Special Report: Failure to Protect

August-September 2001

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: > DOWNLOAD

by Alexandra Morton

On June 5th a fishing lodge owner and keen observer of fish brought me two tiny salmon, a pink and a chum. One had 16 small sea lice sucking its life juices away, the other 19. They looked like pincushions.

I knew from my research on salmon farming that infestations are one of the industry's most indelible signatures. And I was worried. After the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was contacted, I began systematically dipping up juvenile salmon smolts and examining them for lice. These salmon were on their way to sea and no time could be wasted waiting for DFO to act or the evidence would be gone.

I started at the Ahta River in Bond Sound, a good producer of pink salmon. In Bond Sound I found large, 7cm smolts that were fat, slick and sassy. There was an occasional sea louse on them for an average of 2.7 per fish. Their sides were clean and bright, sheathed in a glistening protective mucous membrane.

When I left the Sound, turned west in the direction the migrating salmon were going and sampled Miller Point out in Tribune Channel, I found 6.58 lice per fish, but they were still looking clean and bright. Next I sampled behind the first fish farm on this route at Watson Cove.

Photo by Alexandra Morton

Looking at each tiny fish under a magnifying glass, my heart broke. The average load of lice was 10.77 per fish with some covered in 65 lice! In addition, they had raw open wounds, teeth rake marks down their sides, black dents where lice had eaten through their sides. It appeared that the wild salmon had not only been attacked by lice, but also by fish. Likely this was due to the use of the fish farms' bright lights at night attracting them into lethal, unnatural aggregations of aggressive farm salmon.

I went on and found the same pattern in Fife Sound and Wells Pass-no lice east of the farms where the smolts were emanating from their birthplaces, but many lice west of the farms, among the surviving fish which had passed the netcages.

After two weeks and over 600 samples from 44 sites, a strong pattern and warning emerged. On 12cm salmon, a load of 10-11 lice is considered lethal. But here I was seeing fish half the size with double the load! It was obvious they would die. Peering down at the schools of minute salmon I was tracking, I could sea lice hanging off most. Below the pinks, out of reach of my dip net, larger chinook smolts could be seen with lice on them too.

Pink salmon researchers in Alaska tell me they have never seen such an infestation of lice in wild pink salmon and remarked, "We knew this would happen as soon as BC let those salmon farms in."

Through this period of research DFO asked for my samples, but did not appear on the grounds until virtually all the pinks had migrated out of the area. DFO failed to act and failed to protect the wild salmon that belong to us all. The salmon farmers have also failed to act responsibly. In their home country, Norway, they must reduce their lice loads to 0.5 female lice per fish during spring to protect the outgoing baby wild salmon, but not in BC.

On a recent school tour of a local salmon farm, ten to fifteen adult lice were seen on each farm salmon. The low rainfall of this winter caused salinity levels to rise, favouring lice production. In addition, lice grow and reproduce faster under lights, which the salmon farms use all winter and spring. There are a million salmon in
many farms, growing a billion sea lice. Every 30 days or less the number of lice explodes exponentially. The only way to stop this is to remove the hosts. The wild salmon will do this, as most will die, but their deaths will not solve this problem because the farm salmon will remain.

Each fish farm should have been immediately "diapered" in tarps and the fish removed. This entire Archipelago must go "fallow" if the salmon whales, bears and eagles are to survive. The fish farms of the Broughton have lived up to their worldwide legacy-they are killing off their competition.

© Alexandra Morton is a marine mammal scientist and writer in the Broughton Archipelago.
e-mail: wildorca@island.net