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A Stain Upon The Sea (Harbour $26.95)
B.C. consumers may be forgiven for being confused about whether to let a farmed Atlantic salmon land on their plate. There's a blistering war of words out there. The stakes are immeasurably high. A coalition of environmentalists, commercial fishermen and native groups argue the very future of wild salmon stocks, the marine environment and possibly human health are at risk. "Exaggerated and misleading,"; says the salmon farming industry, assuring us fish farming is environmentally sound, takes pressure off fishing wild stocks and is key to revitalizing coastal communities like Port Hardy and Campbell River. Stephen Hume, Alexandra Morton, Betty C. Keller, Rosella M. Leslie, Otto Langer and Don Staniford offere a critical evaluation of fish farming in A Stain Upon The Sea (Harbour $26.95), reviewed here by Mark Forsythe.
British Columbia, now the world's fourth largest producer of farmed salmon. Having generated 1,800 direct jobs, and another 2,000 indirect jobs in small coastal communities, fish farming is regarded by some people as an economic saviour. Salmon farming has become the province's biggest agricultural exporter (about 15% of total agricultural production) returning more than $600 million to the economy each year. In 2002 the province lifted a moratorium on expansion. The industry-outlawed in Alaska-is now poised to take its open-net cage pens to the North Coast of B.C. A billion dollars of new economic activity is predicted over the next ten years.
A Stain Upon The Sea (Harbour $26.95) arrives just in time re-ignite debate for the upcoming spring election. This collection of essays, written by sixcritics, is a harpoon launched at the industry and government regulators.
As conservationist Terry Glavin points out in the introduction, aquaculture has been with us for thousands of years, from oyster breeding to clam gardens. So what's really new? "Salmon are carnivores."; he writes. "For the first time in history we're raising carnivores for food. So it is an experiment, one might say. And by so intensively interfering in the process of natural selection, by subjecting salmon to such elaborate methods of artificial selection, by genetic tinkering and by long term selective breeding, we are creating a wholly new species.";
We are also tinkering with a symbol unlike any other. To many, wild salmon is the soul of British Columbia. Journalist and columnist Stephen Hume has examined the "collision between the artificial and the natural"; in his piece about a trip to the Broughton Archipelago where one of the biggest recorded collapses of pink salmon occurred, in 2002. Almost four million pinks were expected to return to six local rivers, but precious few showed up. One fisherman searching for the fish called it a "watery wasteland."; It wasn't long before fishermen and local whale researcher Alexandra Morton were connecting missing salmon with fish farms in the area. Morton began testing smolts entering salt water near the farms, and reported finding them covered with sea lice (9,145 sea lice on 872 pink salmon smolts). "I noticed bleeding at their eyeballs and bleeding at the base of the fins, which are classic symptoms of fish disease. I was horrified to see these baby fish being ravaged by these parasites,"; Morton writes. The fish were being eaten alive. Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) questioned her science, but the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, an independent watchdog chaired by former federal fisheries minister John Fraser, backed her up. Industry was ordered to fallow 11 of the 27 farms that fall to create a migration window to make smolts less vulnerable to sea lice. This partial fallowing seemed to have an effect, as significantly fewer fish were infected that year. However, DFO scientists assert there is still no study that shows a cause-and-effect relationship between sea lice on wild and farmed fish. Hume's journey continues to western Ireland with its longer history of fish farming. He meets fisheries biologists who consider the sea lice infestation of our pinks a replay of what happened to juvenile sea trout (with similar life cycles) in their waters. One comments, "We've lost a wild sea trout angling fishery that was worth millions of pounds. Fisheries here that used to be phenomenal are now derelict.";
Irish scientists are now pushing for a ban on fish farms where migrating smolts could come into contact with farmed fish. The manager of a 250-year-old fishing lodge, forced to cater to cyclists and hikers, says, "We're witnessing the death of the fishery."; According to Hume, fish farming is a divisive issue among British Columbia's First Nations. The Kitasoo at Klemtu, for example, are looking to the industry as a way to cut devastating unemployment rates of 85%. But other First Nations are vowing to fight expansion in their territory.
Alaskans are also sounding the alarm. Many fear that expansion coming near
Prince Rupert will mean more escapes of Atlantics, imported stock that could muscle in on the habitat of wild stocks. One critic considers these Canadian fish "smart bombs"; carrying potentially lethal biological payloads upon the wild stocks. Fish farmers are quick to respond that pathogens found in farmed Atlantics are actually indigenous to wild stocks. Don't blame the farmed fish.
Ever since B.C.'s first fish farm was established by forestry giant Crown Zellerback at Ocean Falls, the fortunes of salmon farming have been rising and falling. Sunshine Coast contributors Betty Keller and Rosetta Leslie provide a chronology of the ups and downs in their essay called Sea-Silver.
By 1989 the silver rush was well underway, with 185 small salmon farms in B.C., operated by more than 100 companies. By 1993, "as a result of storms, disease, algal blooms and rock-bottom salmon prices, those numbers had shrunk to 80 farms operated by 17 companies, but they had become large farms and international companies."; Today mostly those farms are far bigger and more automated.
A Stain Upon the Sea effectively marshals arguments against fish farming on various fronts. We hear the voices of sports fishermen worried about the future of wild salmon stocks and a $1.5 billion dollar tourist fishing industry. Commercial fishermen are spitting mad after seeing wild salmon runs go extinct (some fish farmers argue these commercial fishermen over-fished these very stocks), catches reduced and salmon prices hit rock bottom.
Former DFO biologist and now Director of Marine Conservation for the David Suzuki Foundation, Otto Langer skewers the DFO bureaucracy for not living up to its job of protecting wild salmon stocks and habitat. He traces this to reorganization at DFO back in 1971, "when pollution staff were taken from DFO and moved to the new Department of the Environment (DOE). This meant that people responsible for fish habitat protection were no longer responsible for the quality of the water that the fish lived in."; Langer suggests cuts to staff and industry self-policing haven't helped either. "Sadly, the environmental enforcement record goes up and down like the tide in Prince Rupert. For most of the past 30 years, DFO and DOE have failed to protect the water quality when it would conflict with the needs of the provincial government or industry."; This 32-year DFO veteran sees the department in a conflict of interest: tasked with protecting wild salmon while it's simultaneously mandated to encourage development of aquaculture.
Don Staniford, a director of the Salmon Farm Protest Group in Scotland, pens a chilling chapter called Silent Spring of the Sea to describe a"chemical arms race"; within the industry due to antibiotics, artificial colourings, antiparasitics and antifoulants. Some of these substances have polluted the ocean and can be lethal to other species like shrimp, lobster and mussels.
In Scotland an artificial pink dye used to alter the colour of salmon flesh for marketing purposes was linked to retinal damage in humans. Dichlorvos, used previously in the U.K. and B.C., has been linked to testicular cancer. Ivermectin, an in-feed treatment for sea lice, can produce severe side effects.
That did not stop Canadians from giving thousands of farmed salmon a massive drug overdose. In 2000 as many as 10,000 farmed salmon were killed at a farm in the Broughton Archipelago. A new treatment being used in trials is a new product called Slice. The catchy sales slogan is Slice Kills Lice but critics fear it might harm or kill other marine life. Staniford argues, all too often, risk assessments are done after chemicals have been approved, and when a "risk assessment is finally published years later (after the targets' resistance to the chemical has made its use redundant anyway), a new chemical takes its place.";
Whale researcher Alexandra Morton, the woman who's come to symbolize the fight against salmon farming, closes the book. When she first saw a net pen being towed into the Broughton Archipelago, Morton thought salmon farming might be a good thing for the area, but she soon "lost trust in the system."; The government permitted farms to be located in what local fishermen considered to be sensitive 'red zones', important to wild stocks. Atlantic smolts infected with furunculosis were allowed to stay in the water at one farm, possibly posing a threat to wild stocks. "I felt it (DFO) was working to hide the truth,"; she says. From her eye-witness perspective, Morton chronicles escaped Atlantics, disease outbreaks on farms and the sea lice infestation which she believes brought on the crash of the Broughton pink-confirming most of the suspicions that many British Columbians have about a high powered industry having its way in public waters. A Stain Upon the Sea is pretty much a one-sided argument. Next year, Raincoast Books will release a book on fish farming by Peter Robson. 1-55017-317-0
--by Mark Forsythe
[BCBW 2004] "Environment"
British Columbia, now the world's fourth largest producer of farmed salmon. Having generated 1,800 direct jobs, and another 2,000 indirect jobs in small coastal communities, fish farming is regarded by some people as an economic saviour. Salmon farming has become the province's biggest agricultural exporter (about 15% of total agricultural production) returning more than $600 million to the economy each year. In 2002 the province lifted a moratorium on expansion. The industry-outlawed in Alaska-is now poised to take its open-net cage pens to the North Coast of B.C. A billion dollars of new economic activity is predicted over the next ten years.
A Stain Upon The Sea (Harbour $26.95) arrives just in time re-ignite debate for the upcoming spring election. This collection of essays, written by sixcritics, is a harpoon launched at the industry and government regulators.
As conservationist Terry Glavin points out in the introduction, aquaculture has been with us for thousands of years, from oyster breeding to clam gardens. So what's really new? "Salmon are carnivores."; he writes. "For the first time in history we're raising carnivores for food. So it is an experiment, one might say. And by so intensively interfering in the process of natural selection, by subjecting salmon to such elaborate methods of artificial selection, by genetic tinkering and by long term selective breeding, we are creating a wholly new species.";
We are also tinkering with a symbol unlike any other. To many, wild salmon is the soul of British Columbia. Journalist and columnist Stephen Hume has examined the "collision between the artificial and the natural"; in his piece about a trip to the Broughton Archipelago where one of the biggest recorded collapses of pink salmon occurred, in 2002. Almost four million pinks were expected to return to six local rivers, but precious few showed up. One fisherman searching for the fish called it a "watery wasteland."; It wasn't long before fishermen and local whale researcher Alexandra Morton were connecting missing salmon with fish farms in the area. Morton began testing smolts entering salt water near the farms, and reported finding them covered with sea lice (9,145 sea lice on 872 pink salmon smolts). "I noticed bleeding at their eyeballs and bleeding at the base of the fins, which are classic symptoms of fish disease. I was horrified to see these baby fish being ravaged by these parasites,"; Morton writes. The fish were being eaten alive. Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) questioned her science, but the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, an independent watchdog chaired by former federal fisheries minister John Fraser, backed her up. Industry was ordered to fallow 11 of the 27 farms that fall to create a migration window to make smolts less vulnerable to sea lice. This partial fallowing seemed to have an effect, as significantly fewer fish were infected that year. However, DFO scientists assert there is still no study that shows a cause-and-effect relationship between sea lice on wild and farmed fish. Hume's journey continues to western Ireland with its longer history of fish farming. He meets fisheries biologists who consider the sea lice infestation of our pinks a replay of what happened to juvenile sea trout (with similar life cycles) in their waters. One comments, "We've lost a wild sea trout angling fishery that was worth millions of pounds. Fisheries here that used to be phenomenal are now derelict.";
Irish scientists are now pushing for a ban on fish farms where migrating smolts could come into contact with farmed fish. The manager of a 250-year-old fishing lodge, forced to cater to cyclists and hikers, says, "We're witnessing the death of the fishery."; According to Hume, fish farming is a divisive issue among British Columbia's First Nations. The Kitasoo at Klemtu, for example, are looking to the industry as a way to cut devastating unemployment rates of 85%. But other First Nations are vowing to fight expansion in their territory.
Alaskans are also sounding the alarm. Many fear that expansion coming near
Prince Rupert will mean more escapes of Atlantics, imported stock that could muscle in on the habitat of wild stocks. One critic considers these Canadian fish "smart bombs"; carrying potentially lethal biological payloads upon the wild stocks. Fish farmers are quick to respond that pathogens found in farmed Atlantics are actually indigenous to wild stocks. Don't blame the farmed fish.
Ever since B.C.'s first fish farm was established by forestry giant Crown Zellerback at Ocean Falls, the fortunes of salmon farming have been rising and falling. Sunshine Coast contributors Betty Keller and Rosetta Leslie provide a chronology of the ups and downs in their essay called Sea-Silver.
By 1989 the silver rush was well underway, with 185 small salmon farms in B.C., operated by more than 100 companies. By 1993, "as a result of storms, disease, algal blooms and rock-bottom salmon prices, those numbers had shrunk to 80 farms operated by 17 companies, but they had become large farms and international companies."; Today mostly those farms are far bigger and more automated.
A Stain Upon the Sea effectively marshals arguments against fish farming on various fronts. We hear the voices of sports fishermen worried about the future of wild salmon stocks and a $1.5 billion dollar tourist fishing industry. Commercial fishermen are spitting mad after seeing wild salmon runs go extinct (some fish farmers argue these commercial fishermen over-fished these very stocks), catches reduced and salmon prices hit rock bottom.
Former DFO biologist and now Director of Marine Conservation for the David Suzuki Foundation, Otto Langer skewers the DFO bureaucracy for not living up to its job of protecting wild salmon stocks and habitat. He traces this to reorganization at DFO back in 1971, "when pollution staff were taken from DFO and moved to the new Department of the Environment (DOE). This meant that people responsible for fish habitat protection were no longer responsible for the quality of the water that the fish lived in."; Langer suggests cuts to staff and industry self-policing haven't helped either. "Sadly, the environmental enforcement record goes up and down like the tide in Prince Rupert. For most of the past 30 years, DFO and DOE have failed to protect the water quality when it would conflict with the needs of the provincial government or industry."; This 32-year DFO veteran sees the department in a conflict of interest: tasked with protecting wild salmon while it's simultaneously mandated to encourage development of aquaculture.
Don Staniford, a director of the Salmon Farm Protest Group in Scotland, pens a chilling chapter called Silent Spring of the Sea to describe a"chemical arms race"; within the industry due to antibiotics, artificial colourings, antiparasitics and antifoulants. Some of these substances have polluted the ocean and can be lethal to other species like shrimp, lobster and mussels.
In Scotland an artificial pink dye used to alter the colour of salmon flesh for marketing purposes was linked to retinal damage in humans. Dichlorvos, used previously in the U.K. and B.C., has been linked to testicular cancer. Ivermectin, an in-feed treatment for sea lice, can produce severe side effects.
That did not stop Canadians from giving thousands of farmed salmon a massive drug overdose. In 2000 as many as 10,000 farmed salmon were killed at a farm in the Broughton Archipelago. A new treatment being used in trials is a new product called Slice. The catchy sales slogan is Slice Kills Lice but critics fear it might harm or kill other marine life. Staniford argues, all too often, risk assessments are done after chemicals have been approved, and when a "risk assessment is finally published years later (after the targets' resistance to the chemical has made its use redundant anyway), a new chemical takes its place.";
Whale researcher Alexandra Morton, the woman who's come to symbolize the fight against salmon farming, closes the book. When she first saw a net pen being towed into the Broughton Archipelago, Morton thought salmon farming might be a good thing for the area, but she soon "lost trust in the system."; The government permitted farms to be located in what local fishermen considered to be sensitive 'red zones', important to wild stocks. Atlantic smolts infected with furunculosis were allowed to stay in the water at one farm, possibly posing a threat to wild stocks. "I felt it (DFO) was working to hide the truth,"; she says. From her eye-witness perspective, Morton chronicles escaped Atlantics, disease outbreaks on farms and the sea lice infestation which she believes brought on the crash of the Broughton pink-confirming most of the suspicions that many British Columbians have about a high powered industry having its way in public waters. A Stain Upon the Sea is pretty much a one-sided argument. Next year, Raincoast Books will release a book on fish farming by Peter Robson. 1-55017-317-0
--by Mark Forsythe
[BCBW 2004] "Environment"
Submitted on October 21, 2004 in By David.
