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:
- Why are the salmon in your pens dying?
- Who made the diagnosis?
- 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.