Notes from the Archipelago: Waiting for Change

April-May 1999

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

by Alexandra Morton

Having knowledge and using it wisely are concepts that remain worlds apart

The archipelago is calm this morning beneath the brilliant full moon. The life within her is resting.

Storm after storm have torn these waters into spectacular water spouts. Dark fingers of wind disturbed every lee shore and trees lie fallen everywhere. A friend had a close call as a river of mud, boulders, split tree trunks and branches pinned him at the edge of a rocky shoreline. His weak radio signal reached one neighbour, who reached another until finally Glen heard the call and with his sturdy vessel Port Lincoln plucked the man from his nightmare.

Throughout the storms the pilchard died by the thousands. The virus VHS (viral haemorragic septicema), reached epidemic proportions for reasons no one fully understands. But that plague seems over too, and now we wait. Herring were found dead among the pilchard and so we won't know how many survived until the spawn begins.

Over the past two years humpback whales have spent the first few weeks of March in front of my house feeding on herring and I scan often for the sight of a dark tail or back rising from the water.

Another lone male orca came by to spend a few hours in front of Echo Bay. He wasn't obviously hunting, just pacing slowly in large circles. There were other transient pods nearby, within kilometres, sighted by researchers at the nearby Orcalab on Hanson Island. I wondered if the male was waiting at the natural crossroads of Echo Bay, where four passages meet, hoping to run into one of the other groups. I have seen this before-a lone male once spent thirty hours off Echo Bay.

Mammal-eating transient whales appear much less social than their fish-eating resident counterparts, but they may not be the loners I thought they were. Curiously, when I see a transient I often get reports of other small pods within twenty kilometres and generally see the pods over the next few days. After 15 years of watching this pattern emerge I get the sense that a transient "group" may be spread so far apart, we don't perceive them as travelling together when in fact, they are. Months can go between sightings and then I get a flurry of calls, encounters and whale voices over the hydrophone, before they vanish again.

As I travel Tribune Channel I have found many current meters, anchored in pristine bays. These meters have no identifying marks or names, but warn of coming salmon farms. Tribune Channel, migration route for millions of salmon, will soon support millions of Atlantic salmon, if the tanker corporation still trying to farm this archipelago has its way. The talk has become increasingly desperate as people watch the invasion of farms continue against their wishes. Local wisdom, so patiently offered, has been discarded. Sometimes government appears to be listening, but the archipelago community knows it is only a charade.

Federal Fisheries Ministers refuse to acknowledge the problems with salmon farming, but alternate opinions have begun to form. Why is a chemical tanker corporation losing money farming salmon on a coast known for wild salmon abundance? Who would fish the oceans, process the tonnage into pellets, transport these sacks of feed thousands of kilometres to pour them back into the sea, and harvest a greatly reduced tonnage of fish?

Why would the federal government steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the devastating problems associated with salmon farming in Norway, Chile, Ireland, Scotland and New Brunswick? Why hasn't any level of government taken a reasonable approach to say, yes there are problems with salmon farming and here is what we are going to do about them?

On the docks of Port McNeill, Port Hardy, Campbell River and Echo Bay more and more people are reaching the same conclusion. This isn't about salmon. This is about oil. "Look at the east coast", they say. There, despite warnings from fishermen and scientists alike, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans actually invested in the huge over-efficient draggers blamed for pushing beleaguered eastern cod stocks over the edge of commercial extinction. Salmon farms were allowed to proliferate, tossing a few jobs to the starving fisheries-dependent communities. The end result: the greatest fish producing ecosystem on earth, the Grand Banks, is supporting the oil industry today, not fish.

Large sub-sea pools of oil along the British Columbia coast beckon to corporate giants, small town mayors and all the hierarchy between. Once the proud, thriving little coastal communities have suffered long enough, they will accept whatever it takes to feed their children. Salmon farms, oil wells and other corporate activity will set up shop unhindered by fishery concerns, until they've had their fill and depart leaving behind a wasteland and another generation of coastal families in hardship.

If you study salmon aquaculture in this same light, you'll see the weak threads of denial twist smoothly into a web of greed. We know importing exotic species is one of the greatest threats to the biodiversity of this planet. We know corporate farming has never co-existed with wild species and their essential ecosystems. We know that assisting pathogens across long standing biogeographic barriers causes ecosystems to spin out of control towards a chaotic re-ordering. We know that as a top level predator, humans require a solid pyramid of life to support us. But having knowledge and using it wisely are concepts that remain worlds apart.
Increasingly, I hear a murmur of anxiety rippling through society. Just as deer lift their heads at unforeseen rustling and caribou stampedes begin with a few uncertain rumblings, the people of this coast sense government no longer serves them. The decision has to be ours.

Waiting for whales, waiting for herring, waiting for salmon... from the archipelago.