From the Archipelago: The Turning Point—Are We There?

April-May 2003

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

Thirteen years ago I noticed there were problems with salmon farms. I noticed them as you might notice a neighbour has left a gate open and you go to close it, to keep their dog from your yard. Salmon farms did not seem a huge threat. They were nothing I paid much attention to. I thought their indiscretions would be resolved, the gate gently closed and life would go on as before. But that gate would not close and from that portal, a silent potion of doom dripped steadily into the veins of life which are our coastline. No single droplet was enough to raise the alert; each appeared problematic, but not threatening, and so they seeped continually, hidden, below our radar. Until now.

Over the past two years I have walked a mile in Chicken Little's shoes, and there are lessons learned I would like to share.

FIRST, I was surprised to find that bureaucrats run this country. In the game that is our politics, the faces we watch rise and fall, the politicians, are only window dressing. I have seen good men step into that system and lose their compass. "Leadership" seems irrelevant. It is the next layer below that runs the show. Nameless, faceless to most of us, they decide our fate and make it come to pass. They exist outside democracy: they do not move as parties rise, dance and fall. They have strict agendas none will alter. They absorb all attempts to move them and never allow a ripple to appear upon their surface. Don't waste your time with them.

SECOND, no one can change the world without allies. The best allies are akin to wild horses. Each is strong in their own right, independent and often jealous. Territories must be painfully etched in sand and observed. The organism which is an alliance morphs rapidly at first, an agonizing rebirth at every junction, but in the end, the best we humans can achieve comes within grasp. An alliance of dedicated individuals, honed through the hard-won respect that only comes after rigorous field trial, is our best hope for continued life on earth. An alliance can engage the government and swing wide simultaneously.

THIRD, for a miracle to occur, the fuel source must be love. Not wealth, not fame, not job security, not hate.

For over a decade I have tried to keep salmon farms from atomizing the ecosystem in which I live, a small coastal archipelago nestled in the embrace of Knight and Kingcome Inlets. When the whales were displaced (Morton and Symonds 2000) it was not enough. When 10,000 escaped Atlantics were caught in six weeks by commercial fishermen (Morton and Volpe 2002) it was not enough. When the toxic algae blooms first flashed in warning colours of red and orange, it was not enough ( Mother Jones, Nov/Dec 2001). When shrimp fishermen called to report "extra-terrestrials stuck to the eyeballs" of fish (Morton and Overstreet in progress), when viruses were cultured at fish farms and released in the heart of the archipelago (Morton et al. in progress), it was not enough.

But when baby salmon were infested with a blight of sea lice and eaten to death (Morton et al under review) the critical mass was reached, and all the other issues rose to the surface - silent ghosts released from inertia.

Nothing has yet been achieved. But finally the BC government is threatened by salmon farms and so it must respond. The salmon farming industry will try divide and conquer. But I suspect they will fail. The government did not mean for all their recent meetings on sea lice, skillfully rigged to prevent solutions, to have effect. But they did, because they brought together an extraordinary alliance of men and women. Meeting after meeting, magnetic forces aligned us, until we have become essential to protecting the biology of wild salmon on this coast.

FINALLY, there is one crucial ingredient essential to success - something worth fighting for. Certainly the wild salmon are that. They are a gift to all life on earth. They bring prosperity wherever they swim, they are a food source not metered out by corporate hands. They are ours and we work passionately for them.

© Alexandra Morton (R.P.Bio) is a marine mammal scientist and author in British Columbia's Broughton Archipelago. Visit her website at www.raincoastresearch.org.

Ed. Note: My apologies to the people of Gilford Village. In our last issue, I labelled Alex's photo, taken during a ceremony there, a "wolf" mask when it was in fact a beaver mask.