Notes From the Archipelago: Year of the Blue Moon

June-July 1999

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

by Alexandra Morton

A Pacific white-sided dolphin bow-rides Alex's boat

My yellow daffodils nod, brilliant against dark unplanted soil in the gentle morning breeze. Beyond them the archipelago lies, smooth in pastel shades of blue and silver, such a different palette of colors from the dark wind-torn waters of this past winter. Mount Stevens gleams cold and white. Winter still clings there and the cold air slipping down the mountain keeps the tiny seeds I have planted tightly closed and dormant.

This was an unusual year for moons because there were two full moons in January and March. When there are two full moons in a month, the second is called a "blue" moon. We won't be seeing another blue moon until well into the next millennium. My neighbour Bill Proctor tells me you can predict the timing of salmon runs, herring and eulachon by the date of the first full moon in January. "The spring salmon show in the inlets on the fifth full moon of the year, the pinks which spawn in the mainland inlets show on the sixth, Fraser River sockeye and pinks go through Blackfish Sound on the seventh moon, with the late runs showing on the eighth moon" (from Heart of the Raincoast). But when there are two full moons in the first month of the year, "everything gets a little haywire".

Sure enough this year's herring spawn was a bit "haywire". For the first time in the 15 years I've been watching, the fish spawned on the half-moon in March, not the full moon. The spawn was only fair, and the fish small. Although herring in the Broughton Archipelago have been protected from commercial fishing for many years, they are not returning to spawn in places where they were fished out. The only spawn today is where remnant populations survived the aggressive pit-lamp seine fishery carried out in the 1960s. Brilliant mercury lights were used to attract herring to the surface at night. These lights brought herring, octopus, cod, indeed most of the food-chain into the nets. These fishermen were dubbed "grille fishermen" because everyone knew they were killing thousands of juvenile salmon, or grille, with this indiscriminate method. Before being outlawed, this fishery appears to have caught entire breeding populations of herring. Traditionally over 100 miles of Fisheries Area 12 were coated with herring spawn every spring, but now there's less than ten miles.

Why won't the herring return to traditional sites? One theory suggests there are no adult fish to show the way. There is a similar phenomena on the east coast of Canada where increasingly, cod are spawning in shallow coastal waters instead of moving offshore to the banks where they once spawned. The inshore waters were the domain of the young cod. When adult migrations swept through the juvenile stocks, they attracted the newly matured fish and led them out to the rich banks of the North Atlantic. Today, with no teachers to follow, the young fish are maturing and remaining in inshore waters where conditions are not optimal for survival. The old joke that fish schools have teachers turns out to be no joke at all. The Atlantic cod and Pacific herring need teachers and the teachers appear to be gone.

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The salmon farmers are still using their underwater acoustic harassment devices, even though the devices explicitly violate the Fisheries Act. No one in Canada is allowed to "disperse" a whale, dolphin or porpoise, but nothing I have done has inspired our politicians to uphold this Canadian law. However, the salmon farmers sensibly turned off the devices in front of my house. I can only guess that they did not want me collecting any further information on their impact.

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I am happy to report one resident pod of whales came through. It was the A23s, a small family of the larger A5 pod. Regrettably I missed them, but friends who run Sea Smoke charters out of Alert Bay saw and identified them. Did these whales like what they found, will they come back, can they "tell" others there is a clear, silent route through the Broughton Archipelago again? I am hoping it will be yes to all. I'll let you know.

On a less positive note, the most recent Northern Aquaculture describes a new type of pest control - a laser gun. The article mentions it would be best not to point the gun at co-workers, presumably to prevent blinding them, but this precaution is not extended to wildlife. It explains you can either "hit" a bird directly or hit the water near the bird. If these guns are a threat to human vision, they will certainly damage the vision of birds, seals, otters and the other British Columbian wildlife. This new technology acts in the same manner as the acoustic harassment devices, by damaging the primary sense of animals which come into conflict with salmon farmers. If you find this latest assault on marine life abhorrent, please voice your concerns to the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Fisheries. The address is simply Parliament Buildings, Victoria, BC, V8V 1X4.

Finally, in a leap of logic so twisted that it is hard to follow, the Ministry of Environment is allowing a logging company to spread 40 tonnes per hectare of dried Greater Vancouver sewage on the flood plains of the wild and magnificent Klinaklini River at the head of Knight Inlet. The Ministry of Environment's own assessment of this sludge lists high concentrations of arsenic, mercury, lead, copper and other chemicals toxic to life. The Klinaklini is a major river supporting many salmon runs and eulachon. The application of these chemicals from the garages, factories and homes of the city of Vancouver is being paid for in part by Forestry Renewal. Paul Christensen (fax: 250-751-3130) of the Ministry of Environment can give you more information on this. The Klinaklini is not an isolated case! This sludge will soon be spread throughout river valleys of BC unless someone says "whoa, let's take a good look at what will be damaged if we do this."

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Yesterday I spotted the first pair of kayakers of the year, a male and a female. He was a large fuzzy red-head, she a demure blond in braids. They traveled so close to shore they slipped beneath the ramp to my dock and float. I don't think they were looking for a nesting site, but appeared on a schedule as they paddled gracefully along. I looked to see if they were part of an early run, but there was just the pair. Nevertheless, it's another sign of spring and promise of the coming summer.

Alexandra Morton is a marine mammal researcher and author living in BC's Broughton Archipelago, and a regular Wavelength columnist.