From the Archipelago:Ebbs and Flows

December 2004-January 2005

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

Grizzlies chow down on returning pink salmon, full of eggs.
© Alexandra Morton photo.

The Broughton lies vibrant before us. In the smooth, smoky blue days of fall, her face is calm. A vast sense of peace fills any heart that looks upon her. She is all that is right with the world, a natural order giving life, cradling life, full of the promise that this will be so for eons to come. But as her sides rise and fall with the full moon tides, the calm is only surface deep. Just below, the plankton community is in turmoil.

In August, rainfall was near biblical, with nine inches falling in eight days. The rain glazed the salty surface waters with a fresh water lens. Like a child’s magnifying glass left carelessly on dry grass, this freshwater lens intensifies the sun’s energy. As the first southeast winds stir from a summer’s sleep, they stretch and yawn, and halt the west winds which dominate the summer skies. This meeting of winds, the waking winter winds and dying summer winds, breeds stillness. Equilibrium quivers for a few short weeks. These factors spark wakefulness to an organism buried months, even years. Tiny living cysts buried in the mud of Viner Sound and Simoom Sound stir to release their progeny, and like the seven year locust, heterosigma is released to float upwards into the plankton layer.

One of the first signs that this sleeping dragon is among us is a dramatic clearing of the water. Normally, the Broughton’s waters are only clear during long, cloudy and dry spells, which are rare. Any sunlight, any time of year, produces a thick blush of life in the plankton layer. In a single droplet one will find a tangle of segmented stick- like organisms, chaetoserous, resembling a spinal cord with long sharp thorns at every ‘vertebrae’. Little whirling bits of life skitter across the microscope’s field of view with the occasional, most remarkably spaceship- like armored vehicles scattered within. Long necklaces of perfect amber disks lie strewn carelessly about. But when heterosigma comes to life, everything else vanishes. Researchers don’t know if it poisons the competition, but certainly it displaces everything. The ocean turns gin clear. As I press my eyebrow against the microscope eyepieces, all I see are tiny cornflake–like shapes, ominously spinning on their own axes in a barren universe—red tide.

Red tide describes algal blooms of many species, as they all give the water a dark red to orange appearance. They are a naturally occurring organism and generally self-limiting. They reproduce and prosper only until they run out of nitrogen and phosphorous. This quick end is a good thing because they consume the ocean’s oxygen and in some cases outright poison sea life. Heterosigma is not always toxic, but it often turns that way. When I sent samples to Fisheries and Oceans in 1997, they said this was the first occurrence of heterosigma ever noted in the Broughton—now it is common.

THE RETURN!

This fall, many of us waited for the first return of pink salmon which had gone to sea through a salmon farm-free corridor in 2003. The Pink Salmon Action Plan emptied eleven salmon farms, and all researchers in the area, including DFO, found many fewer sea lice. I waited, the bears waited, the eagles waited and the tiny salmon egg- eating water oozle waited. And then they came. Rivers barren only the year before, are teeming with life as I write this. Looking into the Glendale River, you can’t see the bottom, only layer after layer of shifting hues of olive brown, dotted tails, flashes of pink. These fish are here to give life, then die, and they seem enthusiastic about their role. Even though they have made it upriver, they break the water in energetic leaps. Perhaps they’re saying, “Look at me! I went to sea, grew like a fish, escaped predators of every shape from many kingdoms, swam against a river, and I still have energy to spare—I am the perfect mate for you!”

The female grizzly bears agree. As a blonde mother bear stands firmly, claiming the best spot in the river, her cubs run gaily about, snatching succulent, energy-rich fish with their clawed toes. They plop down on rotund haunches and bite into the fish, causing eggs to spurt towards the sun. Ravens, oozles, trout and bears lap, peck, gulp and, in anyway possible, capture these packets of nourishment. All are depleted from a summer of dealing with their young, and this is the tonic required to see them through the winter. Bushes wave, large sticks crack, brown fur is glimpsed in the twilight of the forest. Most of the bears in the river do not even glance up as another mother with twin cubs enters the river. Huge heads submerge, only cute little ears remain dry, and mother bear knows she didn’t risk the journey for naught. Her cubs will grow fat and thrive.

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Springer is also thriving on the salmon swimming home. The little female orca whale, orphaned and lost in the waters of Seattle and then carried home, has become a wild whale again. Hers was the only family of resident whales to pass through the Broughton this summer and she never gave me a glance. She no longer comes to boats for company—she has all she needs among the whales.

Humpback whale numbers rose again in nearby Blackfish Sound with up to five seen feeding in the general area on some days. Theirs is a story of success, back from whaling pressures and near extinction. The Offshore killer whales also returned to the waters just outside the Broughton Archipelago several times this summer and fall. Why these whales are appearing in these inshore waters more frequently is not known. We can only say that they are being pushed or pulled, but I don’t know which. The Pacific white-sided dolphins did a similar thing—they’ve been absent, then rare, then abundant, but they do seem to be returning to these waters (Morton 2000). The Offshore story is still not known.

AN IMPASSE

The Broughton has become the focus of great controversy over fish farming, and where we stand on this issue depends on which side of the pens we’re looking from. People working for the industry see different things than those who believe they are being negatively impacted. People focused on being elected are more interested in how many votes exist in the different camps. Environmentalists argue that the environment does not stop at the surface of our skin and that they’re fighting for human life. Many industry proponents counter that we need jobs to feed our families.

All are right in some respects. But that doesn’t help. If life on earth is to continue, this type of impasse needs resolution. And who shall decide? The economist? The engineer? The corporate president? The biologist? The fisherman?

Both the Bible and Science tell us to cherish the diversity of life on earth. And it is clear the specifics of this task have fallen to us. At this critical junction of humanity, this uncomplicated command would seem an appropriate rule. If this rule were applied to the Broughton, we would keep farmed fish fully contained, and the young, wild fish would pass unencumbered on their way to the sea.