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LITERARY LOCATION: Echo Bay, on Gilford Island
The most prolific literary town in Canada on a per capita basis has got to be Echo Bay, B.C. With a year-round population of approximately ten, miniscule Echo Bay has been home to four authors--Alexandra Morton, Bill Proctor, Yvonne Maximchuk and Nikki Van Schyndel--over a 25-year-period. B.C.'s leading opponent of fish farming, Alexandra Morton, lived there from the mid-'80s until 2007, raising her son and daughter on a floathouse, conducting maritime research and working on lifetime local Bill Proctor's fishboat.
QUICK REFERENCE ENTRY:
Brought up in Connecticut, Morton moved to California in 1976 in order to research marine mammals. "When I was 18," Morton has said, "I naively thought that if I looked hard enough, I could understand the communication between two whales in a tank in Los Angeles. I was wrong."
Morton arrived to study orcas in B.C. in 1979. Six years after her marriage to filmmaker and photographer Robin Morton in 1980, her husband died while filming whales, just one day before National Geographic was scheduled to record the couple's work. Morton remained at Echo Bay from 1986 onward.
To make ends meet, she took a job as a seasick, greenhorn deckhand on Billy Proctor's fishboat, while raising her son and daughter in Simoom Sound. [A complicated geographical clarification: The post office at Echo Bay is named Simoom Sound because the original post office for the area was in Simoom Sound, to the north of Echo Bay. When the post office was moved to accommodate the growing community at Echo Bay, the name was never changed.]
Alexandra Morton first rose to prominence as the author of Siwiti: A Whale's Story (1990), winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Prize for Children's Literature. Her charming personal account of one year in the life of a young whale turned out to be the launching pad for decades of public advocacy work for the protection of the Broughton Archipelago and for the elimination of fish farms. Siwiti was followed by a second, educational book about whales, In the Company of Whales (Orca, 1991).
Morton now collects research to prove the biological threat of industrial net-pen feedlots that are accorded use of the oceans. Morton maintains, "The science is clear these operations risk wild fish populations by intensifying disease, they deplete world fishery resources to make the feed. They privatize ocean spaces and threaten our sovereign rights to food security."
Morton is a co-author of the anti-fish farming compendium, A Stain Upon the Sea (2004), winner of a Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, followed by Beyond the Whales: The Photographs and Passions of Alexandra Morton (2004). In the latter, she writes, "Some time ago I was given the opportunity to meet Jane Goodall. I was spellbound by my childhood idol. She radiated grace, and the wisdom of the Earth. When a lull in the conversation opened, I stepped forward and asked, 'Jane, do you think there is hope?' Her answer came back crystal clear, 'Yes.'"
In 2010, Morton organized the Get Out Migration protest walk through Vancouver Island communities, as a call to action to make the provincial government aware that wild salmon should be given a higher priority than farm salmon.
With Bill Proctor, a lifelong resident of the Broughton Archipelago, Alexandra Morton also co-wrote Heart of the Raincoast: A Life Story (1999), described as a "warts 'n' all" memoir of Proctor's experiences and contacts on the coast where he was raised, without public schooling, by his parents. It was reprinted by Touchwood Editions in 2016.
Listening to Whales, What the Orcas Have Taught Us (Ballantine Books/Random House, 2002) is her autobiography describing her efforts to study communication in whales. Theories on whale intelligence are explored, the extraordinary underwater world of whale communication, a woman's life in the wilderness studying whales and raising children, and her attempts to negotiate for their continued survival.
Morton's life and work are the subject of a documentary film, Alexandra's Echo, released in 2003.
Morton has since moved from Echo Bay, aka Simoom Sound, to Sointula on Malcolm Island, then onto Donegal Head, Malcolm Island.
Other titles from Echo Bay are Full Moon Flood Tide - Bill Proctor's Raincoast (Harbour, 2003) by Bill Proctor and Yvonne Maximchuk, nominated for the Bill Duthie Booksellers Choice Award in 2004. The pair subsequently collaborated for a second collection, Tide Rips and Back Eddies - Bill Proctor's Tales of Blackfish Sound (Harbour, 2015).
Similar to Morton, Maximchuk is a contemporary homesteader who worked as Bill Proctor's deckhand for eight seasons. Her solo memoir is Drawn to Sea - Paintbrush to Chainsaw, Carving out a Life on BC's Rugged Raincoast (Caitlin Press, 2013).
Having taken up residency on Bill Proctor's land in 2015, Nikki Van Schyndel previously published a survivalist's memoir, Becoming Wild (Caitlin, 2014), about her year-and-a-half living the primitive life in the Broughton Archipelago, foraging for food and making tools from cedar and bone the way the First Nations people did.
[For books pertaining to other female activists, see abcbookworld entries for Baxter, Sheila; Culhane, Clare; Day, Shelagh; Edwards, Anne; Finlay, K.A.; Guiled, Brenda; Holt, Simma; Howard, Irene; Jewett, Pauline; Kivi, K. Linda; Krawczyk, Betty; Lewis, S.P.; McAllister, Karen; McClung, Nellie Letitia; Mitchell, Margaret; Nickerson, Betty; Rempel, Sharon; Thobani, Sunera; Zimmerman, Lillian.]
[BCBW 2015] "Whales"
Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
A Stain upon the Sea: West Coast Salmon Farming
BOOKS
Siwiti: A Whale's Story (Orca, 1990)
In the Company of Whales (Orca, 1991)
Heart of the Raincoast: A Life Story (1999). Co-authored with Bill Proctor.
Listening to Whales, What the Orcas Have Taught Us (Ballantine Books/Random House, 2002)
A Stain Upon the Sea (2004). Co-authored
Beyond the Whales: The Photographs and Passions of Alexandra Morton (2004)
Not on My Watch: How a renegade whale biologist took on governments and industry to save wild salmon (Random House Canada, 2021) $35 9780735279667
[BCBW 2021]
+++
Not on My Watch: How a Renegade Whale Biologist
Took on Governments and Industry to Save Wild Salmon
by Alexandra Morton (Random House $35)
Review by by Portia Priegert
Not so long ago, salmon spawning rivers in British Columbia would see bank-to-bank fish, the water a churning mass of sinuous colour and movement. Thousands of people come out to witness this autumn ritual, awed by the salmon’s magnificent feats on their final journey home from the ocean.
But a catastrophic collapse of wild salmon populations over the last few decades has changed that ritual. Now, watching a salmon run can be a tragic affair, the numbers so diminished and sickly fish so weak they often die before they can spawn.
This tragic turn of events ignited activist Alexandra Morton’s righteous anger and drove her to write Not on My Watch, which explains, in shocking detail, how this environmental debacle came to pass. And as salmon are a critical part of a precious web of cyclical relationships, the dire consequences extend through West Coast ecosystems. Morton cites images seen by millions of people around the world —emaciated grizzlies on the northwest coast and the orca who tended her dead calf for 17 days—as amongst the devastating impacts of the salmon die-off.
Morton, an American-born biologist who moved to B.C. to study orcas in 1980, builds a strong case against the foreign-owned commercial fish farms that have proliferated along the West Coast. Their crowded open-water pens spew a deadly cocktail of parasites and viruses into once-pristine coastal waters. Her descriptions of the foul effluent from these farms, often along migratory routes used by wild salmon, are graphic and horrifying.
So too are her accounts of the damage wreaked on the fish, both the wild salmon and the larger Atlantic variety favoured by fish farms. In 2016, dipping her camera underwater at one of the farms for the first time, Morton saw emaciated fish sculling erratically. “Many of their eyeballs were white, which indicated the fish were blind. I turned the camera towards their tumours and open sores … The water was laced with stringy, mustard-coloured strands, fish diarrhea, I realized when one fish let loose a stream of it in front of the camera.”
The farms, she explains, disrupt the natural order that keeps disease in check. “Salmon farms are a type of feedlot: They raise as many animals as possible, as fast as possible, in as small a space as possible, on an unnatural diet. Feedlots break all the rules that keep animals healthy, largely because they breed out genetic diversity, they crowd creatures together and they prevent predators from removing the sick and dying. As a result, sick animals linger in feedlots, dying slowly and shedding disease particles as they go, infecting those around them.”
Morton not only holds the industry to account, but also the government bureaucrats and politicians who allowed this travesty while doing little to monitor impacts and protect wild salmon swimming past the farms. Fearlessly, she names names, critiques flawed research and reveals the contents of emails obtained through access to information requests.
Morton’s single-minded determination to save the wild salmon, especially around her home in the remote Broughton Archipelago, near the northern tip of Vancouver Island and the communities of Port McNeil and Alert Bay, is one remarkable aspect of this book. Clearly, she is driven by her love of the natural world, as well as a strong ethical sense.
Early on, she put her scientific training to work, publishing research papers about the impact of the foreign-owned farms. She also began lobbying, eventually broadening her activism to community coalitions, which included Indigenous leaders and organizations like Greenpeace. Harassed and spied on, she refused to back down, trying one strategy after another as doggedly as a spawning salmon.
Despite the difficult subject matter, Not on My Watch is a pleasure to read, with a good mix of memoir and natural history. Morton’s prose is engaging, and the book has an easy-to-follow chronological structure. I would like to have seen photographs of the places and events she discusses, as well as information on the potential impact of various viruses and parasites on human health. It’s easy to feel queasy about eating salmon after reading this book.
Morton ends on an upbeat note after the province’s 2018 decision to remove most fish farms from her beloved Broughton Archipelago. Still, only time will tell if sufficient numbers remain to allow wild populations to rebuild, particularly with unprecedented climate challenges.
Hopefully, this book will inspire new environmental activists to protect threatened wildlife. As Morton says: “I am part of the resistance movement against extinction. The movement spans the globe. We are a force of nature. Like a river, we well up, slip around, bore through and dive under obstacles. We don’t stop.” 9780735279667
Victoria-based Portia Priegert is the editor for Galleries West and a former reporter for the Ottawa bureau of the Canadian Press.
The most prolific literary town in Canada on a per capita basis has got to be Echo Bay, B.C. With a year-round population of approximately ten, miniscule Echo Bay has been home to four authors--Alexandra Morton, Bill Proctor, Yvonne Maximchuk and Nikki Van Schyndel--over a 25-year-period. B.C.'s leading opponent of fish farming, Alexandra Morton, lived there from the mid-'80s until 2007, raising her son and daughter on a floathouse, conducting maritime research and working on lifetime local Bill Proctor's fishboat.
QUICK REFERENCE ENTRY:
Brought up in Connecticut, Morton moved to California in 1976 in order to research marine mammals. "When I was 18," Morton has said, "I naively thought that if I looked hard enough, I could understand the communication between two whales in a tank in Los Angeles. I was wrong."
Morton arrived to study orcas in B.C. in 1979. Six years after her marriage to filmmaker and photographer Robin Morton in 1980, her husband died while filming whales, just one day before National Geographic was scheduled to record the couple's work. Morton remained at Echo Bay from 1986 onward.
To make ends meet, she took a job as a seasick, greenhorn deckhand on Billy Proctor's fishboat, while raising her son and daughter in Simoom Sound. [A complicated geographical clarification: The post office at Echo Bay is named Simoom Sound because the original post office for the area was in Simoom Sound, to the north of Echo Bay. When the post office was moved to accommodate the growing community at Echo Bay, the name was never changed.]
Alexandra Morton first rose to prominence as the author of Siwiti: A Whale's Story (1990), winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Prize for Children's Literature. Her charming personal account of one year in the life of a young whale turned out to be the launching pad for decades of public advocacy work for the protection of the Broughton Archipelago and for the elimination of fish farms. Siwiti was followed by a second, educational book about whales, In the Company of Whales (Orca, 1991).
Morton now collects research to prove the biological threat of industrial net-pen feedlots that are accorded use of the oceans. Morton maintains, "The science is clear these operations risk wild fish populations by intensifying disease, they deplete world fishery resources to make the feed. They privatize ocean spaces and threaten our sovereign rights to food security."
Morton is a co-author of the anti-fish farming compendium, A Stain Upon the Sea (2004), winner of a Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, followed by Beyond the Whales: The Photographs and Passions of Alexandra Morton (2004). In the latter, she writes, "Some time ago I was given the opportunity to meet Jane Goodall. I was spellbound by my childhood idol. She radiated grace, and the wisdom of the Earth. When a lull in the conversation opened, I stepped forward and asked, 'Jane, do you think there is hope?' Her answer came back crystal clear, 'Yes.'"
In 2010, Morton organized the Get Out Migration protest walk through Vancouver Island communities, as a call to action to make the provincial government aware that wild salmon should be given a higher priority than farm salmon.
With Bill Proctor, a lifelong resident of the Broughton Archipelago, Alexandra Morton also co-wrote Heart of the Raincoast: A Life Story (1999), described as a "warts 'n' all" memoir of Proctor's experiences and contacts on the coast where he was raised, without public schooling, by his parents. It was reprinted by Touchwood Editions in 2016.
Listening to Whales, What the Orcas Have Taught Us (Ballantine Books/Random House, 2002) is her autobiography describing her efforts to study communication in whales. Theories on whale intelligence are explored, the extraordinary underwater world of whale communication, a woman's life in the wilderness studying whales and raising children, and her attempts to negotiate for their continued survival.
Morton's life and work are the subject of a documentary film, Alexandra's Echo, released in 2003.
Morton has since moved from Echo Bay, aka Simoom Sound, to Sointula on Malcolm Island, then onto Donegal Head, Malcolm Island.
Other titles from Echo Bay are Full Moon Flood Tide - Bill Proctor's Raincoast (Harbour, 2003) by Bill Proctor and Yvonne Maximchuk, nominated for the Bill Duthie Booksellers Choice Award in 2004. The pair subsequently collaborated for a second collection, Tide Rips and Back Eddies - Bill Proctor's Tales of Blackfish Sound (Harbour, 2015).
Similar to Morton, Maximchuk is a contemporary homesteader who worked as Bill Proctor's deckhand for eight seasons. Her solo memoir is Drawn to Sea - Paintbrush to Chainsaw, Carving out a Life on BC's Rugged Raincoast (Caitlin Press, 2013).
Having taken up residency on Bill Proctor's land in 2015, Nikki Van Schyndel previously published a survivalist's memoir, Becoming Wild (Caitlin, 2014), about her year-and-a-half living the primitive life in the Broughton Archipelago, foraging for food and making tools from cedar and bone the way the First Nations people did.
[For books pertaining to other female activists, see abcbookworld entries for Baxter, Sheila; Culhane, Clare; Day, Shelagh; Edwards, Anne; Finlay, K.A.; Guiled, Brenda; Holt, Simma; Howard, Irene; Jewett, Pauline; Kivi, K. Linda; Krawczyk, Betty; Lewis, S.P.; McAllister, Karen; McClung, Nellie Letitia; Mitchell, Margaret; Nickerson, Betty; Rempel, Sharon; Thobani, Sunera; Zimmerman, Lillian.]
[BCBW 2015] "Whales"
Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
A Stain upon the Sea: West Coast Salmon Farming
BOOKS
Siwiti: A Whale's Story (Orca, 1990)
In the Company of Whales (Orca, 1991)
Heart of the Raincoast: A Life Story (1999). Co-authored with Bill Proctor.
Listening to Whales, What the Orcas Have Taught Us (Ballantine Books/Random House, 2002)
A Stain Upon the Sea (2004). Co-authored
Beyond the Whales: The Photographs and Passions of Alexandra Morton (2004)
Not on My Watch: How a renegade whale biologist took on governments and industry to save wild salmon (Random House Canada, 2021) $35 9780735279667
[BCBW 2021]
+++
Not on My Watch: How a Renegade Whale Biologist
Took on Governments and Industry to Save Wild Salmon
by Alexandra Morton (Random House $35)
Review by by Portia Priegert
Not so long ago, salmon spawning rivers in British Columbia would see bank-to-bank fish, the water a churning mass of sinuous colour and movement. Thousands of people come out to witness this autumn ritual, awed by the salmon’s magnificent feats on their final journey home from the ocean.
But a catastrophic collapse of wild salmon populations over the last few decades has changed that ritual. Now, watching a salmon run can be a tragic affair, the numbers so diminished and sickly fish so weak they often die before they can spawn.
This tragic turn of events ignited activist Alexandra Morton’s righteous anger and drove her to write Not on My Watch, which explains, in shocking detail, how this environmental debacle came to pass. And as salmon are a critical part of a precious web of cyclical relationships, the dire consequences extend through West Coast ecosystems. Morton cites images seen by millions of people around the world —emaciated grizzlies on the northwest coast and the orca who tended her dead calf for 17 days—as amongst the devastating impacts of the salmon die-off.
Morton, an American-born biologist who moved to B.C. to study orcas in 1980, builds a strong case against the foreign-owned commercial fish farms that have proliferated along the West Coast. Their crowded open-water pens spew a deadly cocktail of parasites and viruses into once-pristine coastal waters. Her descriptions of the foul effluent from these farms, often along migratory routes used by wild salmon, are graphic and horrifying.
So too are her accounts of the damage wreaked on the fish, both the wild salmon and the larger Atlantic variety favoured by fish farms. In 2016, dipping her camera underwater at one of the farms for the first time, Morton saw emaciated fish sculling erratically. “Many of their eyeballs were white, which indicated the fish were blind. I turned the camera towards their tumours and open sores … The water was laced with stringy, mustard-coloured strands, fish diarrhea, I realized when one fish let loose a stream of it in front of the camera.”
The farms, she explains, disrupt the natural order that keeps disease in check. “Salmon farms are a type of feedlot: They raise as many animals as possible, as fast as possible, in as small a space as possible, on an unnatural diet. Feedlots break all the rules that keep animals healthy, largely because they breed out genetic diversity, they crowd creatures together and they prevent predators from removing the sick and dying. As a result, sick animals linger in feedlots, dying slowly and shedding disease particles as they go, infecting those around them.”
Morton not only holds the industry to account, but also the government bureaucrats and politicians who allowed this travesty while doing little to monitor impacts and protect wild salmon swimming past the farms. Fearlessly, she names names, critiques flawed research and reveals the contents of emails obtained through access to information requests.
Morton’s single-minded determination to save the wild salmon, especially around her home in the remote Broughton Archipelago, near the northern tip of Vancouver Island and the communities of Port McNeil and Alert Bay, is one remarkable aspect of this book. Clearly, she is driven by her love of the natural world, as well as a strong ethical sense.
Early on, she put her scientific training to work, publishing research papers about the impact of the foreign-owned farms. She also began lobbying, eventually broadening her activism to community coalitions, which included Indigenous leaders and organizations like Greenpeace. Harassed and spied on, she refused to back down, trying one strategy after another as doggedly as a spawning salmon.
Despite the difficult subject matter, Not on My Watch is a pleasure to read, with a good mix of memoir and natural history. Morton’s prose is engaging, and the book has an easy-to-follow chronological structure. I would like to have seen photographs of the places and events she discusses, as well as information on the potential impact of various viruses and parasites on human health. It’s easy to feel queasy about eating salmon after reading this book.
Morton ends on an upbeat note after the province’s 2018 decision to remove most fish farms from her beloved Broughton Archipelago. Still, only time will tell if sufficient numbers remain to allow wild populations to rebuild, particularly with unprecedented climate challenges.
Hopefully, this book will inspire new environmental activists to protect threatened wildlife. As Morton says: “I am part of the resistance movement against extinction. The movement spans the globe. We are a force of nature. Like a river, we well up, slip around, bore through and dive under obstacles. We don’t stop.” 9780735279667
Victoria-based Portia Priegert is the editor for Galleries West and a former reporter for the Ottawa bureau of the Canadian Press.
Articles: 4 Articles for this author
Protesting Fish Farms
Letter (2010)
May 17, 2010
Dear Gordon Campbell
On the afternoon of May 8, 2010 thousands of British Columbians from all walks of life, from the far reaches of Kingcome Inlet, Hope Town and Gwyasdums, from Port McNeill to across the Strait of Georgia and from the bays and watersheds of Vancouver Island traveled to your office to tell you that we want salmon farms out of our ocean, because we want our wild salmon. Everywhere in the Pacific Ocean where salmon farms do not exist (Alaska and the western Pacific) wild salmon remain abundant, even the Fraser sockeye that do not pass salmon farms are thriving. The people of BC want their salmon back.
Someday we are going to learn how Canada's governments were sold on corporate salmon raised in public waters in cages that prevent public access when the Constitution states no one has the right to privatize ocean spaces, nor own a fish in the sovereign waters of Canada. In 1989, fish farms were handed to the province to simply side-step the inconvenience of the Constitution, but this era is over and the industry remains fundamentally unconstitutional. Farm salmon enable dams on the Fraser River, oil wells, clear-cuts, open pit mines and I think this is why the bureaucracy has blindly pushed it no matter which government is in power or what scientists, lawyers, First Nations and everyone else has to say. I think Ministry of Agriculture and Land's handling of salmon farms needs thorough scrutiny.
Mr. Campbell, you did not cause this problem, but you have inherited it. The era of cheap oil is over with the people on the Gulf of Mexico being the first hit with what will be a cascading degradation of planet earth that all our children will inherit. You cannot morally chose a salmon that robs one ocean, to pollute a second one while consuming fuel because it feeds Atlantic salmon in BC on fish from Chile. You must choose the salmon that comes home to us without oil consumption feeding us, our forests and creating oxygen.
Norwegian salmon farming corporations are holding this coast ransom using the excuse "jobs";, when at the same time they are mechanizing to reduce their payroll. Nothing about this industry appears legitimate to me. It does not make food. It depletes global supply. It is not sustainable as it is running out of cheap fish to grind into pellets. It is not benign as it intensifies disease and pollutes.
I do not believe the assurances from the Provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MAL), nor the Federal Pacific Biological Station that salmon farms are not damaging Canada's public fishery resources. I believe their research has been skewed and suppressed. I eagerly accept any invitation to argue these points in a court of law.
The Norwegian salmon farming industry is consuming massive quantities of Canada's wild fish with no accounting, or licenses. If you think I am wrong, let's have a look. Put cameras and observers on every fish pen as it is pulled to the surface, on every packer pumping out the pens and on the assembly line as these fish are gutted. Commercial fishermen have accepted and borne the costs of this scrutiny to protect wild fish and the Norwegians can too. Why did it require an order from the Department of Justice to make DFO lay a charge against Marine Harvest for unlawful possession of wild salmon? Something is very wrong here.
Why won't MAL test Atlantic salmon facilities for the Norwegian ISA virus? How can MAL say sea lice in Nootka Sound are not drug resistant without producing a single test result?
My colleagues from the First Nations, scientific, legal, environmental and political communities have all tried to bring reason to the Norwegian salmon farming industry, but the government sponsored level of secrecy surrounding it simply grows. The only reason for secrecy is activity the public does not like.
If we remove corporate farmers and the European shareholders from this equation the solution is simple:
1- Rescind the leases under all salmon farms in British Columbia and place covenants on these sites in trust for future generations, as they are BC's most productive coastal wild fishery grounds.
2- Invite Norway to graciously bow-out and go face the calamities they are experiencing in Chile and in their own shores.
3- Protect aquaculture jobs by WISELY developing a sustainable, community-based land-based industry
4- Use the best knowledge we have and actually restore the resilient wild fish, not enhanced fish, which are very unlikely to survive climate change.
If the people of British Columbia are your primary concern, there is no rational obstacle to embracing these solutions please start rescinding leases immediately.
There is something very wrong with this situation and it is only a matter of time before we figure it out. Let's move forward. Given their track record in Chile these Norwegian companies are not sustainable anyway. The state of the planet is a very serious concern and it is immoral to further degrade public resources that we will need on in the coming decades. This is about food-security and to pretend it is anything less is deceptive. In a world depleted of easy oil no one is going to be moving fish from the south Pacific to make less fish in the North Pacific, but we will most definitely be thankful to have millions of wild salmon returning to us for free!
Thousands of people showed up in person to deliver a message to you. Get salmon farms Out of BC waters. We await your response.
Sincerely,
Alexandra Morton
Salmonaresacred.org
Sea Lice Drugs
Press Release (2010)
Government memos reveal fish farmers pressured government to keep sea lice drugs secret, six years before biologist Alexandra Morton made it public
A series of government memos reveal a heated debate in 1995 over a sea louse outbreak on a farm salmon on the Fraser sockeye migration route (Okisollo Channel). In 1995, a salmon farm requested permission to use hydrogen peroxide to treat an extremely heavy outbreak of sea lice on their fish. When the Ministry of Environment, Parks and Lands (MELP) informed the company that their drug application would have to be released to the public, the fish farmer withdrew the request. When environmental groups found out about the sea lice outbreak, the BC Salmon Farmers Association called for an investigation of MELP and a guarantee that fish farmers had a right to secrecy in the future.
Sept 6, 1995 Don Peterson of MELP writes, "The company has withdrawn their application (for hydrogen peroxide) because they heard there was a requirement to advertise if a pesticide was going to be applied. I guess they were either afraid of the shareholders...or the public finding out... the company has asked that this request be kept strictly confidential and that all correspondence on the subject be destroyed.";
September 28, 1995 the BC Salmon Farmers Association criticized Minister Moe Sihota (MELP): "...government has an obligation to maintain confidentiality... Government is further prevented from unauthorized collection, use or disclosure of information.... puts at risk ... capital investment of private citizens and individual companies...";
However, salmon farms operate in Canada's public waters and impact a Canadian resource - wild fish.
On October 23 Earl Warnock of MELP writes, "I find it unconscionable that they (fish farmers) are only prepared to undertake measures appropriate to protect their stock health and the environment unless they can do it in a clandestine manner.... and for them and MAFF to ask us to operate with them in this way says something about the people we are dealing with.";
"MAFF"; = Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, now Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MAL).
Either the sea lice remained on the farm fish on the Fraser sockeye migration route or they were treated without permission from MELP.
November 03, 1995, Bryan Ludwig, MELP writes: "...we are in the difficult position of being concerned about use of pesticides for treatment of sea lice, but also wanting to ensure we avoid a severe outbreak for fear of transfer to wild stocks.";
These documents reveal heroes among our MELP bureaucrats who tried to protect our wild salmon from salmon farms. Gordon Campbell disbanded MELP as soon as he took office in 2001, and he renamed MAFF, MAL and gave them control of allocation of Crown Land. The fish farm industry did not develop a sea lice action plan, the public lost their government biologist advocates, sea lice outbreaks continue with lethal infection underway today rates on wild juvenile salmon on the Fraser migration route (Okisollo Channel) (photos available) and Fraser sockeye stocks migrating through Okisollo Channel are in steep decline.
October 23, 1995 Earl Warnock MELP: "If the truth harms their integrity perhaps they need to look at themselves...";
If we cannot save wild salmon in British Columbia, we do not live in a democracy.
All documents available at www.salmonaresacred.org, "Breaking News";
Tide Rips and Back Eddies
Excerpt (2015)
By Billy Proctor
In 1946 I bought my first book on fish.
I saw it advertised in a fishing magazine and ordered it from the Biological Station in Nanaimo.
The package arrived COD at the post office in Alert Bay and I paid for it with money I made fishing spring salmon from my rowboat.
The book was called Fishes of the Pacific Coast of Canada and remains the best book on fish that I have found.
I still refer to it for details about some species.
When I got the book I took it with me to my little pool and when I'd find a fish I'd find the name of it in the book.
There was a small bay close by that had a lot of crab grass on the bottom.
I learned it was called eel grass but I called it crab grass because that was where the big crabs lived.
I would take my mom's strainer with me and a bucket, and looked for little fish.
Over time I identified 22 species that called that bay home.
Round about that time there were two missionaries who came once a month to visit Mom.
They'd paddle over in a dugout canoe and Mom always told me to go down and help them out of the canoe.
So I would and one would always say, "How is the heathen today?";
This was because I was not going to school.
They were always trying to get Mom to send me to boarding school.
Finally they reported me to welfare.
Then the government boat called Sheila started coming around.
I took to hiding in the bush when I saw them coming, so I ended up spending a lot of time in the bush.
It really bothered me to think that these people wanted to take me away and leave my mother there alone.
As I was spending a lot of time in the bush, I got to know all the different species of trees and plants that grew on our land.
In 1948, a salesman came in selling books, so I bought a 10-volume set of The Book of Knowledge, which I still have and I still use.
So, instead of going to school, I was learning about the things around me.
Now when people come to my museum, some ask me, "How often do you go out in the real world?";
I say, "I think this is the real world.";
Alexandra Morton joins Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw to evict fish farmers
Article (2016)
Tt is not yet illegal to protect our planet, says Alexandra Morton. As an independent biologist, Morton, one of B.C.'s most vital authors, has accepted support from Paul Watson's Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for Operation Virus Hunter and recently witnessed an eviction notice proferred by a West Coast First Nation to a Japanese/Norwegian consortium.
The joint venture with Sea Shepherd has been envisioned to track farm- salmon viruses and audit the salmon farms along Canada's biggest wild salmon migration route. Investigative voyages will be undertaken aboard Sea Shepherd's research vessel the R/V Martin Sheen.
In 2015, Alexandra Morton won a federal court case that prohibits the transfer of piscine reovirus-infected farmed salmon into marine net pens unless the salmon farmers have ministerial permission. Her work will help to show if this legal decision is being followed. She will be joined by First Nations leaders and journalists.
In early August, Morton participated in a gathering at the Big House in Tsaxis (Fort Rupert) when the crew of the Sea Shepherd were dressed in regalia and honoured by Hereditary Chief Paul Willie and his sons Charles and Stephan. Attendees joined in dancing with the crew, as a symbol of solidarity.
According to Morton's research, up to 80% of farmed salmon in B.C. appear to be infected with piscine reovirus (PRV).
"This is a dirty industry,"; she says. "It pours all of its waste into the biggest wild salmon migration routes in Canada, one of the last great fisheries left on earth. Who decided that wild salmon would go the way of the buffalo? Who made that decision?
"Everyone knew that bringing Atlantic salmon into British Columbia was a bad idea. Scientists and the Ministry of Environment and the DFO [Fisheries and Oceans Canada] fought hard, they called it Russian Roulette. We're playing Russian Roulette with the wild salmon.
"The director-general of DFO science, Pacific Region, Pat Chamut, said we would be guaranteed to get an exotic virus, probably one that we had never even heard of, if we kept importing Atlantic salmon. The people who were trying to stop Atlantic salmon from coming into B.C. said 'Men in suits showed up, and it was decided.'
"I have been studying viruses in farmed and wild salmon for the last five years and 95% of the salmon in supermarkets are infected with the piscine reovirus, which is a virus that is associated with a disease that damages the hearts of salmon.
"So, a wild salmon with a damaged heart is a dead salmon. What I see today in the management in the salmon-farming industry is corruption and fraud. Our government, the Canadian Liberal government, granted this industry long-term licenses. That benefits shareholders in Norway and Europe; it doesn't benefit the people of this coast.
"So, how do we get rid of this industry? How do we move on? You have to be visible to government. You have to stand alongside all of us who are fighting this. We can do this. Governments will change their minds if enough people say no.
"Places on earth that still make clean water, air and food have to be protected. Covenants need to be put on them. Otherwise our children are simply not going to survive. Wild salmon feed the trees, they make the oxygen we breathe. They've built cultures, they built the soil of this province.
"We can fix this. It is not yet illegal to protect life on earth.";
The Musgamagw Dzawada'enuxw First Nations are a group of four tribes whose traditional territory in the Broughton Archipelago currently contains approximately one-third of the B.C. salmon farming industry despite 29 years of opposition to that industry. According to Musgamagw Dzawada'enuxw, the salmon farming industry does not have permission to operate in their territory.
Consequently, on August 15, 2016, three traditional leaders served an eviction notice to Cermaq/Mitsubishi fish farms, accompanied by Alexandra Morton. After being advised they were not allowed to stand on the floating fish farm premises, they read an eviction notice to the fish farm staff.
According to Morton, last spring up to 40% of the young salmon leaving their territory were killed by sea lice from Cermaq and Marine Harvest salmon farms. Hence the Norwegian/Japanese salmon farming operation was told to vacate their territory.
BCBW (Autumn 2016)
