There was a sight for sore eyes in late July off the coast of Tofino, when a Dutch-built, Vancouver-registered 30-metre barge, Salar, was towed out of Clayoquot Sound waters, hopefully never to return.

The vessel — looking like something out of Terry Gilliam’s fantasist movie Brazil — was brought to Tofino to battle infestations of sea lice, a persistent by-product of industrial salmon farming that attacks farmed fish and, incidentally, wild juvenile salmon.

That the name, Salar, is derived from the species name for Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar, may seem a rude irony to some on the West Coast where the fabled Oncorhynchus, or wild Pacific salmon, are endangered by the industrialization of salmon rearing not just in Clayoquot Sound, but in the Broughton Archipelago on the east side of Vancouver Island.

Meares Island, immediately to the east of the resort municipality of Tofino, is among the most iconic locations on Canada’s West Coast when it comes to the protection of rare old-growth coastal temperate rainforests.

It was here that the ritual of clear-cut logging was slowed 35 years ago. The Meares Island blockade in 1984 lit a fuse that blew up into a full-scale War in the Woods that dogged successive provincial governments — Socred and NDP and Liberal alike — until much of Clayoquot Sound was “protected,” as were large swaths of Haida Gwaii and, eventually, impressive tracts of the so-called Great Bear Rainforest.

Where there was a War in the Woods, now there’s a War on the Waters.

A view of Clayoquot Sound near Tofino. Photo: Shayd Johnson

To summer tourists who savour the “eco” tourism that has taken the place of some, if not all, logging, the uncut slopes of Meares Island, and a gorgeous necklace of inlets and islets on glittering inshore waters, perfectly disguise an environmental catastrophe that constitutes, literally, a pestilence on our coast.

Parked this summer (one hesitates to use the term “moored”) in sight of the Fourth Street dock in Tofino, the Salar supplemented the onshore processing plant of Cermaq, a Norway-based salmon farming company owned by Mitsubishi that operates in Chile, Norway and Canada.

Farmed fish, packed together in their thousands in pens, like battery chickens, are subject to disease, including outbreaks of a Norwegian strain of piscine orthoreovirus, or PRV — something Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans refused to screen for before a federal court ordered it to do so.

Farmed fish are sitting ducks for sea lice, too. Industry has struggled to contain the sea lice menace.

Last year, Cermaq took to sucking afflicted fish out of their net pens and bathing them in a solution of pesticide designed to dislodge the lice. The fish went back into their pens (and eventually made their way into the mouths of consumers), the chemicals were dispersed into the marine environment and life went on.

But some lice developed an immunity to drugs used to remove them.

This year’s “solution” was to deploy the Salar, or what industry calls a “hydrolicer” that was built to pressure-wash lice to dislodge them rather than use chemicals, making it “100 per cent pollution-free and thus environmentally friendly” according to a soothing review in Fish Farming Expert.

But at least farmed fish get a shake.

Wild smolts — which have no choice other than to migrate past open net pens — pick up lice in such numbers that they cannot survive.

Clayoquot Sound wild smolts covered in sea lice, May 2019. Photo: Tavish Campbell

Regulations require industry keep parasite levels below a certain threshold. During this past spring and early summer three of Cermaq’s farms exceeded sea lice levels in violation of federal rules.

During the early summer wild salmon migration season in Clayoquot Sound, I watched filmmaker and naturalist Tavish Campbell document juvenile salmon covered in sea lice.

Sometimes ten lice clamped to one tiny smolt — fish so young they have yet to develop scales and thus are defenceless against parasitic attacks.

On an excursion for the Cedar Coast Field Station on Vargas Island, Campbell, perhaps best known for his short film Bloodwater, said, “the focus has been on the Broughton, but it’s even worse out here.”

“Clayoquot Sound is close to the point where there’s just not going to be any wild fish any more,” Tavish Campbell told me, looking up for a moment from filming chum salmon smolts he sampled.

Sea lice on a wild salmon smolt recovered in Clayoquot Sound, May 2019. Photo: Tavish Campbell

Bonnie Glambeck, a director of the conservation group, Clayoquot Action, told The Tyee, “At one point during the out-migration, sampling of smolts at the Cedar Coast Field Station found 100 per cent of the juveniles were infected with sea lice.”

Mack Bartlett, research coordinator at the Cedar Coast station, told me the effect of sea lice on wild salmon was devastating. “We have [wild fish] returning in their tens, when there used to be thousands. We could see the disappearance of chinook salmon in Clayoquot Sound if we don’t come up with a solution.”

In an open letter in the Tofino-Ucluelet Westerly News Cermaq’s managing director, David Kiemele, admitted the company was “unable to effectively manage sea lice populations for a variety of reasons” during the critical wild salmon migration period from March to June.

So much for Salar.

Sea lice on a juvenile wild salmon in the Broughton Archipelago. Video: Tavish Campbell

You would think that Fisheries and Oceans Canada would shut down Cermaq’s operations pronto, but instead, the Government of Canada announced it was “moving forward on developing an action plan to address the enforcement of sea lice regulations in coastal waters.”

Which brings a tired laugh of disbelief from Homiskanis Don Svanvik, elected chief of the ‘Namgis First Nation, in Alert Bay.

“One of the biggest issues is that people don’t believe that our government would not be telling us the truth, or would not be doing all they can to help wild salmon. And in fact, they’re not.”

Svanvik’s people have been at the forefront of attempts to get fish farms out of their waters in the Broughton Archipelago, and onto dry land — as with the band-owned Kuterra land-raised salmon enterprise that has shown it can be done.

Open-net pen fish farms, Svanvik told me, “are this staging place for disease and sea lice that were never (previously) in place for the wild salmon returning and going out to sea. The logical place for those is on land, where they cannot impact wild fish.”

“They’ve got to go. Let’s get them out. Let’s not have any risk to our salmon up here.”

The key to getting fish farms out of open waters, Svanvik believes, is “when the population says no, that’s enough. You can’t do this anymore.”

Back in Tofino, in an echo of the Meares Island logging blockade a third of a century ago, signs of the salmon farming’s denouement are evident.

In late June, a new generation of protesters joined with holdovers from the War in the Woods as about 200 protesters took to local waters in the wake of the R/V Martin Sheen, a sailboat operated by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which has taken up the fight against salmon farms. A flotilla of small craft motored to and circled Cermaq’s farm on Warne Island.

The R/V Martin Sheen, a research vessel used as part of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s ‘Operation Virus Hunter,’ a campaign to document the impacts of open-net fish farms on the B.C. coast. Photo: Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation member Tsimka Martin, one of the organizers of the flotilla, co-founded a group called the Nuuchahnulth Salmon Alliance that is determined to see fish farms — 27 of them, operated by three companies — evicted from Clayoquot Sound.

“These are cess pools, we need to remove them from our waters,” she says in a video posted on the alliance’s Facebook page.

There have been public marches, a rally outside Cermaq’s plant, boardings of Creative Salmon farm operations, an Indigenous talking circle — all chapters in the textbook endgame for an industry that has worn out whatever welcome it had in the first place.

Because there are jobs involved, of course politicians will have a say.

Unlike Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington State who is clearing fish farms out of the Salish Sea and vows to keep them out, Premier John Horgan has been hesitant to make significant changes.

Indigenous political leaders are meanwhile divided. While some communities benefit economically from the aquaculture industry operating in their traditional waters, others argue the protection of wild salmon should be see as critical to both reconciliation and efforts to free Indigenous nations from their economic dependence on extractive industries.

But time is running out for all — to save salmon from going the way of the East Coast cod.

“The salmon can be a messenger,” Don Svanvik says. “When we start doing things better, they’ll be coming back more. Then we’ll know we’re headed in the right direction.”

And then perhaps the people of Clayoquot Sound — indeed all over Vancouver Island — can get back to fighting the War in the Woods, which, it turns out — a third of a century later — isn’t really over after all …

Bringing back the trees to bring back the salmon

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Wild salmon swimming past B.C. fish farms are at high risk of picking up a virus that causes weakness and affects their ability to reach spawning grounds according to new groundbreaking research published this week in the scientific journal PLOS One (Public Library of Science One).

The study found the percentage of wild salmon infected with piscine reovirus (PRV) was much higher in wild salmon exposed to a large cluster of salmon farms along the B.C. coast than in those that were not.

“In my view allowing piscine reovirus to flow from salmon farms into the marine environment will be viewed as an environmental crime of the highest order,” independent biologist and study author, Alexandra Morton, told DeSmog Canada.

ICYMI: Disturbing New Footage Shows Diseased, Deformed Salmon in B.C. Fish Farms

Morton’s concern that enough isn’t being done to protect wild salmon stocks is in line with concerns from some coastal First Nations, which in August occupied two fish farms on the Central Coast over their opposition to open-pen farms.* In early December, environmental group Pacific Wild released footage showing clouds of blood emanating from fish plants on Vancouver Island; subsequent testing revealed that that blood, too, contained the virus and other parasites.

The new study also found infected wild salmon were less likely to make it back to high-elevation spawning grounds.

“This study provides the first evidence that exposure to farmed Atlantic salmon is associated with infection of wild Pacific salmon with PRV, a virus of significant concern to both the aquaculture industry and wild fisheries management and that PRV infection may impair the capacity of wild salmon to complete a challenging spawning migration, with the potential for population-level impacts,” the study concludes.

Alarmingly Low Salmon Stocks in B.C. Stoke Fish Farming Concerns

The findings come at a time of alarmingly low salmon returns in B.C. and, adding weight to the concerns, are recent scientific findings that PRV is linked to heart and skeletal muscular disease (HSMI). Although HSMI has not been found in wild salmon it was found at a fish farm in the Discovery Islands between 2011 and 2013.

HSMI makes the fish lethargic — something that is not necessarily a problem for penned fish, but is usually fatal for wild salmon, which are in danger of being eaten by predators such as eagles, seals or killer whales if they lie around on the surface, independent biologist and study author, Alexandra Morton, told DeSmog Canada.

“And we know the fish don’t even have to get HSMI. PRV lodges itself in the red blood cells and affects the ability to carry oxygen from the gills to the tissues,” Morton said.

If the infection progresses, the salmon’s heart and swimming muscles become damaged leaving the fish very weak.

Salmon farming companies would not give Morton access to their fish, so the team of scientists bought 262 farmed salmon and 35 farmed steelhead from supermarkets. Tests found PRV in 95 per cent of the salmon and 69 per cent of the steelhead.

Farmed salmon tested for study. Photo: Alexandra Morton

Highest Density of Infected Wild Salmon Near Highest Density of Fish Farms

The scientists then looked at wild salmon infection rates and found that the highest percentages of infected fish were in high-density fish farm areas such as the Broughton Archipelago, where 45 per cent of the wild fish were found to have the virus.

Wild fish around the Discovery Islands — where the Cohen Commission concluded that diseases from farmed salmon could have an irrevocable impact on Fraser River sockeye returns — were found to have a 37 per cent infection rate and 40 per cent of returning salmon in the lower Fraser River were infected.

ICYMI: Ban on New Fish Farm Permits Sidelined as Escaped U.S. Farmed Salmon Increase in B.C. Waters

However, as Fraser salmon made it to the upper reaches of the river, the infection rate dropped by about 50 per cent.

“This suggests that salmon infected with PRV are less capable of swimming up through strong rapids in places like Hells Gate and therefore unable to reach their spawning grounds,” said study co-author Rick Routledge, Simon Fraser University professor emeritus.

In contrast, in areas furthest away from salmon farms, such as the Skeena and Nass, the infection rate dropped to five per cent.

This is the first study in the world to compare infection rates in wild fish to infection rates in farmed fish and the difference between the north and south is startling, said Morton, an outspoken opponent of open net pen fish farms.

One oddity found in the study was that in Cultus Lake, where, last year, sockeye were listed as endangered, 76 per cent of the trout were found to be infected.

That will need further study, but the hypothesis is that the trout were infected by salmon that travelled through the Discovery Islands and the virus was then incubated in the lake, Morton said.

“It’s a durable virus, a nasty little thing and it can exist for quite a long time outside the fish. It’s shed in the feces and urine,” Morton said.

A recent, video-gone-viral showing “blood water” being pumped into the ocean near Campbell River from Brown’s Bay Packing Company, a farmed fish processing plant, shocked British Columbians — and effluent samples analyzed by the Atlantic Veterinary College tested positive for PRV.

Morton said her research was completed before the video was taken, but effluent from the processing plant could be contributing to the high PRV rate in the Discovery Islands. The discharges are currently being tested by provincial investigators.

The peer-reviewed study is being strongly criticized by the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association which issued a press release accusing Morton of using weak correlational data to draw strong conclusions.

“This paper is part of a deliberate activist campaign led by Alexandra Morton and can hardly be taken as unbiased research,” said Jeremy Dunn, the association’s executive director.

The release says it is impossible to sample fish in a supermarket and make claims about the exposure of wild salmon to a pathogen.

BCSFA says that PRV commonly affects Atlantic salmon raised in open net pens around the B.C. coast, but say it is rarely associated with any sort of sickness and, although research is continuing, results so far show the virus “has little to no effect on an animal’s fitness.”

The presence of PRV has been linked to HSMI in farmed fish in Norway where the number of HSMI infected salmon farms rose to 181 by 2014. The presence of HSMI in Norway has caused fatalities in farmed fish according to company Marine Harvest.

But that same causal connection has not been proven in B.C. or replicated in laboratory settings, according to the industry association.

Morton said that, after the virus was first identified in Norwegian fish farms in 1999 it moved rapidly through the industry, appearing in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Chile. Most salmon-farming companies operating in B.C. are Norwegian-owned and previous research found the strain of PRV identified in her study originated in Norway, she said.

“This work is a strong indicator that [federal] management of salmon farms is not consistent with law, the precautionary principle or the mandate handed down by the Prime Minister of Canada that [the Department of Fisheries and Oceans] use science to manage fish stocks,” Morton told DeSmog Canada.

Morton and Ecojustice are currently arguing in Federal Court that the government is acting illegally by issuing licences allowing juvenile farmed salmon to be put into ocean pens without testing for the virus as transferring diseased fish into wild fish habitat contravenes the Fisheries Act.

Salmon-farming companies Marine Harvest and Cermaq have joined DFO in contesting the lawsuit and claim their businesses would fail if the court says they cannot put infected fish in the ocean.

* Correction Dec. 15, 2017: Due to an editor's error a previous version of this article stated First Nations occupied B.C. fish farms in October. They in fact began their occupation in August.

Image: B.C. farmed salmon. Photo: Tavish Campbell

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.