
Look at the Johnstone Strait on a map or chart and you’ll see that it forms a natural bottleneck between the islands located between Campbell River, Vancouver Island
Chris explained to me that the scientists of the Station are looking into a working theory that this geographical feature causes the uppermost, sunlight receiving layer of the water column (the Euphotic Zone) in the area to become, in his words, “well mixed” and, as a result, to be naturally lower in nutrients than it might normally be.
Sea lice are pervasive in the deep sea environment where they latch onto fish that are fully grown and able to withstand their presence, but the lice naturally die off by the time the fish get to the fresh water environment near their spawning grounds.
According to Chris the fish farms have become “a sort of incubator” for lice in winter, where they infest farm fish, and spread into the wild environment where they attack vulnerable juvenile salmon as they work their way to the ocean, just at the moment when many are about to endure the nutritionally poor waters of the Johnstone, and the compound effect of this seems to be a factor in declining wild salmon stocks.
He is not against aquaculture per se – but he does believe that open-pen salmon farming is causing real damage and is at pains to point out that this is where the data from the Research Station has been pointing for a while – data that is publicly available to anyone who wants to look.
We talk about the potential for salmon hatcheries. His view is that while not perfect the US is handling the Alaskan salmon situation much better than Canada is handling ours. From Chris’s point of view, it looks a lot like Canada has given up on its wild salmon – worse, that the economics of the situation are tilted in favor of atlantic salmon farmed in open pens versus the preservation and expansion of the area’s wild salmon.
That last part is not a view that I completely accept but I can tell you that Chris is not alone in holding it. Why else people say, would our government support the open pen aquaculture business in preference to the wild salmon stock?
Did You Know
There are about 50 open-pen salmon farms in BC waters.
The farming of Atlantic Salmon has been banned in Washington State
Salmon is a fish eating fish. This means that significant amounts of fish need to be taken from the wild environment and then processed into pellets to feed to farmed salmon.
Environmental Impacts
Environmentalists claim that open-pen salmon farms introduce pests and disease into sensitive near-shore areas where juvenile salmon migrate to the ocean.
There have been cases where atlantic salmon have been allowed to escape into the natural environment occupied by pacific salmon.
Health Impacts
Including fish as part of your diet has well-recorded health benefits although care should be taken as some varieties are high in toxins as a result of pollution in the environment. Wild salmon is generally regarded to be healthier than farmed salmon due to a lower risk of PCB contamination.
Lessons Learned
Aquaculture is a broad topic that includes much that can pose a net gain for the environment. The open-pen farming of Atlantic salmon has encountered many problems however.
What You Can Do
Understand whether the salmon you are buying is wild or farmed and educate yourself on the health risks and benefits of both. Seriously consider the impact of open-pen salmon farms before buying farmed salmon.
Environmental groups exist to promote restrictions on the open pen farming of salmon.
Activists have been campaigning for leases allowing salmon farms to operate to not be renewed.
