alexandra morton

The Sacred Fire

With water and sediment samples carefully packed in the back of the car I left Quesnel Lake and began heading south. 

I stopped at the sacred fire lit along the road to Likely, at the turnoff to Imperial Metal's Mt. Polley Mine.  A small group, of mostly women and children, are holding a vigil there.  The mine workers wave in support as they pass them. The miners have been hurt by this as well.  Many have lost their jobs and they fear the mine will close.  The failure by government to force Imperial Metals to build a proper tailing pond has hurt everyone, including the credibility of the BC government.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the tradition of the people who have adopted me, twin sisters like these two beautiful women, are a sign of the salmon. To stand between them on their birthdate was an honour and seems a hopeful omen. I left them with a rock from a beach where the whales rub.  If whales could talk to us, I feel certain they would beg us to save the salmon they need to survive.  The coast and the interior need to lock arms as Chief Bob Chamberlin of the Kwik'wasutinuxw Haxwa'mis has said to me many times. Incredibly one of the women at the fire is part of an effort to stop the expansion of salmon farms in Clayoquot Sound.  The salmon threaded us together.

It was hard to leave the camp, but I had been asked by the Chief Darrell Bob of Xaxli'p to meet with the people and tell them what I have seen.  I carried this statement from the camp and played it in Lillooett.                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi9_xPpUOko

They have a facebook page Secwepemc Sacred Fire at Imperial Metals Mount Polley Disaster Site

Please consider helping them with food, communications, and moral and physical support - show up if you can.  The way government has handled this disaster is not worthy of us.  Minister Bennett first told us it was just a bunch of sand that had come down from the mine - no mention of the arsenic, cadmium, 3,114 kg of mercury known to be in the tailing pond. Then he said it was no different from the 10,000 avalanches that occur in BC every year!  That he announced we might "get lucky."  Looking at the wasteland, feeling the burning in my nose and eyes does not feel "lucky", it feels like poisoning and I can't image the millions of juvenile sockeye salmon rearing Quesnel Lake are feeling "lucky" either. 

The Premier has not shown strong leadership. First she appointed Conservation Officers to do the investigation, which confused everyone. Then very quickly and perhaps after gauging that the public was on to the fact that this was a lot more than a sand avalanche, announced there will be two seperate reviews of what happened.  That is nice, but there needs to be a plan to clean this up and no one is voicing that.  If you came across an accident and a person lay bleeding on the road - do you a.) Google the make of the car to see if it has a problem or b.) apply first aid and make sure the person survives?

Here is my interview with CBC

And CBC On the Island

As I drove south the sheer beauty and diversity and wildlife of British Columbia was revealed around every corner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whenever I got glimpses of the mighty Fraser pouring towards the ocean, I had to wonder how much Mt. Polley tailings, water and blue film was in the water I was looking at.

 

Once your eyes are opened, you cannot close them again.

 

 

 

 

Pulling into the Xaxli'p band office the impact of Imperial Metal's inattention to the integrity of their tailing pond took on a new and devastating dimension.  Fishing is not a sport here, it is central to the people of the Xaxli'p Nation. It is who they are and what they are made of.  

The hall was packed with over 300 people.  Edlers, mothers, babies, young men, five chiefs heard from the people who had taken a flight over the disaster area.  The collapsed area of the tailing pond is still oozing waste downstream into the Fraser watershed 15 days later.  Everyone wanted to know if the salmon swimming past Lillooet were safe to be eaten, 400 river km south of the Mt. Polley Mine (red arrow).  

I applaud Chiefs Darrell Bob, Michelle Edwards and Francis Alec, for trying to protect their people.  Real leadership in extremely tough times. They don't trust the reports that just sand fell into the lake and so have sent samples of locally caught sockeye to be tested.  I told them what I had seen and that this toxic mess cannot be allowed to fester for generations. This generation here, the one that let this happen, has the responsibility to clean this up.  Imperial Metals does not let their money leak out of the bank.  The things they care about, they hold onto.  They just did not care enough about their massive tailing pond to reinforce the earthern berm with rock.  Everyone seemed know it was going to collapse and it did.  These chiefs care about the people who elected them and they are taking the heat for their decisions and hold strong.  They don't let the fickle winds of popularity guide them.

That night a woman described how she went to prepare one of the sockeye and that the skin fell away from the flesh as if it had been cooked.  It left a tingling sensation in her fingers. She is afraid.  Most salmon caught appear normal, but as a precaution Chief Darrell Bob sent samples of the dried fish to the lab and awaits results.  He is not going to rely on government who viewed the disaster and told the people we "could catch a lucky break because the waste may not be poisonous."  Really?  Copper and gold mining tailings are not poisonous? We already know what went into this tailing pond and I offer the article below without judgement. 

 Click here to read this article.

When I left Lillooet, I met Ray Bewza and followed his motorcycle to what seemed a random place on the side of the road.  We left our vehicles and walked down the steep canyon.  This is a traditional fishing ground, where there were reports of red spots all over the sockeye.  Every year since the Cohen Commission I have traveled the Fraser River watershed tracking European viruses associated with Norwegian salmon farms worldwide.  Ray was my guide.

Sure enough 6 of the 15 sockeye caught were speckled with localized hemoraging.  This can be the symptoms of disease. I sampled them quickly in the hot canyon breeze.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you Ray - it is not easy to catch up with sockeye in the mighty Fraser River!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I took the jar of mysterious blue film collected from the surface of Quesnel Lake to a lab, but the blueness had vanished. The contents of the jar appeared as clear as the water of Quesnel Lake has always been, but then when the lid was turned there was the hiss of escaping gas.  The genie escaped the bottle its molecules dancing free...  Water does not hiss.   Still no word from the Ministry of Environment on what this is even though they are apparently aware of it. And so our work continues. Stay tuned.

Driving home I welcomed the cool saltiness of the Pacific Ocean, but everytime I passed a lake or river, I thought how lucky the people and animals of that place are that no mining tailings are in their water.  What if Nimpkish Lake was full of mining tailings, how would the Namgis deal with it? If tailings were in Kingcome River, what would the Dzawada'enuxw do? What if it was the Tsolum River, or Cowichan?

There is an open gash upon our land, the land that feeds us and makes the oxygen we breath. We need to reach our arms, voices and hearts out to heal this place.  Please help me think how we can do this. How can we inspire government and Imperial Metals to put the mining tailings back into a much, much better built tailings pond?

I have started a petition.  Sign and share it so that those who care can be counted.  Government needs to know we care.  If we sleep through this, they will notice and I doubt they will learn not to do this again.  Let me know what you think can be done.  I already know how bad it is, now I want to know how this can be cleaned up.

SIGN PETITION TO CLEAN UP SPILL CLICK HERE

We Need to Know the Truth

Today I set out to get samples from Polley Lake, a little lake that received so much tailing pond waste from Imperial Mines that its level was raised 1.6 meters. That works out to about 5.5 billion litres of mining waste.  Polley Lake was apparently an incredible place to fish, full of trout.

As we approached the lake we were met by a road block and my ride, Lionel.

Lionel has been going in to Polley Lake every few days to check on the lake.

 

Despite the seriousness of the mission. It was fun to be zooming through this beautiful area on an ATV.  At first Polley Lake looked like any beautiful BC lake.  There was a common loon riding on its waters.

However, the Imperial Metal mine rose ominously above the water.  A facility that had turned a mountain top into a slurry of waste that had escaped into this lake changing it forever in exchange for financial gain for share holders who would never see this place.

Dragon flies hovered above its surface, but I did not want to touch it... Stupidly I had forgotten my gloves. I took water samples for heavy metals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For reasons that no one I spoke to can figure out, Imperial Mine's response to the torrent of waste that had hit this landscape like a firehose in a sandbox was to pump water out of Polley Lake into the sludge-filled Hazeltine Creek.  Here you can see the pumps with hoses in the lake roaring away.

This water is pouring down the ruined Hazeltine Creek carrying more tailings into Quesnel Lake.

While Imperial Metals says the lake is dangerously high, Lionel says it is no higher now than he sees it during winter rains.  Why is Imperial Mines pumping Polley lake out?

Thanks for the ride, Lionel, you are right, there is nothing like seeing a place for yourself.

Next I headed into the village of Likely, a beautiful place with people who are deeply attached to this lake and all that it holds.  I attended a meeting where people are trying to figure out how to restore the place, and keep their livelihoods alive.

My input - Imperial Mines must collect their tailings and put them back.  A big job? Yes, of course, but this is what they are good at - moving massive quantities of earth.  Heck they took off the top of a mountain and put in the tailing pond, they can certainly collect it and put it back.  Suck it up off the bottom of Quesnel Lake and Polley Lake and pump it back into the tailing pond.  Put a conveyor down Hazeltine Creek bed and load the spludge on it an take it back up the mountain and this time build the berm everyone knew should have been built in the first place!

I stood with local residents and watched some of the very first sockeye to return this summer.  People were happy to see them, but then their voices trailed off as they voiced fear that the fish would no longer be able to survive in this lake... nursery to 1/4 of the Fraser sockeye, one of the greatest fisheries left on earth, the bloodstream of this coast.  This was only the second day that the salmon were seen entering the lake.

 

Then we noticed something that stopped us in our tracks.  The blue film I sampled yesterday from further up the lake was here too and it was moving swiftly into the Quesnel River, which flows into the Fraser River.  It was visible wherever debris collected.  It appeared as a sheen acrosss the entire lake.

 

When you touch this film, it burns your skin like a jelly fish sting.  A small crowd collected and everyone could see it.  What is this?  What is it doing to the Fraser River.  I have received reports since the first days after the tailing pond burst that the water far downstream has different colour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is this chemical layer on the surface of Quesnel Lake a flocculant used to seperate mining waste?  Is it from the human waste that was apparently loaded into the empty northbound mining trucks and dumped into the tailing pond?  What is it and is it dangerous to life? I had a plankton net in my car and used it to collect a concentrated sample.

We need answers now and perhaps a skimmer placed across the entrance to the Quesnel River so this chemical can be skimmed off into tanks and removed.  Interior Health needs to tell us what this is and what it is doing to the people and the fish.  A layer of chemical on this lake is not in the public interest.

I contacted Interior Health and they sent this email.  I don't know why the Ministry of Environment would keep this from the public.

 As I left Likely I attended a sacred fire at the entrance to the road to Imperial Mines.  The people said they were now the canary in this mine.  The words hit deeply as I thought about the toxins I breathed in to get these pictures over the past few days.

 Everyone needs to write to the Premier of BC and tell her this HAS to be cleaned up.  All mines in BC need to understand they cannot poison the people and places where they make money.  premier@gov.bc.ca

Mystery film on Quesnel Lake

Several people living along Quesnel Lake have asked me what I think the blue, oily - looking film on the lake is.  So today I went looking for it. I found it everywhere and took samples.

 

It is breaking up and floating among the debris.

Juvenile fish are swimming among the blue film.

And it is collecting along the rocks.

No one knows what the future holds for Quesnel Lake and the millions of sockeye rearing in it today.

 

 

Been to Hell

Today I went to see the Mt Polley mining disaster for myself.  First Nations that I have worked with sampling for European farm salmon viruses called me.  I don't know anything about the mine tailings that exploded out of the Mt Polley tailings pond on August 4th, but I know evasive government behaviour when I see it.  Frankly, I don't believe that this massive injection of mine tailings into pristine Quesnel Lake is not dangerous to life.

My objective with this trip was to take samples of the water and sediment and I wanted to meet the people caught by this. Yesterday I went out on Quesnel Lake where 1/4 of this years Fraser sockeye are expected to return.  Chris Blake of Williams Lake was our guide.  She has fought for the natural world of this area for decades and knows the people and the place well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kim Goforth, a longtime resident on the shores of Quesnel Lake generously took us out in his boat.

There were piles of the smashed forest torn out by the explosive torrent of mining waste that came down Hazeltine Creek on the beach where we met the boat between Hazeltine and Horsefly.

As we approached Hazeltine Creek where the tailings had pushed into the lake there was a log boom, trying to contain the massive amount of wood. There were no signs on the boom.

This is my first view of Hazeltine Creek. On August 3, 2014 this was a tiny creek, meandering through the forest.  First Nations once chose to make this place a village site for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.  Now the forest had been replaced by a wide expanse of grey dust.

Kim Goforth,  told us that when the mine waste water hit Quesnel Lake it produced a wave recorded 8 km away at the Quesnel hydro monitoring station in Likely. Here is the data on that.

 

Julia Banks, Natural Resources Coordinator, with the Soda Creek First Nation told us First Nations were not notified that this had happened to their territory. 

There was no communication from Imperial Mines, or government that millions of mining waste had ripped through their territory and polluted Quesnel and Polley Lakes.

The mine is a guest in this territory and yet they did not think to inform their host that one of the biggest mining disasters in history had just taken place on top of an old village site, affecting their most significant food resource.

 

 

 

Kevin Logan was part of the crew, also wanting to see this first hand.

 

 

The first thing we did was try to get a sample of mining waste sediment off the bottom of the lake using a special device that snaps shut when it hits bottom.  Kim watched his sounder and when we saw the bottom of the lake rise steeply - we dropped the grabber.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the grabber hit bottom there was an explosion of fine particles, the jaws snapped shut, I pulled it up and had a sample from the bottom of Quesnel Lake.  I scooped the sediment into a sterile jar.

Next I took water samples in sterile conainers with premeasured fixative.

 

 

 

 To fully understand what is going on in this lake, will require far more than a few samples, but these will give a snap shot of the situation and help First Nations downriver chart their next steps.

 

 

When we landed on the beach and Jake the dog was first ashore.  We walked the small dirt road through the Raft Creek campsite, towards Hazeltine Creek. There were no signs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I entered a place that felt like hell.  You did not want to touch anything, breath, or sit down. This place had once been so inviting it had been chosen as home to First Nations long ago. It was so sweet and lovely that there were picnic tables nearby, berries were ripe and a few flowers still blooming, but everything about the place had changed.  The land was grey and cracking, and the leaves on the trees were grey. It hurt to know I was a member of the species that had done this, created a wasteland, that I believe to be toxic, where life was once diverse and generous.

It was a cauldren of grey thick liquid running through mining tailings.  The unimaginable force of the billions of litres of mining waste had scoured the stream bank down over 10 meters down in some places.

 

What are these strange new landscapes? Pock-marked, caked substrate looked like bubbles had burst as it was drying. There were burnt-looking formations that bore no resemblance to anything I have seen, formed as the tailing waste reacted to oxygen.

What made this burn mark in the middle of the drying sludge wasteland?

What was the most painful to see were the animal tracks, and there were a lot of them.  What did these creatures think as they stepped into the present wasteland after generations of sweet, lush forest?

 

                                    Moose                                                                        Deer

                               Sandhill Crane                                                                         ?

Here you can see an animal walked down to the mining sluice and apparently walked into the liquid.  There are no return tracks, so it must have walked up or downstream becoming soaked in it.

Archeologist Adam Kantakis stands below a dropoff. He will be assessing the damage to the archeological record at this site for the Williams Lake band.

A government that lets this happen despite the clear warnings, is a government that does not care about the people who elected them and pay their salaries.  Our society is sick with an addiction to money and in places and times like this it shows. Are we really so unintelligent that this is the only way we can do business?  Imperial Mines really does not know how to build a berm designed to hold water?  It seems clear that it is well-known that earthen berms are not meant to hold water.  But this company can't do business using engineering solutions that would have protected people and the land?   This was a place that made food, that people sought out to nourish their souls.  This is not a wise use of the resources of the this province.  This is not, at all, a smart way to do business.  This is sloppy, foolish, wasteful, and downright meanspirited towards the children of all species.  Creating hell on earth is immoral.

Wake up BC and make sure government hears from you that this is not acceptable. This is exactly the same collosal stupidity I have fought for 25 years to protect wild salmon from farm salmon disease. Government knows the risk of allowing viruses to spread from feedlots, but they don't do anything about it.  Well, this kind of government behaviour has to stop because we need our planet intact. We need a functional living world to survive.  This kind of pillaging economy cannot be allowed to be the monster that denies the right to life on earth.  This is not a true and sustainable economy.

As we drove away we stopped at the Horsefly River.  Clear, clean, wholesome.  All the salmon that come to this place will have swum past the waste on the sea floor that I sampled.  They will have swum through the plume of mine tailings still pouring 13 days later into Quesnel Lake.  No one knows what will happen to them and everyone and everything that needs them.  Imperial Mines has risked so much just to make more money.

P.S. to the CEO and owner of Grieg Seafood - don't think for one minute that I am distracted from finding out why the salmon you put into the Concepcion Point farm are dying.

Letter to owner Grieg Sea Foods

August 6, 2014

Dear Mr. Per Grieg Jr. owner Grieg Seafood per.grieg@grieg.no:

Several weeks ago I received reports that salmon in your Skuna Bay farms were dying in large numbers.  I visited these farms in Nootka Sound and confirmed the reports were accurate.  I wrote a letter to your CEO, Morten Vike asking what the fish are dying of, who made the diagnosis and the actual test results so that I could repeat the tests and verify.

Mr Vike did not answer my questions, instead he went to INTRAFISH and called my “allegations” “utter nonsense.”  Mr Vike went on to say there had been an algae bloom and that “the fish in Nootka Sound are healthy."

One week later, I returned to your farms called Concepcion Point and Williamson and filmed large hoses sucking hundreds of dead salmon out of your pens into rusting dumpsters.  They were not “healthy,” they were dead and they were apparently garbage.  I wrote to your CEO, Morten Vike a second time, but he has still refused to answer.  This makes it appear that Grieg Seafoods is hiding the true reason the salmon in your pens are dying.

Large amounts of dying farmed Atlantic salmon not only present a risk to the wild salmon of Nootka Sound, they also pose a risk to the most important Canadian salmon stock, known as the Fraser Sockeye.  Your company is taking the fish that are still alive amongst the dead, rotting fish, trucking them across Vancouver Island and getting them processed on Quadra Island where the outfall pipe pours into the migration route of the Fraser sockeye.

I have co-authored a scientific paper on this outfall pipe and the risk it poses to the wild salmon of western Canada.   

You can see the film of the mort suckers and the details at: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com

I recognize that the governments of Canada and British Columbia are weak and ineffective in protecting wild salmon from the impacts of the Norwegian salmon farms that are sitting in every wild salmon migration route of southern BC, but that does not mean the Canadian people feel the same way.

Can you address the citizens of Canada in a manner fitting of a Norwegian company raising Norwegian salmon in the Pacific Ocean and give us the truth about why the salmon in your pens are dying?  As you must know it is very unclear in Canada as to who owns the fish in your pens.

I await your reply,

Alexandra Morton
Independent Biologist

Dear Morten Vike the fish are not "fine"

Dear Morten Vike:

I visited your salmon farms in Nootka Sound, Gold River again this week and I am writing to inform you that your statement below is inaccurate.

"We've had an algae bloom, otherwise the fish are doing fine" (July 28, 2014)

The fish in your pens are not "fine"here is how I know.

 

We launched a boat and traveled out your Concepcion Point salmon farm through the beauty of Nootka Sound.

I was there to confirm that the fish in your pens are no longer dying, but when we arrived we saw quite a few salmon floating dead on the surface again, the same as last week. The crows were helping themselves. 

 

                                                                                                                                                        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My next question was how many dead fish are in your pens?  A handful of dead salmon is one thing, but thousands of dead salmon means there is something deadly in the area.  Since we could not see to the bottom of your pens, I had to wait to observe as your crew removed them.  The stench from the rotting fish was so strong I thought someone would go about getting the dead fish out of the pens, but we waited and waited and waited some more and no one did anything.   Sometimes the crew on the farm looked out of the house windows at us and took pictures or they appeared briefly on the pens, but they did not go to work. I began to wonder if they had been instructed not to do anything while we were there. 

While we waited we had a good look at what we could see from the surface.

Large bubbles were rising to the surface, even in the pens without any live salmon left in them. This may look like rain, but it was not.  There was no rain.

 

We observed a smelly slick of fish oil seeping from the pens. A biological oil spill. Farm salmon are so fat that when mass die-offs happen they release large amounts of fat. I saw the same thing during the IHN epidemic in the Kingcome Inlet area a few years ago.

I stood on the bow of the boat and looked into your pens and was surprised to see wild pilchard circling, trapped by your nets.  Have you reported this by-catch? There were also pilchard outside the pens.  I wondered if they were affected by whatever is killing your fish.  If the fish in your pens have an infectious disease, are these pilchard now carriers?

 Some of the Atlantic salmon in your pens are looking pretty mature, forming kypes, or hooked jaws.

It started to feel like a waiting game.  When we left the crew came out, when we approached they went back in the house.  I have been around many salmon farms, for decades and have never seen behaviour like this. So after two days of waiting to see if anyone was going to attend to all the dead fish, we left.

On the way back to Gold River we saw the Walcan farm salmon packer, Viking Star heading out for a load.  The only harvest-size farm salmon in Nootka Sound are in your two farms with all the dead salmon. 

Is your "Skuna Bay craft-raised" farm salmon product coming out of these farms where stinking dead fish are floating among greasy bubbles?

Just asking.

 

We decided to take a different approach. We loaded the boat on the trailer and drove an hour along a small dirt road.  In the evening we relaunched from beautiful little Cougar Bay. There were a lot of happy people, children and dogs camping and enjoying this beautiful place. It was a lovely scene.

By launching in Cougar Creek, we did not cruise by all your other farms to reach Concepcion Point. When we arrived we kept our distance and used the rocks to steady the cameras.

Finally, when your crew thought no one was watching large tubes started sucking up hundreds of dead farmed salmon from the bottom of the nets pen after pen.  The hoses are translucent so we could see the individual fish as the pumps pushed them out of the water onto a large metal tray where they slid into the dumpsters.

Select the full screen option on this video, turn up the sound and watch the flexible hose.

In case you missed the fish being sucked up the hose into the dumpsters here are some closeups.

 

These fish look freshly dead, because they are still silvery.  They are not going into a packer, they are being poured into dumpsters.  Your fish are not "fine" they are dying.

In this picture you can clearly see these fish are going from the metal tray into rusty metal dumpsters, they are garbage.

 

The moment we approached the farm, the crew aborted the operation. The huge metal tray came down quickly, the water still running as the worker hurried to turn off the valve and then everyone just stood there.  Your crew did their best not to let us see the dead salmon, but there are things that are just too big to hide when you are in public waters.

I showed this video to the Mowachaht/Muchalaht fisheries and to DFO's aquaculture branch where I made a "witness statement".

 

 

 

 

Mr. Vike, we now know something is still killing the salmon in your pens, they are not "fine".  Something is killing the salmon in your pens and your pens are in wild salmon habitat.   Can you understand the concern?  I have studied how sea lice breed in huge numbers in your farms. We don't want your farms incubating disease. When thousands of salmon die on one side of a net it is a legitimate concern that it could affect the salmon on the other side of the net.

What are the fish in your pens dying of should be an easy, straightforward question to answer.

There are two stories circulating. First, the salmon died of a toxic algae bloom called chrysochromulina, but when I took a look at the water back in the hotel, I could not find chrysochromulina.

The second theory was from DFO when I called them.  They said the Atlantic salmon were dying because they had been grazing on the nets, and ate poisonous "biotia" off the nets containing a toxin called microcystin. 

Getting two different stories raises red flags for me. Which one should I believe? 

If the shellfish on the nets are poisonous shouldn't there be a shellfish warning so people don't ingest this toxin from the nearby oysters and mussels?  If these fish are dying of a poison, should their penmates be sold for human consumption? Isn't there a chance they are contaminated too?  Why are there different stories, do you know why the fish in your pens are dying?

Another serious consideration is that the potential impact of these fish is not localized. The salmon that are still alive in your pens are being transported by Viking Star to Gold River, and then by truck to Campbell River and then by ferry to the processing plant on Quadra island.

Here is a picture of your truck in the Quadra Island ferry line up.

Here is a picture taken of the bloodwater from the farm salmon processing plant on Quadra Island.

The blood appears black in this picture because it is 90 feet underwater.  It is spewing directly into the Fraser sockeye migration route off Campbell River.

I co-published a scientific paper on this outfall pipe and the threat of this industrial bloodwater to wild salmon.

 

The Fraser sockeye are passing this pipe right now and from there they will spread out through the lakes and rivers of the BC interior.  If an infectious disease is killing the salmon in your pens, it is washing over the wild salmon of BC on both sides of Vancouver Island.

Mr. Vike, wild salmon are extremely important to British Columbians.  If your pens were on land, behind walls, locked gates and barbed wire your secrets would be yours, but you are using the waters of the North Pacific to flush your waste.  Something is killing the fish in your pens and we don't want it to kill the wild salmon.  I believe Canadians who are hosting your industry, deserve truth and respect.

So once again I ask you, as the CEO Grieg Seafood, the company who owns these facilities:

1. Why are the salmon in your pens dying?
2. Who made the diagnosis?
3. Please provide documentation to support your statements.

You should know, I am not going to give up.

Thank you,

Alexandra Morton

P.S.  Thank you to the patience of the salmon farming crew at Concepcion Point. This must have been as stressful on you as it was on us.  FYI we did not miss the escort out of town. 

I also thank the wonderful people who worked with me on this investigation. Jody Eriksson, Farlyn Campbell and Angela Koch.