Shannon McPhail said she felt like the “world’s biggest schmuck” after reading an email from a senior official at Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The official told her it was “impossible to confirm” how many living salmon eggs were in the path of the Coastal GasLink pipeline at a major river crossing. 

With wild salmon populations in decline throughout the watershed, McPhail wanted to know what the government agency is doing to ensure eggs laid in the path of the pipeline aren’t harmed — and she wanted data.

But the federal department wasn’t telling her everything it knew.

The government message, sent via email in early December, addressed a list of detailed questions McPhail, co-founder of Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, had sent more than a month prior. To draft its reply, the fisheries agency, commonly called DFO, asked Coastal GasLink (CGL) to look over the questions, according to documents obtained by The Narwhal through freedom of information legislation.

A Coastal GasLink contractor promptly replied. To the question of how many eggs were in Wedzin Kwa (Morice River) on Wet’suwet’en territory, where the company started drilling a large tunnel under the river in September, the pipeline worker was forthright: “Oodles.” 

“But following DFO’s blasting guidelines we will assume only [spawning beds] within 150 metres of the tunnel path have the potential to be impacted by vibrations,” the contractor, whose name was redacted in the released documents, wrote in a Nov. 17 email. “A conservative estimate of coho eggs in the gravels within 150 metres of the tunnel path [is] 273,000.”

McPhail was stunned into silence when she learned the government agency had not disclosed the information. 

“You’re fucking kidding me,” she blurted out on a phone call with The Narwhal. “They were gaslighting me. This just blows my mind. I have been pushing so hard for so long trying to find out this information, which I felt was a reasonable request based on reasonable concerns. And they purposely withheld that information.”

Fisheries and Oceans Canada did not reply to questions about the details of the released documents prior to publication.

‘They need to be held accountable’

According to TC Energy, the Alberta-based pipeline operator that is building Coastal GasLink, drilling under the river at a depth of more than 11 metres below the riverbed won’t disturb salmon eggs. Provincial and federal regulators told The Narwhal the same — but declined to share details of the evidence it reviewed about potential impacts of the drilling. McPhail’s questions included a request to see spawning surveys, which Coastal GasLink provided to fisheries officials, according to the newly released documents. The federal department did not share those surveys with McPhail.

“When the pipeline company is being forthcoming with the data but the regulators are not, that’s a pretty significant red flag,” she said. “I can’t even believe this level of willful negligence and gaslighting and withholding of information. This, to me, is criminal and they need to be held accountable.”

When Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked Coastal GasLink to address questions it received about potential impacts to salmon eggs, the company provided detailed responses and data. The federal agency did not share this information.

Brad Fanos, director of the federal government’s Fish and Fish Habitat Protection Program, told McPhail the department couldn’t confirm how many eggs were in the river because it would depend on fish species, numbers of successful spawners, size of the females and how many natural mortalities had occurred during the run. Fanos also echoed the pipeline company’s claims the work would not impact salmon eggs.

“There is no reason to believe any of the incubating eggs are being impacted by the directional drill beneath the Morice River,” he wrote, adding that monitoring had not picked up any indication of “physical or behavioural impacts” to fish or spawning beds at the site.

The exact wording Fanos would use in his email to McPhail was being discussed internally just two hours after the department received information from Coastal GasLink, according to the records. But it would take another 19 days before the department sent its response.

Eric Hertz, an analyst with the Pacific Salmon Foundation, said it’s “technically true” Fisheries and Oceans Canada wouldn’t be able to confirm the exact number of eggs, but he didn’t understand why the department wasn’t willing to share Coastal GasLink’s data.

“They were provided an estimate from industry so it is surprising that they weren’t able to pass that along — or they chose not to pass that along,” he said, adding he shares concerns about the lack of transparency.  

While Coastal GasLink noted a conservative estimate of 273,000 coho eggs, the actual number of salmon at risk could be much higher. In the email to fisheries officials, the pipeline contractor noted individual females can lay between 2,000 and 7,000 eggs per clutch. And coho isn’t the only species that spawns in the river. According to the industry survey, the pipeline crossing is home to 13 fish species considered by a Coastal GasLink consultant to be of concern, including bull trout, lamprey, steelhead, mountain whitefish and all five species of Pacific salmon.

“I can’t even believe this level of willful negligence and gaslighting and withholding of information,” McPhail said. “This, to me, is criminal and they need to be held accountable.”

Wet’suwet’en fish and wildlife inspectors have rarely been able to monitor construction. Coastal GasLink has blocked access to worksites and told chiefs and their supporters they would be arrested if they ignored the warnings. TC Energy told the Office of the Wet’suwet’en, an administrative body that operates on behalf of the Hereditary Chiefs, that anyone wanting access to sites needs to give 24 hours notice and arrange to have private security accompany them, according to Wet’suwet’en fisheries officials. 

Hereditary Chief Na’moks said if the federal fisheries officers have data, it’s vital the public has access to that information.

“They are there to protect salmon and fish species,” he told The Narwhal in an interview. When data is “smothered” people are led to believe construction of the pipeline isn’t damaging the environment, he said, accusing government officials of “just spreading pixie dust on the territory” by creating an impression that “everything’s fine and dandy.”

Fisheries and Oceans Canada appears to be relying on Coastal GasLink data, self-monitoring

Coastal GasLink also told federal officials in an email sent in November that they were looking at installing vibration monitors, but neither the company nor the department confirmed whether it followed through on that plan. 

“We have the spawning areas mapped so we can place the monitors in the best sampling location and avoid disturbing any redds,” a Coastal GasLink contractor wrote in the email.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada said the company was doing this in response to “ongoing public concerns” but did not confirm whether it had verified information it was receiving from the company.

“Through conversations with CGL, DFO understands that vibration monitoring along the drill path was conducted on both the east and west sides of the river using geophones that were positioned outside of the wetted stream to avoid any potential disturbance to [spawning beds],” a spokesperson with the department told The Narwhal.

Coastal GasLink’s email noted “environmental inspectors visit the location daily to inspect for compliance with permitting conditions” and industry biologists have been monitoring water quality “24/7 since the start of tunnelling works.”

Fisheries and Oceans Canada did not directly answer whether it was involved in inspections or water quality monitoring at the site.

Wedzin Kwa (Morice River) is home to numerous fish species, including struggling salmon populations. According to a 2020 spawning survey, the river is home to 13 fish species considered by Coastal GasLink to be of concern. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

As The Narwhal recently reported, fisheries officers decided in late October to avoid monitoring in areas they considered “tense locations” due to perceived conflict between land defenders, police and pipeline workers. Internal government messages revealed that federal enforcement officers used vandalism as an excuse not to do required inspections.

Walter Joseph, fisheries manager with the Office of the Wet’suwet’en, said his experience working with fisheries officers has been positive and habitat issues or concerns have been handled appropriately. But he said monitoring is challenging.

“From what I’ve seen with their working with CGL is that local helicopter companies have a lot of business with CGL, and are reluctant to endanger their work by having DFO fly low over their site,” he told The Narwhal in an email. “When they do so, CGL calls the helicopter base to complain.” Joseph said pipeline workers stopped by the office in Smithers to complain after he flew over construction sites near the river crossing. 

The federal agency confirmed the river system provides vital habitat for numerous fish species but did not directly answer whether fisheries officers were keeping an eye on the crossing on the ground or from above. 

“Morice River is considered important fish habitat and supports spawning of a number of salmonid species in proximity to the pipeline crossing site,” the spokesperson said. “Because of this sensitivity, DFO recommended that instream works be avoided at this location.”

“The regulator’s interpretation is that the absence of any evidence that there could be an impact is the evidence,” Hertz said. “There could be an impact but they don’t want to think about that.”

“Given the importance of salmon in the Skeena and elsewhere in the province, having an independent body to ensure that works are being done in the most appropriate way for salmon is important,” he added. “It’s concerning that DFO is relying on these companies to report on themselves.”

‘This project is a boondoggle’

Between federal and provincial investments, more than $900 million has been allocated to Pacific salmon conservation initiatives in the last four years alone, including a sockeye recovery program in Wedzin Kwa, which supports a third of the watershed’s Chinook salmon. As populations throughout the region continue to slip further on a decades-long decline, anything that could harm fish or fish habitat — from illegal poaching to major industrial projects — runs a gauntlet of legislation and regulations put in place to prevent species from going extinct.

It’s all based on a dizzying array of data: years of field studies, comprehensive climate change modelling, water chemistry calculations, collaboration with First Nations, academics and industry and much more. There’s a complex network of officials overseeing the laws and regulations meant to keep people and companies in check. Conservation officers float the rivers to check sport fishers’ licences while compliance and enforcement authorities drop out of the sky in helicopters to make sure heavy equipment operators are keeping their machines from leaking toxins into fish-bearing streams.

At 670 kilometres, the Coastal GasLink pipeline is roughly equal to the distance between Vancouver and Calgary. The path crosses the northern Rocky Mountains, spans vast stretches of forests pockmarked by decades of clearcutting, rises back up into the glacier-capped Coast Mountains and finally drops down to meet the Pacific Ocean. Building the gas pipeline through all this terrain means crossing more than 700 creeks and rivers.

Despite the international scope of the project — getting fracked gas from massive shale deposits in B.C.’s northeast to buyers in Asia on behalf of a consortium of foreign-controlled corporations — oversight of the pipeline is primarily handled by provincial regulators. That’s because construction is taking place within provincial borders.

The main watchdogs are the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission (which quietly announced it is changing its name and expanding its regulatory responsibilities last October) and the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office.

Since starting construction in 2019, Coastal GasLink has continually struggled to prevent sediment from entering wetlands, lakes and rivers. Sediment reduces available oxygen in fish habitat and can suffocate fish in large amounts. For its failures, the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office has issued dozens of rebukes and fined the company more than $450,000 for infractions. Yet the company still struggles to control the issue and cited it as one of the reasons for skyrocketing costs — on Feb. 1, TC Energy announced the pipeline now had an revised price tag of $14.5 billion, more than double its original estimate. 

“This project is a boondoggle,” McPhail said. “It’s a boondoggle for the province, for the feds and for Coastal GasLink.”

Coastal GasLink construction has been plagued with problems relating to erosion and sediment control for years. Government regulators are investigating allegations that the company failed to prevent sediment from entering Lho Kwa (Clore River), pictured here in images captured in January. Photos: David Suzuki Foundation

Officials at Environment and Climate Change Canada can step in if the project is in violation of federal legislation.

“As the issue is currently in relation to the erosion of a wetland and fish habitat, but does not concern the release of deleterious substances into fish-bearing waters, [Environment and Climate Change Canada’s] enforcement branch has not been involved in this matter,” a department spokesperson told The Narwhal in an email. It later added in a follow-up response that the deposit of deleterious substances could include sediment in certain circumstances.

“Eggs and anything in the gravel would be a big concern,” Hertz said. “A fry or smolt has some ability to move and find areas that are less turbid, but for a fish that’s developing and in the gravel, you’re kind of stuck with where you were laid.” 

Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, a Gidimt’en clan wing chief, noted neither provincial nor federal governments have jurisdiction over Wet’suwet’en lands and waters. In 1997, a landmark Supreme Court of Canada case affirmed the nation had never given up its Rights and Title to the 22,000 square kilometre territory.

But she said Canada still has a duty to protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“The federal government has responsibilities to us, as Indigenous people. I’m not saying they have jurisdiction, but they have legal responsibilities to Indigenous people. The same goes for DFO.”

Fisheries and Oceans Canada told The Narwhal it typically stays out of B.C. processes but monitors “provincial project decisions and focuses on any related Fisheries Act or Species at Risk Act regulatory decisions.”

Yet, according to internal documents the federal agency appears to be in regular contact with Coastal GasLink and conducts periodic inspections of worksites.

In October, for example, the pipeline company reached out to a fisheries protection biologist with the department for permission to work in a fish-bearing stream on Wet’suwet’en territory outside of a prescribed “least-risk” window. Coastal GasLink is also required to file regular reports and keep the department up to speed on any negative impacts to habitat. 

“The fact that they’ve been involved without anybody knowing seems a little suspicious to me,” Wickham said. “They’ve said nothing, they haven’t supported us in any way to find out information, to find out accountability processes — that’s critical information that we need in order to protect our territory and our fish and our water. Why are they hiding the fact that they’ve been involved this whole time? If anything, you would think that they would be transparent about it to prove that they’re doing their job.” 

‘A reality that doesn’t exist’

With so many government agencies involved, it’s hard to know who to turn to for answers. McPhail said figuring out which agency has jurisdiction over various conservation issues has been a major source of frustration. Prior to sending her first lengthy email to provincial and federal regulators, she said she spent weeks trying to connect with regulators on phone calls.  

“We get these responses that don’t include answers to the questions, that are completely trying to dodge responsibility and, in some cases, are outright misleading or outdated information that presents a reality that doesn’t exist.”

When it comes to how and when the various government regulators talk to each other, things get murkier. 

The federal Fisheries Department said it has been coordinating with B.C. “on specific issues related to their project monitoring that intersects with DFO’s mandate, and vice versa.”

But both the federal and provincial governments responded to The Narwhal’s freedom of information requests by saying they had no records of communications between the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office and federal fisheries officers between Sept. 1 and Nov. 24, 2022, when Coastal GasLink was conducting major work crossing salmon rivers and tributaries and the pipeline company continued to struggle with erosion and sediment control issues.

A spokesperson for B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy confirmed it was not in contact with the federal agency about the pipeline during the period, noting the environmental assessment office takes a backseat to the federal department and the energy regulator for “instream works and crossings.”

“It is a cross-jurisdictional issue with a number of federal and provincial agencies involved in regulating both potential causes of fish habitat impact and the potential impact itself,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. They added that the province didn’t detect any instances of non-compliance that required inter-agency communication during the fall months.

“These agencies are aware of each other’s mandate and which agency is the best-placed regulator to respond to an incident or to ensure compliance with habitat-protection requirements.” 

In a similar request for communications between B.C.’s assessment office and the provincial energy regulator, The Narwhal was told “no records were located.”  

Hertz said it’s not surprising there is confusion.

“Having so many different entities involved, I think, is a recipe for issues like this to come up,” he said. “Who is supposed to be keeping track of what? It seems troubling.”

To McPhail, the best bet to protect salmon lies with the pipeline workers.

“There are a lot of people who are out there trying to make a good honest living for themselves and for their families,” she said. “I want to empower those people to be our eyes and ears out there, because our regulators are not. We need the local people who are working on this pipeline to keep working it — that’s exactly who we want out there. And if they see something, we need them to say something because the regulators, both provincially and federally, aren’t doing it.”

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.

This story is a co-production between The Narwhal and VICE World News.

Two years after fisheries observers came forward to talk about harassment, intimidation, assault, sexual assault and threats aboard fishing vessels, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has created a suite of new policies intended to limit harassment and is spending millions of dollars on modernization — but is refusing to talk about it. 

Whistleblowers within the trawl industry went on the record for investigations published in The Narwhal and VICE World News after DFO, Canada’s regulator of commercial fisheries, failed to take steps to make working conditions safer for at-sea observers.

While the department has been silent on its inner workings, internal documents released to VICE and The Narwhal through access to information legislation show that below the surface there has been a steady flow of activity at DFO offices in response to revelations published in the investigations. 

Observers are the eyes and ears of the public aboard fishing vessels, reporting information about illegal fishing, the kinds of fish being caught, accidental bycatch, vessel location and more to DFO, under whose purview observers are assigned to fishing vessels. But as earlier reporting revealed, observers — often young women, working alone on vessels mostly crewed by men — suffer from workplace abuse, with many recounting stories of being screamed at by boat captains, coerced into falsifying their reports and sexually abused, among other mistreatment. 

The result of that intimidation, whistleblowers say, is systematic under-reporting of the amount of accidentally caught fish and deliberate malfeasance — because observers do not feel safe enough to speak out about infractions that could jeopardize vessel permits and profits.

“You are all alone out there, and nobody wants you there,” said one female former observer, who said she, as a recent biology graduate, had spent a year being subjected to a gauntlet of sexual harassment and violent intimidation on trawlers before quitting. 

That reporting kicked off a lumbering internal response at DFO that, while happening behind closed doors, is still ongoing. 

A culture of intimidation aboard trawlers led to a decades-long undercounting of bycatch that was dumped back out to sea, former observers have said. Illustration: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

More than 700 pages of documents, received by VICE and The Narwhal, show an emotional response within the department to the allegations raised in reporting published by both outlets in 2020 and 2021.

“This article is horrific,” wrote Adam Keizer, a DFO regional manager, in an email to three colleagues on Feb. 9, 2021, the morning the investigation was published in VICE. “I know we’ve discussed the limitations about what DFO can do with respect to harassment of [observers], but we must have a discussion about what is within our means to ensure [they] are protected.” 

The earlier discussions Keizer is referring to were regarding the incidents reported in the 2020 article in The Narwhal. 

“Agreed Adam, I’ve just finished reading this. It is very upsetting and extremely troubling,” a colleague, Neil Davis, replied. 

Keizer declined to comment for this article, citing DFO communications policies. Over the course of two years of reporting and interview requests, DFO has never made anyone available to talk about the allegations or the department’s response, preferring instead to send bullet-point written responses. Requests for interviews with three officers who the documents show were on the front lines of the response and pushing internally for change were also declined.

Multiple requests for interviews with federal fisheries minister Joyce Murray were initially deflected. In late February, a spokesperson for the minister wrote, “I spoke with my DComm [director of communications] who agrees with me that its (sic) important to Canadians that the minister speak on these issues.” 

A month later, the line had changed. The minister would not be made available at all. “Heather McCready is best positioned to get you the information that you’re looking for (sic) your story.”

McCready is the director general for conservation and protection, who has been leading the internal changes in response to the allegations over the past year.

That interview was cancelled two hours before it was set to begin. In an emailed statement, in lieu of an interview and sent at the same time, the department said it “does not and will not tolerate harassment of at-sea observers” — the exact same wording that appeared in media lines more than two years ago.

In the absence of access to DFO officials, the recently released documents shed light on a department that is both confused regarding its responsibility to the observers working on its behalf, and frustrated by its own inability to respond. The department recognizes the problem, but according to emails, briefing notes and meeting minutes, appears unsure of how to address it. 

However the internal documents also reveal the department quietly responded to the allegations with one major measure: entirely new sections of its nation-wide observer policy devoted to harassment, amounting to dozens of significant changes intended to protect observers. 

The revised policy was meant to be released last spring, but has yet to see the light of day. In an email to VICE and The Narwhal, five months after we received the documents and following repeated requests for comment, DFO cast doubt on the legitimacy of its own draft policy.

“The documents you have obtained through ATIP reflect work that has been done, and in some cases continues, to explore options for future consideration of the At-Sea Observers Program,” a spokesperson wrote. “We have nothing else to add in terms of your questions below – at this time, there isn’t a new policy related to the At-sea Observers Program.”

At-sea observers are dependent on the ship’s own systems to communicate with the authorities in serious situations. In jurisdictions like Alaska, observers are given personal locator beacons as a safe and secure form of communication. Illustration: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

‘Shut him down’ 

A week into 2020, Misty MacDuffee, the wild salmon program director at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, reached out to The Narwhal with a tip. MacDuffee had heard from an observer that people in his position were being mistreated at sea, and that it had major consequences for how bycatch — sea life that is unintentionally caught and sometimes has to be discarded — is reported.

“I think it is atrocious and needs to be exposed,” MacDuffee wrote in her email. 

That email set off the investigations that would run, respectively, in The Narwhal five months later and in VICE a year later. 

The investigations took a long time, in part, because of a lack of cooperation on the part of DFO. The first interview request was sent to DFO by the end of January 2020. 

“Communications responded to the reporter with approved messaging,” reads a record of the interaction obtained through a separate access to information request. Keizer suggested in an email to communications staff that he himself could be a good source to explain what was happening in closed-door meetings with industry. “I think there will be value in speaking with the reporter,” he said. 

“If he wants to speak about any of the allegations, then DFO should not be speaking nor providing any kind of comment. [Sentence redacted by DFO]. My response to him last night should have shut him down continuing to poke DFO staff on this,” the communications staffer wrote back. “Just so you know, we are back to being in a ‘no surprises’ environment.” 

When the investigation in The Narwhal ran on May 6, 2020, detailing the kind of harassment MacDuffee had raised in her email and which DFO had declined to respond to, MacDuffee herself was taken aback. “It was worse than what I thought,” she said. 

Two weeks after publication, Kelly Andersen, a trawling skipper that five whistleblowers named as being among the perpetrators of the harassment, resigned from the industry group that oversees the trawling fleet. Andersen’s ships are still actively fishing in B.C.

Despite Anderson’s resignation, the public response to the harassment allegations by DFO remained muted. What the documents now reveal is that while an internal investigation by DFO dragged on, it would take the second investigative piece in VICE to fully get the wheels turning. 

A tip at the start of 2020 kickstarted more than two years of reporting on the fisheries observer program. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Limited at-sea observer companies may have stymied DFO response to allegations

Within five hours of the VICE investigation reaching DFO staffers’ desks on the morning of Feb. 9, 2021, a briefing note had been put together for then-fisheries minister Bernadette Jordan.

The focus of the briefing note was that DFO is not directly responsible for the treatment of the observers who work on its behalf. 

“Canada’s National At-Sea Observer Program places designated private-sector observers aboard fishing vessels to monitor fishing activity,” the note read. “At-sea observers who feel they are being harassed are encouraged to report instances to their employer, as well as their local police.” 

While DFO mandates at-sea observers must be present aboard fishing vessels, observer services are contracted through private fishery observer companies like Archipelago Marine Research, a company accused by whistleblowers of failing to protect employees or penalizing them for speaking out. The internal briefing note does not indicate any steps DFO intended to take to protect the observers by holding companies such as Archipelago accountable.

However, by October 2021, a month after the VICE story appeared, a working group had been established, and the department had met with Archipelago to rake them over the coals regarding their labour practices. 

Despite repeated requests for interviews over the course of two years of reporting on the observer program, DFO hasn’t made anyone available to talk. Still, emails show there was a flurry of internal discussion. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

“I have serious concerns about their labour operations,” Keizer wrote to a colleague who was looking at whether or not to renew the company’s designation — a critical approval the company needed to operate. But according to meeting minutes, a lack of competition meant the department had few options; DFO could not have cut off Archipelago’s designation even if it had wanted to (and there is no evidence it did want to) without dealing a serious blow to the West Coast fishing fleet’s ability to operate because there were no other companies that could step in to provide the observers.

In an email, DFO confirmed that Archipelago is still designated as an at-sea observer company — and that in the history of the program “no at-sea observer corporation has lost its designation for at-sea observer-related activities.”

Meanwhile, the people in charge of industry compliance were scrambling to speak with the same people whose solutions had been put forth in The Narwhal and VICE investigations, including Jaclyn Smith, an investigator for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Liz Mitchell of the Society for Professional Observers.

Ann Bussell, a DFO investigator, asked her U.S. counterpart Smith about potential improvements that had been raised in the investigations, including giving observers their own independent communications systems rather than forcing them to rely on the ships’ radios or internet.

Bussell reached out to WorkSafeBC on Feb. 18, who said they were working on a plan and talking to their federal counterparts. She reported in an email to colleagues that she was feeling “very encouraged” that the provincial organization was willing to take action.

“They are familiar with the trawl vessels and companies,” she wrote. “They want to do more work on this as they know there are problems.” 

But when Bussell spoke with Mitchell a month later about how to support observers and help them report incidents of harassment, the DFO officer sounded frustrated, Mitchell recalls. (Bussell declined to speak with VICE and The Narwhal for this story. She has since retired.)

“She sounded genuinely concerned, but because of the employment arrangement with the outsourced companies … that’s kind of a conflict of interest,” Mitchell says.

That conflict was created following deep cuts to DFO under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government last decade; until 2013, DFO funded the program rather than industry. So one possibility the department explored to deal with its lack of oversight power was to go back to how things had been originally: either operating the entire program within DFO, or at least funding the observer role rather than leaving it up to the fishing companies. It also considered adding “increased legal obligations” for the companies involved, including monetary penalties. 

“May need extreme consequences for the fleet,” someone wrote in the minutes for a meeting that included multiple DFO divisions involved in fisheries enforcement.

It’s unclear which of these options, if any, were adopted — or if any fishermen, skippers, fishing companies or observer companies have ever been charged for the mistreatment of an observer.

But one major change — a change for which some had been agitating for years — would be accelerated in the wake of the pandemic, and conveniently it helped solve the harassment issue at the same time: take the observers off the trawlers altogether.

A shift to electronic monitoring

Jon Eis was among the whistleblowers who spoke to The Narwhal in 2020. He said he had been threatened and intimidated out of accurately reporting how much halibut was being discarded aboard the trawler Raw Spirit — and that DFO, and the industry, had done nothing to protect him. 

“Morals and ethics don’t pay,” Eis told The Narwhal in our initial investigation, pointing to the fine margin between profit and cost for skippers and crews. “If you follow the regulations you make less money.” Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Since the allegations surfaced, he’s had some hard conversations with people he had worked closely with for years, including fishermen, observers and the company that put him in that position, Archipelago. In all those conversations, he says no one has questioned the veracity of his story.

“No one’s ever called me a liar, in all of this. Even [Archipelago] has never called me a liar or a bullshitter.”

Now he’s working with industry insiders to create the next generation of technology that is already making observers like him obsolete.

Eis admits, in his classically straightforward fashion, that he has some discomfort now working within the industry: “I don’t know if I’m just a political pawn so they can tell DFO they’ve got the whistleblower.” But, he adds, “from what I can tell they’re absolutely taking this seriously.” 

The technological solution Eis is working on? Electronic monitoring. If the primary problems with observers are that they can’t be everywhere, electronic monitoring can be. If the problem is that observers can be cajoled or coerced into misreporting what they see, electronic monitoring can’t be. That’s the theory driving the technology forward, and it’s been underway since the mid 2010s. The pandemic, however, vastly accelerated the desire to replace people — who move from ship to ship and can spread COVID-19, potentially shutting multiple vessels down — with cameras.

When observers were abruptly ordered off ships in the early days of the pandemic, electronic monitoring was put forward as the natural replacement — on an interim basis.

“We had no choice; we couldn’t put observers on board [due to the pandemic]. Our whole fishery’s management is based on at-sea data collection,” says Bruce Turris, an industry insider who, along with Brian Mose, head of the Deep Sea Trawlers Association of British Columbia, is spearheading the work to make the change.

That data collection previously depended on the eyes and estimates of observers. Now, increasingly, it depends on high-definition cameras that are strategically placed throughout the ship. 

Every time the gear is moving, data is recording where the ship is and what is being used. Cameras capture every fish that passes through the sorting area, and grids all over the deck help size them. A human later watches a sample of that footage to compare it to what the ship’s own logbook recorded, and when discrepancies arise it costs the ship more money to pay for a deeper audit. 

It also costs the ship time if the audit has to be completed before it can leave the dock. That, Mose and Turris say, is the real deterrent.

The people doing that audit, often, are former observers themselves — only working from a warm, dry office instead of at sea.

Turris says that’s an improvement for everyone.

“[Electronic monitoring] works 24 hours a day and captures information in all places at all times, as opposed to an observer — even two observers.” 

Eis flips through a species identification booklet at a beach in Victoria, B.C. Observers are responsible for taking biological samples and reporting the catch of prohibited species. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Turris and Mose downplay the role the whistleblowers’ allegations played in the acceleration of their electronic monitoring program. 

“I don’t mind saying that the whistleblower … when we were made aware about his complaint, [the revelations were] certainly alarming and disappointing,” Mose said.

The revelation “helped to accelerate the move,” Turris says. But there was more at play, including efficiency gains and the pandemic: “To be completely honest, outside of that, we were already on the path to [electronic monitoring]. I think COVID accelerated this exponentially.”

But a DFO memorandum for then-minister Jordan in May 2021 suggests that from the government’s perspective, the issues were much more closely related. The briefing memo lumps together the big issues that have been plaguing the observer program — harassment and a lack of jurisdiction to deal with it,  the financial strain on observer companies, and the pandemic — as the reasons to more widely overhaul the system. The changes proposed to deal with the multitude of problems include electronic monitoring and the new, as-yet unreleased, observer harassment policy. 

In September 2020, four months after the first investigation was released in The Narwhal, then-fisheries minister Jordan approved the creation of a $2 million fund to modernize the at-sea observer program, “focusing on addressing the vulnerabilities resulting from the current delivery model.” According to a briefing note, those vulnerabilities included “challenges in recruitment and retention of qualified at-sea observers, particularly in light of recent media attention on incidents of harassment in the industry.” 

Archipelago is among the beneficiaries of that $2 million program as it works toward growing its electronic monitoring operations. Scott Buchanan, Archipelago’s vice president for operations, declined to comment for this article.

“We were disappointed with how Archipelago was presented in the [earlier] articles and as such do not wish to provide you with any information or our perspective on the ongoing changes being made as monitoring programs and fisheries continue to evolve,” he wrote in an email.

MacDuffee and Mitchell are wary of the shift toward electronic monitoring, though not opposed to it.

The observer companies that failed to deal with observer harassment, after all, are the same companies that will be handling the electronic data. And it will all be overseen by DFO, which has spent a decade turning a blind eye to problems in the industry.

“Are they suddenly going to start being super transparent? I don’t think so,” Mitchell says. “I think it’s more a move to avoid accountability.” 

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.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) watered down a scientific report to downplay threats to endangered Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead, documents obtained by the B.C. Wildlife Federation through access to information legislation reveal.

The nearly 2,700 pages of internal documents and emails show DFO scientists, as well as their provincial and independent counterparts, were caught off guard by edits the DFO Assistant Deputy Minister’s Office made to a report regarding the potential for the two declining steelhead populations in B.C.’s Fraser River watershed to receive special protections.

The report, which was meant to inform the DFO’s decision on whether to list Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead under the federal Species at Risk Act, was weakened to downplay the risks to steelhead, to the dismay of scientists involved in the process, the documents show. (The documents in their entirety are available at these links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)The emails shed new light on a July 2019 decision made by Jonathan Wilkinson, then minister of Fisheries and Oceans, to not list the steelhead populations under the act, which would have given policy makers more leverage to manage for their decline in the Fraser River.In October 2018, a month before the altered report was eventually published, the chair of the Canada Science Advisory Secretariat’s steelhead review warned the changed document was undermining the scientific credibility of the process. The secretariat conducts peer review of science advice for DFO.

“The ongoing involvement by people who were not part of the process, who have not been involved in the development of the materials or the advice, continues to compromise our ability to meet the deadlines as well as the scientific integrity of the process,” Sean MacConnachie, a DFO scientist who advises on the species at risk program, wrote in an email contained within the released documents.

One month later, after the report was made public, Jennifer Davis, provincial director of fish and aquatic habitat for the B.C. Ministry of Forests, warned DFO the altered wording in the report did not reflect the scientific consensus. But DFO did not act on these concerns.

The published report summary, Davis wrote, was “inconsistent” with the joint science team’s conclusion that immediate action was needed to reduce steelhead mortality, including changes to commercial fisheries, in order to give the fish a chance at recovery.

“The report, as published, downplays the threats associated with salmon fisheries bycatch mortality,” members of a B.C. science team warned in another email.

Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead spawn in tributaries of the interior Fraser River, where both species have experienced population declines of about 80 per cent over the past two decades. Last year’s numbers were the second-lowest on record for Thompson steelhead and third-lowest for Chilcotin, with 180 Thompson steelhead and 81 Chilcotin counted. In 2019 numbers showed the lowest returns for both populations in history.

Steelhead are trout that behave much like salmon and share a similar pink meat. Like salmon, steelhead are anadromous, meaning they hatch in fresh water, live in the ocean as adults and return to where they hatched to spawn. Unlike salmon, which die after they spawn, it’s possible for steelhead to spawn more than once and live to a ripe old age of about eight years (though some exceptional fish may survive more than 10 years).

Jesse Zeman, director of fish and wildlife restoration for the B.C. Wildlife Federation, said the fact scientists had their findings unilaterally altered by DFO officials raises questions about the process of getting species protected under the Species At Risk Act.

“If DFO cannot do this [process] with integrity and do it properly based on science, this will domino into all of the runs of salmon that are headed for endangered status,” he said. 

“The Fraser is dying … If DFO will edit the science, we have no hope.”

In 2020, the Fraser River experienced historic lows in the sockeye salmon run. In November of 2020, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada listed more than half of the 12 chinook salmon populations in southern B.C. as endangered, threatened or of special concern. Only one population is not at risk, while three populations could not be assessed due to deficient data. 

Zeman said he believes the trouble in getting fish listed under the Species at Risk Act stems from problems with management at DFO and not scientists, who he believes are “not listened to.”

He added that DFO still hasn’t made the Canada Science Advisory Secretariat’s steelhead peer review proceedings public, even years later.

In an emailed statement, a DFO spokesperson said Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead will be considered for listing under the Species At Risk Act again, because the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada has reassessed the populations as endangered. 

The spokesperson also said DFO plans to continue rolling closures for salmon fisheries this year. DFO is also considering additional measures to reduce steelhead bycatch, which will be released in early July within the Salmon Integrated Fisheries Management Plan.

“The Government of Canada understands the importance of these two steelhead trout populations to British Columbians and shares the concern about the decline in steelhead trout returns,” the spokesperson said.

Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead populations have experienced dramatic declines over the past two decades. The years 2019 and 2020 were the worst on record for steelhead numbers in these two Fraser River populations. Photo: SFU / Flickr

‘Every fish counts’

Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead migrate in the Fraser River at the same time as Pink and Chum salmon, two commercially valuable fish. Listing Fraser River steelhead populations under the Species At Risk Act would likely mean curtailing those salmon fisheries. 

The problem is steelhead end up as bycatch of the major salmon fisheries, which makes it less likely as many will survive and return to spawn, Zeman said. 

Even if just 10 fish are bycatch, that could be a tenth of the spawners returning that year, he pointed out.

“When numbers are that low, every fish counts,” he said.

The documents corroborate assertions made by the B.C. government in 2019 that DFO was burying scientists’ concerns about the endangered steelhead. B.C.’s then-deputy minister of the environment, Mark Zacharias, wrote a letter to his federal counterpart in which he said DFO changed conclusions in the report to “support status-quo commercial salmon harvesting.”

The newly released documents reveal how these conclusions were changed. Notably, the original report summary recommended that “the lowest possible allowable harm should be permitted at this time” and that “ … exploitation be reduced below current levels of exploitation wherever possible.” That was changed by DFO to read “allowable harm should not be permitted to exceed current levels.”

“Allowable harm should not be permitted to exceed current levels?” asked one scientist in an email. 

“So I guess the [report] concludes that continued decline in the abundance of the [Designatable Units] is OK because that is what is happening under current exploitation rates?”

A DFO scientist agreed it was a “big change from the language that was settled on at the meeting.”

Another DFO biologist, Scott Decker, said that the body of the report was “much more in agreement” with the science team’s assessment, but the summary allows the reader to conclude current exploitation rates are acceptable and that “exploitation doesn’t really have much influence on recovery probabilities.”

Davis also emphasized how important it was to acknowledge the impact of fisheries on steelhead.

“With two years of lowest-ever returns, what we have been doing isn’t working … we need to immediately take actions to stem any further declines to the extremely low numbers in order to have a chance to recover,” Davis wrote in a 2018 email.

But further protections didn’t come, and another two years of record-low returns followed.

Estimated spawner abundance for both the Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead populations. Source: B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. Graph: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

DFO ‘cannot be objective,’ says expert

In 2019, DFO decided not to protect the Thompson and Chilcotin populations under the Species At Risk Act, despite the recommendation to do so by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

In its decision, DFO estimated listing the species would lead to a $90.7 million loss in profit for commercial fisheries, Indigenous commercial fisheries and seafood processing over 20 years, plus an additional $16.2 million in losses for the recreational fishing sector over the same period. 

Eric Taylor, professor with the University of British Columbia’s Department of Zoology, said the federal government often emphasizes the cost of shutting down fisheries, but doesn’t measure the benefits.

“Maybe [scaling back fisheries] would result in higher returns for steelhead trout in the Central Interior. Maybe it can resuscitate the Interior fishery. Maybe it could lead to longer-term benefits,” said Taylor, who served as chair of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada when it recommended listing Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead under the Species At Risk Act.

Another part of DFO’s rationale for not listing the species under the act was the fact the province and the federal government share management responsibilities of Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead. Fish could be protected under existing provincial and federal legislation outside of the special provisions of the act, DFO said.

Taylor told The Narwhal he is shocked at DFO’s “mismanagement” of steelhead populations. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

DFO launched a Steelhead Action Plan in partnership with the province in 2019, but just a few weeks after it was released, fisheries were opened and not much has changed since, B.C. Wildlife Federation’s Zeman said.

Zeman said DFO is prioritizing fisheries over fish conservation, a view echoed by Taylor. 

“I continue to be shocked by the deliberate mismanagement,” Taylor said.

Taylor said because of its conflicted mandate to advocate for fisheries and conserve fish at the same time, DFO “cannot be objective.”

“DFO needs to be broken up, and have some responsibility taken away,” he said. “Aquaculture should be in agriculture.”

“That doesn’t mean tweaking. The entire ministry needs to be reconfigured.”

Taylor also emphasized the intrinsic value of protecting these fish. Steelhead are unique, and many people value them simply for existing, he said. 

“When you drive through the landscape, you can’t help but think of the rivers and the fish,” he said. “It’s like polar bears in the Arctic… they reflect the landscape, and people’s connection with the landscape.”

“They are not just any other fish.”

Updated May 17, 2021, at 11:38 a.m. PT to include comment from DFO. Updated May 19, 2021, at 4:12 p.m. PT: This story was updated to clarify that steelhead do not reside in the Fraser River as previously written, but rather spawn in the tributaries of the interior Fraser River. As a friendly scientist pointed out, Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead technically reside in the Thompson and Chilcotin Rivers, the Fraser River and the ocean throughout their lives.

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.

The people Canada relies on to ensure the West Coast trawl fishery is operating within the law are frequently subjected to threats and harassment, making it perilous for them to do their jobs. The result is millions of pounds of wasted fish and untold environmental impacts, a months-long investigation by The Narwhal has found. 

Workplace abuse has led observers to under-report the adverse impacts of trawl fishing and resulted in an estimated 140 million pounds of wasted fish. Put another way, that’s $1 billion in unaccounted catch in just over two decades.

In 1996, Fisheries and Oceans Canada took the unprecedented step of closing the fishery for five months in the wake of years of over-harvesting. 

B.C.’s bottom trawl fishery involves dragging a net through the water column or along the seabed, harvesting a variety of fish that live near the bottom of the ocean, including Pacific cod, hake, rockfish and pollock. The fishery was only permitted to reopen once it was guaranteed an independent observer would be stationed as a watchdog on each and every boat.

Yet an imperfect system means observers — whose reports could ultimately result in a shut down of a boat or even the entire industry — are vulnerable to intimidation from ship skippers and crew members who at times exercise pressure on individuals to under-report their findings or look the other way.

“It’s a very dangerous thing for observers to be out there,” said one observer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “You’re out there alone, often without cell service or contact.” 

The Narwhal spoke with 11 current or former at-sea observers for this story. Many asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.

Under the at-sea observer program, observers are required to estimate bycatch on ships, often while mountains of fish are being dumped on deck and unwanted species are being thrown overboard. Observers are also expected to take biological samples and count and assess the condition of prohibited species, which can include valuable fish like halibut, all while staying out of the way.

In early April, Fisheries and Oceans Canada suddenly ordered the observers off the boats for 45 days due to safety concerns around COVID-19. But observers told The Narwhal they cannot safely and effectively perform their duties during normal times. The result is a fishery far less sustainable than the observer program is designed to guarantee. 

“We’re totally destroying the [fisheries] for future generations. Completely,” Jon Eis, one of the whistleblowers, tells The Narwhal. 

The testimony of observers, along with documents reviewed by The Narwhal, outline a system that is meant to protect and monitor a resource but instead rewards the actors most willing to break the rules. 

During this investigation, Archipelago Marine Research, which provides all of the observers for the Pacific trawl fishery, instructed its employees not to speak with the media. Two Archipelago executives, Shawn Stebbins and Scott Buchanan, denied allegations that the company fails to protect its employees. 

Thousands of pounds of squashed and suffocated halibut

From the first net that was brought aboard the Raw Spirit in early December 2018, Eis knew he was on a collision course with the ship’s captain and co-owner, Kelly Andersen.

On this trip, the Raw Spirit was fishing for turbot — a roughly triangular, low-value bottom-dwelling fish — on the so-called 800 line, a productive fishing ground off the southern tip of Haida Gwaii. 

Yet it seemed for every 10 pounds of turbot pulled in by net, one pound of halibut was caught up as well. Halibut, a sought-after species that sells for more than 10 times the price of turbot, was not on the shopping list; trawlers aren’t allowed to keep it. 

The inconvenient bycatch could have spelled financial disaster for Andersen, who was legally required to report the Raw Spirit’s poundage of dead halibut. The vessel was a mere 5,000 pounds from being shut down for the year, Eis says Andersen and others on the ship told him — an outcome that could have cost the skipper hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

According to Eis, the halibut on board were in bad shape. Four crew members were tasked with separating the halibut from the rest of the catch and throwing them overboard, but struggled to do so before the fish suffocated. Others lay mangled in the back of the net, crushed by the weight of fish piled against them during a long tow. But, dead or alive, it is standard practice for trawlers to throw prohibited bycatch back.

With thousands of pounds of turbot being caught, the halibut pounds, too, were adding up quickly. 

Eis says Andersen reminded him of the ship’s annual halibut limit, which Eis perceived as a threat to not report beyond it. As the only observer aboard, it was Eis’s reporting that could get Andersen caught. 

Fisheries observers are responsible for monitoring bycatch on industrial trawlers off the B.C. coast. Many of these individuals feel not enough is being done to protect them from intimidation and harassment while at sea. “It’s a very dangerous thing for observers to be out there,” one whistleblower told The Narwhal. “You’re out there alone, often without cell service or contact.” Illustration: Maria Nguyen / The Narwhal

The introduction of factory trawlers to the B.C. coast

The Raw Spirit was brought to Canada from Norway in 2013. Its arrival on the coast was part of a new wave of trawling in B.C., as factory trawlers are capable of catching more fish, more quickly and — because they can process and freeze as much as a million or more pounds of fish onboard — can stay at sea longer than the previous generation of vessels. The Raw Spirit’s purchase was a joint venture between Andersen, the Jim Pattison-owned Canadian Fishing Company and Fisher Bay Seafood co-owners Tracy Ronlund and Theresa Williams.

The net of a bottom trawler catches anything that can’t swim fast enough to escape, and its  potential damage to habitat — rare glass sponges and corals are often damaged in the drag —  means the trawl fishery has an outsized, if invisible, impact on the environment. 

According to Scott Wallace, a research scientist with the David Suzuki Foundation, of all the ways humans interact with the natural environment on the B.C. coast, “the trawl fishery is the single biggest.”

Despite the high percentage of halibut bycatch and even with a storm approaching, Eis says Andersen kept hammering at the same spot for days. 

Eis says he felt pressured and eventually wrote down that Andersen’s crew had discarded 12,800 dead-weight pounds of halibut. (Dead weight is calculated based on the condition of the fish when they’re thrown overboard. A fish that appears full of life counts for less dead weight than a fish that is clearly already dead — though, even dead fish are given up to a 20 per cent chance of recovery.) 

The reality, Eis says, was that the Raw Spirit killed closer to 50,000 pounds of halibut in just three and a half days. 

“I’m trying to write down 25 per cent of what we really killed, and the skipper is freaking out,” Eis says. He says Andersen called the Archipelago Marine Research office to try to have that number reduced further. Archipelago would not confirm or deny that such a phone call was made, citing confidentiality concerns.

Eis also says Andersen began a campaign of harassment toward him. He alleges Andersen became aggressive and threatening, yelling at him and “doing everything in his power” to make him change the number. Eis, who at that point had been an observer for 15 years, says he began locking the door to his cabin every night out of fear. 

In an emailed statement to The Narwhal, Andersen says he regrets Eis’s “interpretation of his experience.” 

The Narwhal followed up with two emails and a text message to ask for further comment, but Andersen did not respond to any other allegations raised in this story.

Trawlers are not permitted to catch halibut, yet often accidentally do so when dragging their nets for other species. Although halibut must be returned to the ocean, many do not survive their capture and release. Fisheries observer Jon Eis said, while aboard the Raw Spirit, he witnessed the destruction of 50,000 pounds of halibut in just three days. Illustration: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Massive under-reporting of bycatch

Eis says he had experienced this kind of pressure before and estimates he regularly under-reported the waste of some species of fish, especially rockfish and halibut, by as much as 80 per cent. 

As a fisheries observer, Eis was trained to combine his observations with statistics to make an educated guess about the bigger picture. So, asked for an estimate of how much waste he has seen go unreported in his 1,200 or so days at sea, Eis conservatively puts the figure at around three million pounds of fish — a number he says would have been several times higher had he not avoided factory trawlers whenever possible. (For comparison, B.C.’s total reported legal catch of black cod in 2017 was slightly over four million pounds; it was 8.4 million pounds for halibut.)

Multiplied over dozens of active observers in the Pacific throughout the duration of the observer program, that estimate could add up to well over 140 million pounds of unreported waste on top of the reported bycatch. That would be an additional “shadow” waste of more than B.C.’s legal combined annual catch of rockfish, wild salmon, halibut, black cod, herring and all wild shellfish. It would be more than a billion dollars in fish that has gone completely unaccounted for in just over two decades. 

According to a 2016 global study conducted by University of British Columbia researchers with Sea Around Us, a fisheries research initiative, the impact of fisheries has been under-reported by about 50 per cent, meaning millions more tonnes of fish are being taken out of the oceans than official reports suggest. The same researchers estimated worldwide bycatch to be 10.3 million tonnes per year — although there is no accounting for bycatch that goes unreported. 

Eis and other observers say under-reporting is pervasive throughout the industry. Their personal accounts signal the potential for B.C.’s bycatch figures to be far higher than previously thought.

Stebbins, Archipelago’s vice-president in charge of special projects, balked at the estimated volume of waste from the trawl industry, but agreed systemic under-reporting could be happening. 

“I absolutely agree that could be a possibility,” he says. “It’s just common sense.” 

Trawlers are problematic for their bycatch. Fisheries observers operating on the B.C. coast say they consistently underreport the amount of bycatch brought in by trawlers due to intimidation and harassment. Illustration: Maria Nguyen / The Narwhal

Skippers and crews make their profit in a fine margin that exists between the cost of their quota (the fish they’re allowed to catch), the cost of their operating expenses, like food and fuel, and the money they can bring in by catching fish. Any additional expense, like catching prohibited fish and having to pay for extra quota, or having to move to a different fishing ground, cuts into profits. 

“Morals and ethics don’t pay,” Eis says. “If you follow the regulations you make less money.” 

Those who compromise their observers through bullying and threats avoid penalties, while observers who fail to do their jobs correctly are rewarded with bribes and a welcoming crew. Observers who try to report abuse say they’ve been ignored, belittled or fired. All the while, Archipelago gets paid as long as the fishermen are still leaving the harbour.

For Eis, the volume of halibut waste that day on the Raw Spirit, combined with what he felt was abusive behaviour on Andersen’s part, was a bridge too far.

“Something in my head just snapped,” he says. 

He reported what happened to him on Raw Spirit to Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Archipelago Marine Research in early December 2018, days after it occurred. A government representative told him not to speak to the media, as did the trawl association and fishermen he trusted.

“Morals and ethics don’t pay.”

A spokesperson for Fisheries and Oceans Canada declined requests for an interview, saying an investigation is underway and the department could not comment on ongoing investigations. The spokesperson said the investigation “may cover multiple avenues of enquiry,” but would not address its focus. 

In meeting notes obtained by The Narwhal, the department says it is “investigating several observer treatment [incidents].”

In a meeting with The Narwhal, Archipelago managers refused to discuss the halibut incident, also citing the ongoing investigation, though Stebbins called it “a one-time occurrence.” 

Eis says his efforts seemed futile. “Every step of the way, I felt that I was just squashed.”

After waiting a year for the responsible parties to take action, he agreed to speak with The Narwhal.

Eis says his experience with Andersen made him determined to make things right, even if it cost him his job. His last shift as an observer would be the trip on the Raw Spirit. 

But according to interviews with other observers, the kind of pressure Eis faced is not uncommon. Many named Andersen as the worst perpetrator, but other skippers and ships were named in interviews as well. 

Eis said he brought concerns about observer independence to Fisheries and Oceans Canada and after waiting one year, saw no response being taken. He has since come forward as a whistleblower. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Eis flips through a species identification booklet at a beach in Victoria, B.C. Observers are responsible for taking biological samples and reporting the catch of prohibited species. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

‘We were in denial’

Brian Mose, head of the Deep Sea Trawlers Association of British Columbia, is a fifth-generation fisherman. He grew up “crawling around the deck” on fishing boats, eventually buying two of his own as a teenager.

Today, Mose owns multiple boats in the trawl fleet as well as a hook-and-line fishing boat. 

“This is more serious than a heart attack for us,” he says of the mounting concern about abuse of the observer system.

“If it’s possible for one, it’s possible for all,” Mose says. “We’ve identified three, four, five others.” 

Despite the accusations against Andersen, which are well known throughout the trawl industry, he continues to sit on the trawl association’s board. “Legally, he has not been charged,” Mose says. “And there is nothing that we can prove to have him removed as a director.”

The at-sea observer program is a system Mose actually fought against for years as a fisherman. He and Bruce Turris, a former Fisheries and Oceans Canada economist, are inseparable today but “weren’t the best of friends” in the early ’90s, he says. 

At that time, industry was running roughshod over fish stocks and habitat. From 1980 until 1995, when the fishery was suspended, the trawl industry exceeded the maximum allowable catch every single year. In 1986 and 1987, the fishing fleet caught more than double the total amount of fish it was allowed to catch, overshooting by about 3,000 tonnes each year. Since data collection was spotty, the actual figures are likely much higher. 

Turris, at that point in charge of the fishery, concluded the only solution was to shut it down.

Trawlers were furious. 

“We were in denial,” Mose says. “We thought the actions Bruce was taking were in excess of extreme.”

Every year from 1980 to 1995 the trawl industry exceeded the amount of allowable catch. The fisheries observer program was implemented in 1995 as a solution to the problem of over fishing. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

The fishery reopened nearly five months later with one major change: there would be observers aboard the trawlers and others at shore to monitor the fish as it came in. The fishing companies would pay Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which would cover a third of the cost and contract the observers, ensuring their independence from industry.

Observers were offered as a catch-all solution to a number of problems: they’d monitor species and bycatch, improve the behaviour of fishermen and improve the quality of data the government used to set quotas. Resellers would know their seafood is sustainable. And the public would know their resources are being protected.

Over time the fishermen themselves would come around. While Mose once fought the system, he now defends it as indispensable to protecting the industry. He says fisheries managers come from all over the world to see how things are done in B.C. — and multiple statistical analyses have not found any evidence of systemic under-reporting of bycatch. 

“We had gone from a complete absence in confidence in the data to now feeling that we had improved it enormously,” says Turris, who now heads up the Canadian Groundfish Research and Conservation Society. Andersen also sits on the society’s board, despite members questioning his suitability for the role. 

But the system relies on the ability of observers to report what they see as accurately and honestly as possible.

The observers say in many cases they can’t live up to that standard, and that the public’s trust is misplaced.

“It makes you question the reliability of claims of sustainability of these fisheries,” says Misty MacDuffee, a conservation biologist at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

Rules on what areas to open and close, what fish stocks to harvest or protect or what habitat to conserve in the name of sustainability can have dramatic effects on the fishermen and their livelihoods. Before the observers, the extra pressure from those decisions could be sloughed off; reporting was effectively optional, with devastating consequences for the environment. 

But now that pressure falls squarely on the shoulders of the observers. Each time a trawler brings in a net full of prohibited fish, the observer is now required to make a difficult choice: report it — or don’t.

‘People disappear at sea all the time’

In the early 2010s, Matt McKay was among the most experienced observers working for Archipelago Marine Research at sea. 

“I’m a bit of a fish geek,” he says. “My species counts were always through the roof.” 

If McKay didn’t know what species a fish was, he would put it aside for later then run through guides to figure it out. It slowly made him an authority on identification, and an excellent observer, according to others who crossed paths with him. He would regularly be invited on research trips, a sure sign of his expertise. 

Archipelago sent McKay out on the factory trawler Viking Enterprise, the first ship of its class to be based on the B.C. coast, as a test. McKay was to help the company work out how to monitor ships like the Viking Enterprise that were to arrive in its wake — there would eventually be six.

He was shocked at how the vessel operated. As the sole observer working among 20 or more crew, he was intimidated and outnumbered. Crews worked 24 hours a day, so he found it impossible to both do his job and sleep. Still, he tried his best to diligently report on the ship’s discards. 

The skipper was Andersen, who McKay describes as “one of the skippers who will try to tell you what to write down.” McKay doubled down on his duties, working 18 hours a day to monitor as much as possible of what was happening on board. He measured more than 500 halibut by hand — an unheard-of level of granularity — to make sure he had as much evidence as he could.

When he returned to Archipelago to debrief on what he had learned, he told them because of the nature of the ships, with upper and lower decks active at once, they needed two observers on board to make sure there could be enough coverage. 

The Archipelago executives say they agreed with McKay, and passed the recommendation on to Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

But for reasons unknown to Archipelago and McKay, the recommendation was never brought into effect.

What did happen was a continuation of a culture of harassment that would force Eis and many others to under-report their numbers, McKay says, but now complicated further by the challenge of monitoring a giant ship without access to the whole vessel at once. 

He says he faced regular bullying and threats from fishermen.

“They’ll say, ‘People disappear at sea all the time,’ ” McKay says. 

Worldwide, at least half a dozen observers have gone missing under mysterious circumstances, and there are likely more, says Liz Mitchell, president of the Association for Professional Observers. At a 2013 conference in Chile, she says, she learned of three more disappearances that had occurred there. 

“Everywhere they go, observers get harassed,” she says. “[Abusers] get away with it because most people don’t even know what an observer is.”

Former observer Matt McKay said observers are vulnerable at sea where he faced regular bullying. McKay said he has been told, ominously, that ‘people disappear at sea all the time.’ Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Bribes for changing numbers

Protecting the fishery was what inspired Kate Ramsay (her real name is being withheld upon her request) to become an observer — to “save the world,” she puts it. Like many observers, Ramsay only lasted six months on the job. That’s above average for an industry that chews through dozens of observers each year. 

Archipelago says it has about a 40 to 60 per cent annual turnover, and insists that is normal for a fisheries observer company. 

Even in her six months, though, Ramsay felt the pressure. She says it would come in the form of carrots and sticks — bribes for doing what the crews wanted, a lack of work for those who didn’t. Or worse.

“If you change your numbers … [the fishermen] give you free fish, give you money,” she says. “If you say no, they’ll blacklist you.”

She was aware that changing the documents could be considered fraud. As legal documents, the reports she filed would be relied on by the government to set quotas, and by scientists to do stock assessments. They are the basis for much of what the government and public think they know about many fisheries.

“I do know of observers who have gotten too scared to not change their numbers,” she says. “They’re too scared of what the fishermen will do.”

She was finally driven to quit, soon after a trip on the Raw Spirit. She says the factory manager would demand to see her notes, pressuring her to change her numbers; the crew would dissuade her from visiting the factory part of the ship because there was “nothing new to see;” they would hide things from her and accuse her of double-counting. The harassment escalated. 

“It’s left an impression on me that I still haven’t shaken several years later,” she wrote in an email following her interview with The Narwhal.

Ramsay felt the company did nothing to assure her they were taking her concerns seriously. 

“Archipelago just laughed when I called them to talk about my experience,” she wrote. “They have a really hands-off approach. There’s almost no follow-up.”

Stebbins of Archipelago says “if it’s accurate,” such a lack of response on Archipelago’s part would be “grounds for dismissal of the person they reported it to.”

Some observers say raising concerns with Archipelago often resulted in no action; others reported losing work.

The company says it’s possible they neglected to “close the loop” and inform the observer of what action had been taken. None of the observers The Narwhal spoke with could recall any concrete action the company had taken to rectify the problems they had reported, besides preventing one observer from working on the same ship in the future.

Andersen, the skipper, was independently named by five different observers as having been abusive and unethical toward them while aboard the Raw Spirit and Viking Enterprise. Archipelago says it is aware of the allegations.

Archipelago continues to provide the Raw Spirit and Viking Enterprise with observers.

In his sole emailed statement, Andersen said, “I am deeply committed to actions that support the integrity of the At-Sea Observer Program and its continued development and improvement, as I have been since its inception in 1996.” 

Harper-era budget cuts marked ‘turn for the worse’

Several observers and fishermen pointed toward a specific moment when things took a turn for the worse: in 2012, when facing budget cuts by the Stephen Harper government, Fisheries and Oceans Canada backed away from its role as the intermediary for interactions between fishing companies and Archipelago.

The department also stopped paying part of the cost of the observer program. 

In 2013, fishing companies began dealing directly with Archipelago, and became responsible for paying 100 per cent of the cost.

A 2016 report from the Auditor General of Canada examining Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s monitoring of nine of the fisheries under its jurisdiction (trawling was not among those looked at), identified some of the wider problems with the observer system. 

The audit found that the 2012 cuts are where things went wrong, writing that the department had put itself in a position where its only recourse against offenders was to revoke their licences, which would rob the department of the data it needed to do its job. No Pacific region observer company has ever had its licence revoked by Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

The audit went on to say the government had identified “a serious potential conflict of interest” for at least four companies that monitor fish catches, but that it had done nothing to mitigate the problem. 

Of its three major divisions, fisheries monitoring makes up the largest percentage of Archipelago’s annual revenues. Archipelago says since at least the early 1990s, it has never permanently removed a ship or skipper from observer coverage, though Stebbins says when there have been major problems with a skipper, the companies that own the ships have solved the problem “quite quickly” by removing staff to protect their investments. 

Archipelago denies the suggestion that its dependence on revenue from the ships it is supposed to be monitoring constitutes a conflict of interest.

“The only reason we’re generating revenue is because we’re providing an arm’s-length service. That’s the basic tenet of our service,” Stebbins says.

“Do we have complete control over every one of our employees? No. But we do the best we can.”

A report by the Auditor General of Canada found problems were introduced to the observer program in 2013 when fishing companies became directly responsible for its funding. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Reckoning

On a rainy day this past February, Turris, Mose, Wallace and Andersen gathered in a room at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus in Vancouver, alongside other industry representatives and Fisheries and Oceans Canada officials, to discuss the upcoming year. 

They were there to talk about the usual items (catch limits, marine protected areas, logbooks), but the one topic that got more time than any other hadn’t even been on the agenda until a week prior: the simmering crisis of observer abuse. 

The Narwhal was not permitted by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to attend the meeting, but later obtained the meeting agenda and notes, and spoke with attendees. 

Everyone at the meeting was aware that Eis, who had already contacted Archipelago, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and even the David Suzuki Foundation, had gone to the media and the story would become public.

“The sense around the room was that it’s not a broken system,” says Wallace of the David Suzuki Foundation. “There seems to be nothing wrong with the system on paper.” 

And yet the observer complaints show the system, even with its built-in checks and balances, wasn’t working. 

“It makes me almost nauseous that this happens. This undermines everything,” he says. “You’ve got these old-lived species, you’ve got endangered species, you’ve got habitat … you need the observer program to work.”

Fisheries and Oceans Canada presented a list of improvements that might plug some of the holes in the observer system, including new training to ensure observers know their rights and responsibilities. Conflict resolution training is also being added to the curriculum for new observers.

Archipelago brought in new bullying policies with new ways to report problems up the ladder. 

While these fixes rest on the shoulders of the observers, other measures appear poised to curb these pressures. 

Cameras and other sensors have been installed on seven trawlers to measure when gear is moving, where fishing is happening and the fish sorting process as part of an electronic monitoring pilot program. 

The captured data is randomly compared to observer reports, and fish discards have to match up (within a generous margin of error). If it doesn’t, the logbook is scrapped and the fishing company has to pay for an audit of the entire trip using only the electronic data, which could carry a hefty price tag. According to Archipelago, no fishing company has had to go through that process yet. Even so, the very presence of video footage has the potential to take the heat off individual observers.

“As the fishery changes, the different pressures change out there for at-sea observer staff,” explains Scott Buchanan, director of fishery management programs for Archipelago. “There can be a lot of pressure on observers, so it’s important that the structure of how this works is designed so that that pressure can’t be applied, and they can do their job properly.” 

As one fisherman put it: “You can’t bully a camera.”

There’s another proposal in the works that could also alleviate some of the pressure on observers, one that would allow trawlers to keep 100 per cent of the rockfish they catch — even if it’s not on their list, even if they don’t own any quota for it. 

As a deep-dwelling fish, when rockfish are brought to the surface they often die, their swim bladders popping out of their mouths as they expand. Throwing them back is frequently a futile exercise. Forcing fishermen to retain the fish would change two things: first, it would mean the pressure was no longer on the observer to look the other way, and second, it would mean the skipper would be better off moving his boat to a different area to avoid the cost of the extra fish. 

After the government removed observers in April due to the coronavirus, the industry responded by asking that the adoption of electronic monitoring be accelerated, and that 100 per cent retention of rockfish be implemented immediately. Rather than taking the opportunity to weaken regulations, Mose and Turris and the fishermen they represent sent a letter to the government asking for tighter monitoring. 

The proposal McKay made after his first test trip on the Viking Enterprise — that there be two observers on the large vessels, standard practice in Alaska — is still not on the table. Also standard practice in Alaska is providing observers with communication tools like encrypted text messages and personal locator beacons so they are not dependent on the ship’s own systems to communicate with the authorities in serious situations. 

Archipelago said providing its observers with satellite phones is a possibility.

“It could come to that, I guess,” Stebbins says. 

Fisheries and Oceans Canada is considering improvements to the fisheries observer program to make the work more safe for individuals. It is not standard for fisheries observers in B.C. to be outfitted with personal locator beacons, which could provide a safe and secure form of communication. Illustration: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Sea change

Brian Dickens can still remember steaming back toward Prince Rupert with 150,000 pounds of perch, at 15 years old, thinking about the 80-odd people the fish would employ at the end of its journey. 

“I was so proud,” he recalls. “There was huge, huge honour in fishing.” 

He still feels proud of what he does, and has been described by people throughout the industry as honest and reliable. When The Narwhal spoke with Dickens, he was unloading a similar load of fish — 120,000 pounds of rockfish — from his boat, the Nordic Pearl. Among all that fish, he says he caught and discarded just 16 halibut. 

Dickens, now 63, grew up around the same time as Andersen, fishing the same waters. At that time, nobody believed they could harm fish stocks; it was an infinite resource, invincible to the nets and hooks by force of sheer numbers. 

“Some of us have grown out of that, and some of us haven’t,” he says. 

The reality is that every fish killed incidentally is a lost chance to reproduce, or to feed the predators and scavengers of its own habitat rather than feeding the birds and sea lions at the surface.

For those fishermen who believe bycatch is not a significant problem, he says, the challenge is not to avoid waste — it’s to avoid getting caught. 

“There’s a culture that has developed. It hasn’t developed because these people are evil, it’s human nature,” Dickens says. “If you can get away with it, that’s what you’re going to do.” 

Human nature, in all its predictable excesses, also explains why Kelly Andersen is, at the time of writing, in Denmark: he’s buying a bigger ship.

The vessel is a factory trawler with twice the power of the Raw Spirit and 15 per cent more capacity. Most significantly, it will be the first in the province to house a reduction plant, capable of rendering fish down into anonymous fish meal long before the ship ever reaches shore.

“I just don’t believe that he’s the right kind of person to have that kind of power,” Dickens says. “Kelly Andersen is seemingly operating with impunity.”

As with Raw Spirit, Andersen has partnered with the Canadian Fishing Company to buy the new ship. 

Phil Young, senior director of sales at the company, says he hasn’t heard anything that makes him question the wisdom of doubling down on the company’s investment with Andersen. Nothing official, anyway. 

“Have we heard rumours? Yeah,” he says. “Rumours are rumours.” 

The ship’s other co-owners are equally reluctant to take action based on what they see as a difference of interpretation. In an email, Theresa Williams wrote, “I believe it is impossible to know all the nuances of the conversations that may be at the core of the observer’s complaint from December 2018, and it’s fair to say that there is a difference between telling someone what to report and disagreeing with what they report.” 

She said she is aware of a possible investigation from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and that her company has taken steps to ensure its crew members understand the importance of preserving observers’ ability to do their jobs.

“If you can get away with it, that’s what you’re going to do.” 

For the observers, the ability to make judgments independently of the crews they’re monitoring is a matter of safety and integrity. Those who are still in the business could see an improvement, but for the whistleblowers like Eis and McKay, the change is coming too late.

Eis says Archipelago never formally fired him; work just stopped arriving when he began fighting to fix the system. But the company has referred to him in communications with its staff only as a former employee. 

Matt McKay, the self-described “fish nerd,” is now a mushroom picker.

Ramsay moved on to a related industry, as did others who spoke with The Narwhal. Some are still working for Archipelago.

Eis has found work, a few months out of the year, doing scientific fish surveys for the International Pacific Halibut Commission, an intergovernmental agency that monitors halibut stocks.

There, at last, he feels rewarded when he does his job, rather than when he doesn’t. It’s a job he believes is vital to protecting the future of fisheries, to making sure that when future generations put a line in the water they can catch something to bring home to their families. 

“Once there’s nothing left in the ocean,” he says, “it doesn’t matter how good a fisherman you are.”

Update May 11, 2020 at 1:02 p.m. PST: A previous version of this story noted estimated worldwide bycatch was 10.3 million pounds per year. The correct amount is actually 10.3 million tonnes per year and the story has been updated to reflect that fact.

Update May 13, 2020 at 10:39 a.m. PST: This article was updated to reflect the fact that while observer reports can result in the shutdown of boats or even the entire industry, this power does not rest with observers but rather with Fisheries and Oceans Canada which has the authority to act on the information in those reports.

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.

Even when governments have good intentions — like promoting conservation — they don’t necessarily move forward with plans for Indigenous territories in a productive or helpful way, according to Kelly Brown, director of the Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Integrated Resource Management Department. 

“A lot of work that takes place around management planning with the province or the federal government — they get all the work done, and then they come to us,” Brown told The Narwhal. 

“They don’t realize that, in the community here, we’re already working towards putting our own plans together.”

Brown is a co-author of a recent academic paper that demonstrates how a resurgence in Indigenous governance can lead to more effective conservation.

The paper, “Supporting resurgent Indigenous-led governance: A nascent mechanism for just and effective conservation,” concludes that, worldwide, “increases in conservation in some of the most globally significant areas of conservation interest will increasingly not only be unjust, but also impossible without Indigenous consent and leadership.”

‘Serengeti of the north’: the Kaska Dena’s visionary plan to protect a huge swath of B.C. wilderness

Brown pointed out that conservation techniques are often prescribed from offices in Ottawa, far removed from places where research and direct experience with the landscape are unfolding.

In one instance, Brown said he found inaccurate government data about areas of high and low grizzly bear populations that contradicted the findings of Haíɫzaqv research, which includes detailed bear monitoring. The research gives the Haíɫzaqv valuable insight into local grizzly populations. One study, for example, used grizzly hair samples to find a lower salmon run coincided with higher population levels of cortisol, the chemical associated with stress.

Indigenous people have the right to consultation when it comes to natural resource extraction but also when it comes to natural resource conservation and land use plans, Brown noted. 

It’s time for Indigenous communities to be given the power and authority to lead conservation on their own lands, which they live upon and know well, he said. 

Members of the Coastal Guardian Watchmen inspect their crab traps near Bella Bella, B.C. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

Indigenous-led conservation a social, ecological and economic win

Empowering Indigenous communities to lead conservation efforts comes with other significant benefits beyond respecting Indigenous rights and confronting the legacy of settler colonialism, found the paper, co-authored by Kyle Artelle, Melanie Zurba, Jonaki Bhattacharyya, Diana E.Chan, Jess Housty and Faisal Moola.

For example, Indigenous Guardians programs on British Columbia’s coast have delivered a social return on investment in ranges between 10:1 and 20:1, according to one study (which measured social, economic, cultural, and economic value). 

The authors cite another study that found biodiversity within Indigenous-managed areas is often higher than, or at least equal to, biodiversity in colonial or state-run parks at the provincial or federal level in Canada. 

Meet the Kaska land guardians

The recent creation of new protected areas within Indigenous territories and alongside Indigenous governments has led to sizeable conservation gains, the authors point out. 

The paper points to the newly created 14,250 square kilometre Edéhzhíe Dehcho Indigenous Protected Area in the Northwest Territories and the 14,000 square kilometre Thaidene Nëné National Park Reserve along the Great Slave Lake, established in partnership by the Łutsël K’e Dene First Nation, the Northwest Territories government, Parks Canada, Northwest Territory Métis Nation and other Indigenous groups.

The paper also notes a recent proposal among the federal government, Nunavut and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association to create Tallurutiup Imanga, which, at 109,000 square kilometres, is set to become the largest protected area in Canada.

Moving beyond ‘fortress conservation’

Lead author Kyle Artelle chuckled when he said the paper’s conclusions will not “blow folks’ minds” who are in Indigenous governance and communities, or even surprise people working in conservation who take part in these kinds of conversations.

“A lot of folks really get this, it seems obvious,” said Artelle, a biologist and adjunct professor with the geography department at the University of Victoria. “But when you leave the bubble, into some mainstream conservation groups, for example, there’s still what they call ‘fortress conservation.’ ”

Artelle said the idea of fortress conservation means aiming to conserve as many hectares as possible — and without any humans

“Some of the original national parks were very colonial. Banff has a horrible history of forcing folks out,” he said. “A lot of the original parks had this mentality that to protect nature you have to get rid of people … in a country where none of these ecosystems have existed since the last ice age without people, or longer.”

Bow River, Banff National Park. Photo: Janusz Sliwinski / Flickr

Conservation failures come with high costs

Other examples, such as weakened salmon populations, show even when governments do implement some restrictions with the goal of conservation, it doesn’t always lead to effective practices.

This year, for example, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) implemented rolling closures of commercial and recreational fisheries. But many First Nations said the closures weren’t enough. 

Some First Nations, including the Haíɫzaqv, decided against fishing, even though recreational fishing was still permitted by DFO.

Many First Nations said the government’s approach to dwindling stocks infringed on their constitutional rights of first access to fish and endangered already vulnerable salmon.

Life after Chinook: a West Coast fishing community looks to reinvent itself

The Haíɫzaqv wanted to take a “strong stance” and shut down certain areas to all types of fishing, including recreational fishing, Brown said. In 2015, the Haíɫzaqv famously occupied a DFO field office and pushed the commercial herring fishery out of their territory following a devastating population collapse. They continue to assert control over herring management, and worked with the DFO to suspend the commercial fishery in 2018.

Going forward, the Haíɫzaqv will enforce their own laws “rather than asking permission,” Brown said, recalling the Haíɫzaqv term Káxḷáya Ǧviḷás: “the ones who uphold the laws of our ancestors.”

While the DFO is relying more on traditional knowledge, change is incremental, Brown noted.

“Both the provincial and the federal government know that we aren’t going to sit back. We say something — we’re actually going to do it,” he said. 

“We don’t like to threaten that way, but sometimes we need to get to that point.”

Using tools ‘our ancestors never would have imagined’

Jess Housty, another Haíɫzaqv co-author, said writing an academic-style paper was a new way to share the ancestral knowledge she’s inherited, even though she’s not an academic.

Jess Housty, acting executive director of Qqs Projects Society on a Guardian Watchmen vessel in Heiltsuk territory. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

“Transmission of that ancestral knowledge is important work and sometimes we’re called to use tools our ancestors never would have imagined to do it,” she said in an interview.

Housty sees value in putting out these ideas in a new way.

“The crises we collectively face due to colonialism, capitalism, and climate change are too urgent for us to work in silos and I think this paper represents an opportunity to break our silos down.” Artelle hopes that the paper will make its way into the hands of decision-makers who lack information about Indigenous stewardship. Including Indigenous leadership in a national conservation strategy could help the federal government reach its target to protect 17 per cent of terrestrial areas and inland water, and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas by 2020, he said.

Groups call on B.C. to fund Indigenous monitoring of mines in traditional territories

Indigenous peoples have also recently demonstrated the government will face legal challenges if it makes major land decisions without consent, as illustrated by First Nations opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline and the Tsilhqot’in Nation stopping Taseko Mines from operating on their territory.

Housty said if the government wants to protect the environment, handing over jurisdiction shouldn’t be complicated.

“When it comes to stewardship and thriving lands and waters, no one can do that work better in Haíɫzaqv territory than the Haíɫzaqv people,” she said. 

“Anyone who purports to share our goal of thriving lands and waters should be asking themselves how they can support us or make space for us to do what we need to do  — not trying to do the work for us.”

Update November 28, 1:15pm pst: This article was updated to clarify the 2015 decline in herring populations led to the Haíɫzaqv occupying a DFO field office. The Haíɫzaqv worked with the DFO to suspend the herring commercial fishery in 2018.

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.

The federal government has taken action recently to reduce the amount of plastic waste found on land and in oceans, rivers and lakes.

In June, for example, it said it would ban single-use plastics by 2021. “It is tough to explain to your children why dead whales are washing up on our beaches with their stomachs jammed packed with plastic bags,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau commented at the time.

Despite this progress, one of the main plastic polluters — shellfish aquaculture — continues to threaten marine ecosystems.

Coastal British Columbia is rugged and jagged. Its drowned fjords are home to wild salmon and the ecosystems that depend on them. Tucked away between Vancouver and Denman islands is Baynes Sound, a serene inland sea, home to sea mammals, globally important duck and bird populations, and a biological diversity unmatched along our coast.

So unique is this ecosystem that, 20 years ago, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) recommended regions within this area be set aside as protected areas.

Threats to the sound include increased tourism, urbanization and an-as-yet-unregulated seaweed harvest. The greatest threat, however, is an expanding shellfish industry that provides a continual source of plastics to the sound.

Shellfish aquaculture

For the past 14 years, community beach cleanups have measured the plastic in Baynes Sound. An astonishing four to six tonnes of plastic debris, including anti-predator netting, plastics trays, ropes and styrofoam, is collected from the beaches annually. Now polyvinyl chloride (PVC) piping, used for the farming of geoducks is also being washed ashore.

Geoducks are native to the coastal waters of western Canada and the northwest United States. They are the largest burrowing clam in the world and are a delicacy in China, Korea, Japan and the Pacific Northwest. Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture / Flickr

In 2017, the DFO gave the West Coast shellfish industry a green light to expand its farming practices to include the lucrative geoduck, a luxury protein used in sashimi, to meet the demand from Hong Kong and the rest of China.

Geoducks (pronounced “gooey ducks”) are large salt-water clams, found naturally along the Pacific coast. Sales of farmed geoduck to this select market netted close to $56 million in 2017.

Geoduck Romesco at Taylor’s Shellfish in Seattle, Washington. Photo: T.Tseng / Flickr

Farming them involves placing juvenile geoducks into rows and rows of 18-inch long segments of PVC piping, planted vertically into the intertidal sediments, at a density of one pipe per square foot. Nets are secured with elastic bands over the pipe to protect the immature geoduck.

But the pipes become loose within days, especially after storm events, and the beach becomes littered with the plastic netting, elastics and pipes. Wave action and ultraviolet light from the sun degrade the pipes, creating fragments and then microplastics (items smaller than five millimetres in diametre) that further pollute the marine environment.

Ecosystem and health impacts

PVC is one of the most common plastic polymers in use, and its breakdown can damage ecosystem and human health.

The particles may harm invertebrates, fish, seabirds and other organisms that consume them. The chemicals in the plastic debris, including plasticizers, phthalates, flame retardants and stabilizers, can leach out of particles and have the potential to harm marine organisms. Finally, the pipe fragments can also act as a substrate, providing pathogenic marine organisms and parasites in near-shore environments with a place to grow and multiply.

“Canadians know first-hand the impacts of plastic pollution, and are tired of seeing their beaches, parks, streets and shorelines littered with plastic waste,” Trudeau said in a statement after he announced the single-use plastics ban.“We have a responsibility to work with our partners to reduce plastic pollution, protect the environment and create jobs and grow our economy. We owe it to our kids to keep the environment clean and safe for generations to come.”

So, why the paradox?

The government says it’s intent on protecting at least 10 per cent of our coastal ecosystems and reducing the threat of plastics to our marine environments. Yet the industry, which is managed by our federal government, has been given permission to introduce hazardous plastics into one of B.C.‘s most sensitive ecosystems.

Geoduck planting at the Deep Bay Marine Field Station biological research facility, operated by Vancouver Island University’s Centre for Shellfish Research in Bayes Sound, B.C. Photo: VIUDeepBay / Flickr

The ban on plastic holds consumers accountable. It targets their behaviour and will force change. But this is only part of the problem.

The other part of the problem is the industry practice of discharging dangerous plastics into sensitive ecosystems. Government is regulating a change in consumer behaviour. Why not do the same for industry?

If the government’s goal is to protect these sensitive marine ecosystems, it needs to stop the flow of plastics from industrial sources including the unregulated shellfish industry. The economic gain of farming sashimi for a select market is not worth the environmental cost.

Shelley McKeachie, a founding member, past chair and director of the Association for Denman Island Marine Stewards, co-authored this article.

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.

Being a commercial fish harvester is tough work. There are long hours, unpredictable seas and demanding physical conditions, not to mention the experience it takes to know where to drop the traps or cast a net.

Less recognized, but critical, are the economics of it. Some expenses you might expect: vessel, fuel, gear, ice and crew salary. In some jurisdictions, including the West Coast of Canada, harvesters must purchase or lease commercial licences that grant the right to participate in different fisheries, and quota that grant the right to catch a portion of a particular fish stock.

In the West Coast fisheries, a single licence may be exchanged for tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and quota transactions are worth tens of millions of dollars annually. However, the market for licences and quota is not transparent or tightly regulated. Not unlike Vancouver housing, speculative investors see opportunity and can snap up licences and quota.

As licences and quota concentrate in fewer hands, they become out of reach for active harvesters. In turn, the socioeconomic fabric of Indigenous and coastal communities stretches and strains. A recent study by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans comes to similar conclusions.

Access for sale

Over the past year, I have been leading research into the history and distribution of West Coast licences and quota. One objective is to understand who holds what and how much. The answers are hard to come by.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) manages the country’s commercial fisheries. Like many other agencies globally, it has transitioned to a “limited-entry approach,” where the number of licences is capped, and the year’s total allowable catch is divided up as “quota” and allocated to licences. For example, there were 343 West Coast halibut licences and 6.13 million pounds of halibut quota in 2016.

Governments often favour the limited-entry approach because it institutionalizes their control over who can access fisheries. DFO knows how many eligible licences and vessels there are and, based on stock assessment science, determines the year’s total allowable catch.

A common, though not universal, element of limited-entry fisheries is to make licences and quota freely tradeable. This is the case on the West Coast.

If you wanted to enter into the halibut fishery you would need to negotiate a deal with an existing holder. DFO records the official purchase and lease transactions but does not publicly report them. It does not track informal loans, co-ownership or other financing arrangements that some harvesters enter into to acquire licences and quota.

Understanding the market

Cautions about the transparency, fairness and effectiveness of the market for West Coast licences and quota have been circulating for at least 15 years. Recent reports and research on the B.C. salmon and herring fisheries indicate that a small number of holders control a disproportionate number of licences and quota.

This raises a number of issues, but two patterns are especially important.

First, fish processing firms are free to accumulate licences and quota. B.C.’s largest fish processor, Canfisco, and its parent company, Jim Pattison Enterprises, control hundreds of licences and large volumes of quota across numerous fisheries.

Sometimes processors hire harvesters to run company-owned vessels. More often, they lease licences and quota to harvesters who run their own vessels and sell back the catch. This practice helps processors secure supply and some harvesters welcome working with them in this way. Other harvesters discuss being vulnerable to uncertainty and price squeezing because the lease rates are not made public and fish prices fluctuate within and between seasons.

Second, one need not be in the fishing industry to hold West Coast licences and quota. This opens the door to speculative investing, though exactly how much is unclear.

The records DFO makes public list individual and company names, First Nations and many “numbered companies.” Without submitting an access to information request on each numbered company it is impossible to know who is behind them, where their investment funds originate and how licence and quota holdings factor into their business practices. It is not unheard of for fisheries agencies to track ownership and corporate details, but DFO does not appear to do so.

Transparency, equitability and control

In a recent report, the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans made 20 recommendations to improve the transparency and equitability of B.C.’s fisheries and to better regulate who controls licences and quota.

For example, the committee suggests there should be no future sales of licences or quota to x and that DFO should publish a database listing licence and quota holders and transactions. It also recommends that the fisheries minister establish an independent commission to study “made-in-B.C. solutions,” including a system that would equitably share the value of harvested fish between the quota and licence holder, processor and harvester.

Regulations in other jurisdictions also provide guidance. In Atlantic Canada, for example, owner-operator policy states that only vessel owners in the inshore fleet can hold inshore licences, that they must be aboard during fishing and that controlling agreements — where harvesters finance licences through arrangements with processors or other private interests — are prohibited.

West Coast harvesters and coastal communities themselves have many ideas, and several nonprofits support local initiatives. Two examples include community licence and quota banks that hold licences and quota and lease them to local harvesters for a fair rate, and affordable vessel equipment that harvesters can use to meet DFO’s on-board monitoring requirements without breaking the bank.

A policy that mandates transparency, incorporates owner-operator principles and includes appropriate market regulation, combined with innovation in Indigenous and coastal communities, might just lead to a more socially sustainable fishing sector on the West Coast.

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.

The idea of an international emergency rescue operation to save a sick young orca sounds like the perfect premise for a Free Willy sequel. Officially, Canada and the U.S. are working together to save Scarlet (J-50), a three-and-a-half-year-old killer whale  whose condition has been described as “critical.”

In reality…

The unprecedented attempt to save one of the remaining 75 members of the endangered southern resident orca population by providing food and medicine seems less like a team effort that Canada is part of and more like an American plan Canadians are monitoring, if not blocking.

An examination of scat (feces) from Scarlet and two other members of her family revealed the presence of worms that aren’t fatal for healthy orcas, but might be to the undersized, underweight endangered southern resident.

While it’s not clear if any of the scat was Scarlet’s, the vet team “updated treatment priorities to include dewormer, in addition to an antibiotic.” That was the news from America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries West Coast Region (NOAA) (@NOAAFish_WCRO), which released this on their special orca update page and in a five-part tweet.

#J50 Update (8/20) Part 5 of 5: To ensure that J50 receives the medication, veterinarians may switch to a collared needle w/ a ridge to hold it in place long enough to deliver the full dose. This type of dart is commonly used to treat wildlife & will fall out in time. pic.twitter.com/cqg3P0jAia

— NOAAFish_WCRO (@NOAAFish_WCRO) August 20, 2018

At the same time, Canada’s Department of Fisheries And Oceans (DFO) (@DFO_Pacific) was tweeting about parrotfeather plants and sperm whales.

While the DFO is part of the mission (which also includes the Lummi Nation in western Washington, the Vancouver Aquarium, SeaWorld and several other organizations), so far they’ve decided to wait and see what NOAA does when it comes to treatment. After American officials signed off on administering medicine, the DFO waited for approval to do the same because … dunno.

So, at the beginning of a five-alarm emergency rescue attempt, during which NOAA warned that the orca might only have “days to live,” Scarlet could only receive antibiotics in U.S. waters.

J50 and other members of J Pod. Photo: Candace Emmons / NOAA Fisheries

On August 8, I sent a polite query to two communications advisors at the DFO asking for an explanation.

No response.

Two days later, on August 10, I asked about the difference in U.S. and Canadian approaches during the press conference NOAA hosted and found the answer I received was … let’s go with vague.

I e-mailed another query to two DFO communications advisors on August 10 asking to clarify how and why treatment would be handled differently on our side of the 49th parallel. My questions were what are known in the journalism biz as softballs.

Cue crickets chirping.

While I waited for any response at all, one of the partners in the rescue (The Whale Sanctuary Project) reported on its website and Facebook page that Scarlet had entered Canadian waters and the operation to feed her was “aborted.”

I asked about this in a call-in press briefing about the operation hosted by NOAA and was told by the DFO that it didn’t happen.

After reassuring me there was nothing to see here, the DFO later acknowledged it didn’t have approval to feed the orca in Canadian waters.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that plans to feed Scarlet “would have to wait” because the orca had crossed into Canada. And The Seattle Times reported “NOAA has no permit to work in Canadian waters.”

So the feeding wasn’t “aborted” it just “had to wait” if the whale was unlucky enough to swim into Canada because… DFO? Anyone? Bueller?

Dr. Martin Haulena, Dr. Brad Hanson, and Trevor Foster prepare to administer an injection of antibiotics to J50 on Aug. 9, 2018. Photo: Katy Foster / NOAA Fisheries

Andrew Thomson, regional director of the fisheries management branch, told me in the press call that he was waiting for either NOAA or the Lummi to formally request permission to feed the whale. I was unable to follow-up and ask why DFO wouldn’t just go ahead and grant that permission, given the high-stakes operation underway.

On August 13, I re-sent my query with some new and admittedly blunter questions, now looping in three DFO communications advisors.

Cue those freaking crickets.

Meanwhile, NOAA sent me 11 e-mails answering questions about the rescue operation — often within minutes of my queries.

The next day I tried the DFO again and mentioned I was about to go on the radio to talk about Scarlet and was writing a story about her treatment for The Narwhal.       

Six days after my initial query I finally received my “answers.”

This was the full response to my five questions and my request to interview someone:

“We are continuing to work alongside NOAA Fisheries West Coast and other partners to investigate why J50 is in poor health, and are keeping a close eye on her, hoping to see her health improve. If further actions are needed, our decisions will be evidence-based. We are ready to respond quickly should the intervention need to occur in Canadian waters. We’ll take the best course of action for this whale and her pod without delay.”

Phew. Good thing our government agencies are no longer muzzled and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ushered in a new golden age of transparency.

In my examination of the DFO’s scat it appears their definitions of “quickly” and “without delay” include asking an unidentified overseer for approval to treat a critically ill patient known to vanish from our waters for months at a time.

I found the non-response shocking.

My editor at The Narwhal, Emma Gilchrist, was not so surprised. “In my experience, this treatment by Canadian officials is pretty par for the course,” she said.

Today, if I thought anyone would answer me, it’d be time for hardball questions like: “If Scarlet starves to death because no one signed off on feeding her in Canada, which Canadian official or organization would be responsible?”

If you’d like to know why Canada isn’t onboard with feeding this starving young orca as soon as humanly possible — and why the DFO wasn’t prepared to allow the orca to receive medical help the moment the Americans were — you’ll have to ask them. They’re not answering me.

In the meantime, when Scarlet returns to the Salish Sea, let’s hope — like DFO officials seem to be doing — that she stays in the U.S.

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.

By Stan Proboszcz. This piece was first published on Policy Options.

Does Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s (DFOs) science advisory process have integrity when tasked with answering questions on salmon farming? If there is any hope of changing the trajectory of many iconic but endangered wild salmon stocks, there must be a resolution to political and industrial interference that continues to influence fisheries science advice at the federal level.

Since 2001, a scientific debate has been active in British Columbia around parasitic salmon lice from open-net salmon farms and their impacts on wild fish. Two “camps” of scientific opinion have been obvious.

On one side, academics and NGO scientists have published articles in peer-reviewed journals detailing the negative effects parasites from salmon farms can have on migrating wild salmon. On the other, government and industry-supported scientists have published papers that cast doubt on these conclusions, thereby fuelling the debate and encouraging the continued operation of salmon farms on wild fish migration routes.

It is well established that manufacturing a scientific debate on the impacts of smoking and climate change benefits tobacco and petroleum companies. Some believe the salmon-farming debate is not very different.

DFO’s mandate to promote salmon farming

The DFO is the regulator of the salmon-farming industry, but it also promotes the industry and their products.

These dual roles were identified by the 2012 federal Cohen Commission on the decline of B.C. salmon stocks as a potential conflict of interest that may impede DFO’s ability to protect wild fish stocks. Justice Cohen recommended that the federal government remove industry promotion from DFO.

An expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada reached a similar conclusion — that DFO’s conservation of biodiversity may be impeded by its relationship with industry.

More recently, DFO scientist Kristi Miller broke ranks and testified to a parliamentary committee, raising concern the agency’s science may be influenced by the industry. Despite this, and a commitment by the prime minister to implement all of Justice Cohen’s recommendations, no known action has been taken to remove the salmon-farming promotional mandate from DFO.

Meanwhile, the salmon-farming debate continues. Evidence uncovered by the Cohen Commission rekindled the feud around the impacts of the industry. The subject this time: viruses.

DFO’s scientific stance seems to diminish the relevance of a particularly worrisome virus — piscine reovirus (known as PRV) — as a risk to wild salmon. As in the salmon lice debate, DFO appears to favour Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods (SCAMs).

Environmental sociologist William Freudenburg, who coined the term SCAMs and studied their use in the climate change debate, wrote:

“Given that most scientific findings are inherently probabilistic and ambiguous, if agencies can be prevented from imposing any regulations until they are unambiguously ‘justified, most regulations can be defeated or postponed, often for decades, allowing profitable but potentially risky activities to continue unabated.”

Within the context of SCAMs, we can compare three conclusions from DFO’s 2015 Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat report on PRV with more recent published conclusions from academics, NGO scientists and Kristi Miller’s lab.

• 2015 DFO conclusion 1: “There is no evidence from laboratory studies in British Columbia and Washington State that PRV infection is associated with any disease state, including HSMI [heart and skeletal muscle inflammation]”
  • 2017 Wessel et al.: PRV can cause heart and skeletal muscle inflammation
• 2015 DFO conclusion 2: “HSMI has not been reported on B.C. salmon farms”
  • 2017 Kristy Miller’s lab: HSMI was reported on B.C. salmon farms in 2017
• 2015 DFO conclusion 3: The information suggests “a low likelihood that the presence of this virus in any life stage of farmed Atlantic and Pacific Salmon would have a significant impact on wild Pacific Salmon populations.”
  • 2017 Morton et al.: Salmon farms may spread PRV to wild salmon and impede their ability to migrate upstream and spawn.

Mirroring the salmon lice debate, DFO’s PRV conclusions appear to exploit the uncertainty around the evidence and steer away from exercising precautionary action to protect wild fish.

The 2015 DFO report ends with unsubstantiated platitudes about B.C.’s “robust” disease surveillance program that purportedly minimizes the threat of diseases spreading from farms to wild fish. It appears DFO’s premier peer-review science advisory process, CSAS, produced premature conclusions that coincidently aligned with industry conclusions, but that are now in question.

This raises the question: Is the salmon-farming industry influencing DFO’s Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat?

Independence of federal science advisory body in question

DFO is responsible for three oceans and thousands of lakes, rivers and species, and its decisions need to be informed by sound science.

The Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, established in the early 2000s, is headquartered in DFO and coordinates science review processes throughout the country with the goal of providing high-quality scientific advice to the minister of fisheries and oceans, managers and other interested parties.

CSAS coordinates over 100 science advisory processes a year and responds to specific questions on various subjects, such as the state of fish stocks, species at risk and other fisheries issues. Federal scientists from DFO and other agencies typically comprise a significant segment of each advisory process; however, external experts are also invited to participate in the peer reviews.

The Cohen inquiry had significant implications. It identified pathogens from salmon farms as a risk to wild fish and made several related recommendations. Two of particular interest state that salmon farms located along a key wild salmon migration bottleneck should be removed unless the minister of fisheries is satisfied they do not pose more than a “minimal risk of serious harm” to wild fish.

The minister is also required to summarize the information relied on and include detailed reasons for the department’s decision.

Cunningly, these recommendations shift the burden of proof and place them firmly on the federal government, if it insists on allowing farms to operate.

When the minister needed “detailed reasons,” a new series of CSAS processes was initiated, examining the risk of various pathogens from salmon farms on wild salmon. The first examined the risk of infectious haematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV), another salmon virus.

I was asked to sit on the steering committee as a representative of the conservation community. I accepted.

This CSAS meeting was held December 5-8, 2016, in Vancouver. It examined five technical papers.

The first four covered oceanography, salmon-farm disease management practices, Fraser sockeye salmon biology and IHNV. The fifth drew on information from the other four and purported to examine the risk to wild sockeye salmon from IHNV arising from salmon farms. The final Science Advisory report was published days before Christmas 2017, over six months late.

How to improve independence in aquaculture science in Canada

After participating throughout DFO’s CSAS process, I developed some recommendations for its future conduct.

1. Separate CSAS from DFO.

During the process, I witnessed several instances that suggested DFO scientists were hesitant to freely express views that might be unfavourable to industry. During the peer-review meetings, two DFO scientists quietly urged me to raise concern about the use of a confidential memorandum of understanding (MoU) among several salmon-farming companies.

Allegedly, the MoU detailed voluntary industry disease management practices. The shocking thing was that this MoU was being used to substantiate a final conclusion in the CSAS report that there is reasonable certainty that an IHNV outbreak on salmon farms in the Discovery Islands is very unlikely.

Yet an author of the report refused to provide access to review the MoU. The inability to review the details of substantiating information is contradictory to the fundamental principles of transparency and peer-reviewed science.

In another instance, a report author deferred to DFO aquaculture management staff several questions about possible constraints that may arise in their research due to the use of summarized farm data. I think that serious concerns arise when scientists do not feel free to answer questions about their research, whether it aligns with industry or not.

These two problems give rise to questions around political interference impeding good science advice, similar to those raised over the mismanagement and collapse of east coast cod stocks.

CSAS professes to follow the Government of Canada’s Science Advice for Government Effectiveness guidelines, yet seems to violate a stated core principle around transparency and openness.

Having a science advisory process that is at arm’s length from DFO could improve the integrity of the science advice produced on fisheries issues. Good advice is critical at a time when many salmon stocks are in decline.

2. Make potential conflict of interest disclosure explicit and mandatory.

After I experienced the CSAS process, it was apparent to me that some steering committee members, participants, report authors and reviewers had current or recent connections to the salmon-farming industry.

Unlike many scientific journals, CSAS does not have explicit requirements for the disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. As a steering committee member, I requested that it include explicit conflict-of-interest criteria but was assured by the chair and lead organizer (who both held current and recent high-ranking DFO aquaculture management positions) that this was unnecessary. I was also assured that all steering committee members and participants would be listed in the final reports. No such list was published that I can see.

CSAS is supposedly based on DFO’s Values and Ethics Code, which states government will take “all possible steps to recognize, prevent, report, and resolve any real, apparent or potential conflicts of interest between our official responsibilities and any of our private affairs.”

I witnessed no explicit steps during the process.

Aside from direct financial benefits, there are many potential sources of conflicts of interest in science communication. The CSAS process should immediately integrate strong conflict-of-interest disclosure requirements for all participants, authors and steering committee members.

The long-standing scientific debate around salmon farming and around CSAS and DFO’s potential conflicting interests requires immediate resolution.

In February 2018, it was announced that Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan has asked Canada’s chief science adviser, Mona Nemer, to lead an independent expert panel on the appropriate use of scientific evidence in decision-making around protecting the marine environment, as it relates to salmon farming. More recently it was revealed that the “independent” panel will be substantially supported by DFO staff.

Time will tell what Canadians will get from yet another investigation into the salmon-farming industry. Canada’s commitment to science-based decision-making and to iconic wild salmon are at stake.

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.

Sharks, sea turtles, corals, wolffish — the 1,200 kilometre Laurentian Channel off the southwest coast of Newfoundland is home to tremendous biodiversity.

And that’s the reason it’s set to become Canada’s newest Marine Protected Area, a designation designed to conserve and protect vulnerable species and ecosystems.

There’s just one catch: draft regulations for the proposed 11,619 square-kilometre protected area allow oil and gas exploration and drilling for much of the year. In addition, the government has reduced the size of the protected area by more than one-third from what was originally planned.

Documents obtained by The Narwhal paint a picture of a disturbingly close relationship between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) and provides clues of how a “marine protected area” ended up allowing offshore oil drilling.

Canada is in a hurry to classify more marine areas as “protected” to meet an international target to protect 10 per cent of its oceans by  2020. Whether an area that allows offshore drilling will even qualify as protected is the subject of heated international debate.

ICYMI: Is Canada Fudging the Numbers on its Marine Protection Progress?

But “high confidence estimates” of up to 257 million barrels of oil and four trillion cubic feet of natural gas put the Laurentian Channel in the crosshairs of conservation and resource extraction.

The documents — obtained by The Narwhal via access to information legislation — reveal that lobbying meetings took place between government and industry without being recorded properly in the federal registry and that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans provided the oil industry lobby group with an advance copy of a presentation.

CAPP received advanced copy of DFO presentation

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans conducted more than 30 consultations since mid-2014, when a proposed regulatory framework for the the Laurentian Channel was first distributed.

Stakeholders included the fishing industry, oil and gas players, the Shipping Federation of Canada, environmental organizations, academics, Indigenous groups and various governments. The last consultation of this kind occured on October 28, 2016, with the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Committee on Oceans Management.

CAPP is listed as only having two consultations with DFO as part of this process: once on May 19, 2016, and another on Oct. 20, 2016.

But on the morning of the second meeting, Stephen Snow — DFO’s manager of oceans for Newfoundland and Labrador — sent an intriguing e-mail to Jennifer Matthews, a policy analyst at CAPP.

Both parties indicated that a call occured on Oct. 19 between Snow and CAPP, with the DFO manager beginning his Oct. 20 e-mail as “a follow-up from our discussion yesterday.” Then, Snow explained that he was attaching a draft presentation about marine conservation targets that he would be presenting that afternoon.

“As we have now concluded consultations with all stakeholders, we have not been giving out the presentation as it contains sensitive information from a DFO perspective that needs to be accompanied with the ‘Presenter,’ ” Snow wrote.  Following that, he specifically requested that CAPP “not share or distribute the power point and delete it as we agreed.”

Excerpt from documents released to The Narwhal via Freedom of Information Legislation. The e-mail exchange shows Stephen Snow, DFO’s manager of oceans for Newfoundland and Labrador, requesting CAPP review, then delete, a presentation regarding marine conservation targets.

This communication raises some big questions, according to Gretchen Fitzgerald,  director of Sierra Club Canada’s Atlantic region chapter.

“It seems like there’s some advanced notice and even some discussions that are happening alluded to in the e-mail that would make you think there’s a little bit too much collaboration going on,” Fitzgerald told The Narwhal.

“It’s just worrying when you see people getting documents in advance of what’s supposed to be a public multi-stakeholder consultation, and being given more opportunity to prepare and an inside-track on these consultations that are supposed to put everybody on an equal footing.”

Stella Ruddock, communications officer for DFO, said in an interview with The Narhwhal that the presentation was sent out early as CAPP had employees in Halifax as well as on the ground in Newfoundland, where the meeting was held, and that it was an attempt to “try to speed up the process of getting the meeting going on time.”

She said that DFO requested that CAPP not share the presentation as “there were maps in the presentation that DFO felt might be misconstrued, I guess, if they weren’t accompanied by the presenter. They felt that if it got out, if it was circulated without the presenter, it might be misunderstood.”

Ruddock couldn’t comment on which specific maps were considered sensitive, or if it’s standard practice for DFO to send out a draft presentation to stakeholders prior to a consultation.

10 CAPP members meet with DFO days after draft regs published

On June 27, 2017 — only three days after the draft regulations for the marine protected area were published in the Canada Gazette — CAPP and at least six other industry heavyweights met with DFO for 45 minutes.

That list included senior representatives from BP, Shell Canada, ExxonMobil, Nexen, Suncor and Statoil. However, e-mails from both CAPP and DFO made reference to “10 CAPP members,” suggesting more may have been present in the room.

Only CAPP and ExxonMobil actually registered the communication in the federal lobbying registry.

ICYMI: BP Wants to Drill Underwater Wells Twice the Depth of Deepwater Horizon in Canada

All companies should have registered the meeting, regardless of it being organized by CAPP, said Duff Conacher, founder of Democracy Watch.

“My opinion is that the companies violated the Lobbying Act by failing to register the meeting in the monthly communications registry,” Conacher said.

BP wasn’t even registered to lobby the federal government (and hadn’t been since 2014).

DFO wanted voluntary commitment not to drill in conservation area

A scenario note prepared for DFO’s senior assistant deputy minister of ecosystems and fisheries management Kevin Stringer noted that CAPP members “will likely raise questions on the intention of the government to prohibit or limit current or future oil and gas activities in MPAs in general, but more specifically in the proposed Laurentian Channel Oceans Act MPA.”

It also noted that DFO’s main objective for the meeting was to ascertain if CAPP would be willing to “demonstrate its marine stewardship commitment” by supporting a statement that “no calls for bid on leases in the Laurentian Channel will ever be issued in support of the long-term conservation of the area.”

It appears DFO did not meet that goal.

A summary of the meeting e-mailed out on July 10, 2017, stated that “there was some discussion about Laurentian Channel but not in detail or in any conclusive way; there was agreement to have an ongoing dialogue.”

Fitzgerald of Sierra Club said in an interview with The Narwhal that it was “quite startling” to see the number of senior representatives who met with DFO on June 27.

“I actually didn’t realize they were so interested in this piece of marine seascape,” she said. “But I think to them, it’s about their right to all the oceans on the East Coast of Canada. That’s the only reason they would assemble such a cast of characters.”

CAPP’s submission claims no serious impacts on marine mammals

Following the publication of the draft regulations on June, there was a 30-day window for public comment.

On July 21, three days before the window closed, CAPP sent its final comments to DFO. Signed by Paul Barnes — the director of the Atlantic Canada and Arctic regions for the association — the letter outlines CAPP’s argument for why it thinks that seismic and drilling activity in the region wouldn’t be seriously harmful to species and ecosystems.

Specifically, CAPP emphasized there have been no documented marine mammal injuries or deaths as a result of seismic surveys. In addition, it noted that impacts of drilling and production at two large offshore sites in Atlantic Canada have had negligible impacts on sediment and water quality monitoring.

Rodolphe Devillers, geography professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland and lead researcher at the Marine Geomatics Research Lab, reviewed CAPP’s final submission and said in an interview with The Narwhal that the facts presented appear accurate. However, he added the caveat:  “It’s just always a question of what facts they select in their letters and not others.”

For example, it’s true that there haven’t been any documented marine mammal mortalities as a consequence of seismic surveys, as it’s very difficult to relate deaths to specific sources.

It’s also consistent with the conservation objectives listed in the federal government’s draft regulations, with a particular focus on preventing “human-induced mortality.”

But as noted by Devillers, the overarching objective of the MPA is to “conserve biodiversity through the protection of key species and their habitats, ecosystem structure and function, and through scientific research.”

To him, and many other ocean scientists, that overarching objective requires the prevention of a wide range of disturbance and harms, not just deaths — something largely unknown due to a lack of scientific studies in the region.

“We do know as scientists that seismic activities do have a number of impacts, which can be loss of hearing, challenges to feed and communicate … Those affect the primary objective of the MPA.”

Seismic testing ‘serious’ pollutant: scientists

A 2013 report by Dalhousie University biologist Lindy Weilgart concluded that at least 37 marine species have been shown to be impacted by seismic testing, and that airgun noise “must be considered a serious marine environmental pollutant.”

On June 22, 2017 — incidentally, a single day before the government released its draft regulations — an article was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution that concluded seismic surveys can double or triple the death rates of zooplankton within a 1.2 kilometre radius. The authors wrote: “Significant impacts on plankton by anthropogenic sources have enormous implications for ocean ecosystem structure and health.”

Devillers voiced similar concerns about CAPP’s positioning on potential contamination.

In the final submission, CAPP said that no drill waste or petrogenic hydrocarbons have ever been detected “outside the 500 metre safety zone during drilling or operations phases” of nearby offshore projects. But Devillers noted that “even if it’s within 100 metres, it’s an impact on the ecosystem.”

“Sometimes things go wrong,” he said. “How willing are we to accept that things can go wrong? Even if it’s one chance in 50 years or something, that’s not acceptable. And they cannot guarantee that this will not happen.”

A simple fix could set clear standard for marine protected areas

A simple solution to all of this would be to amend the Oceans Act to prohibit all extractive activities in Marine Protected Areas, said Linda Nowlan, staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law.

Currently, each distinct protected area  is governed by an individual regulation, which can prohibit and allow certain activities. That’s why the Laurentian Channel Marine Protected Area allows oil and gas activities while the nearby St. Anns Bank Marine Protected Area banned them.

In comparison, Canada’s “National Marine Conservation Areas” — which include Ontario’s Fathom Five National Marine Park and Quebec’s Saguenay-St. Lawrence Marine Park — have a blanket prohibition of oil and gas activities.

Nowlan suggested the federal government should take advantage of its ongoing amendments to the Oceans Act to prohibit all “harmful activities,” including oil, gas and mineral exploration and development.

“It sets the bar from the start so industries can’t go into negotiations and whittle down protection, which is what seems to have happened in Laurentian Channel,” Nowlan said.

The government is expected to release the final regulations this year.

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.

Canada has failed to monitor and gather data on 50 per cent of all managed salmon populations on B.C.’s north and central coasts, according to a study released Monday in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

Researchers from Simon Fraser University found the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is monitoring fewer streams now than before the introduction of a wild salmon policy in 2005 that was designed to assess the health of wild salmon populations and aid those deemed at risk.

“Our knowledge of salmon populations in B.C. is eroding,” study co-author and Simon Fraser University researcher Michael Price told DeSmog Canada. “And it’s really frustrating.”

A number of salmon fisheries, including the Fraser and Skeena River sockeye fisheries, closed due to low salmon runs this summer.

Price and co-researcher John Reynolds found that since the 1980s, annual counts of spawning streams have declined by 70 per cent.

“You can’t manage salmon populations if you don’t know how they’re doing,” Reynolds said.

The study, conducted in partnership with Raincoast Conservation Foundation biologists Misty MacDuffee and Andy Rosenberger, found 42 per cent of salmon populations considered threatened would have improved had commercial fisheries been strategically reduced, study co-author and Simon Fraser University researcher Michael Price told DeSmog Canada.

Budget cuts to DFO, especially during the years of the Harper government, have played a role in poor management, Price said, but added it’s about more than just money.

“They are not taking a strategic approach to salmon management. You can’t just blame budget cuts.”

Price said there was hope after the adoption of the wild salmon policy that things would be different.

“So I was surprised to see now how bad things have gotten particularly in terms of visits to spawning streams and just gathering basic information,” he said.

Without new federal support, historical salmon population data is at risk of becoming irrelevant, Price added.

Amid Closure of BC #Salmon Fisheries, Study Finds Feds Failed to Monitor Stocks https://t.co/OdESMK2vc8 #bcpoli @DFO_MPO #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 21, 2017

Salmon Fisheries Closed Across B.C.

The report comes at a time that several salmon fisheries have been closed due to low returns. Salmon fishing contributes about $500 million and roughly 4000 full-time jobs to the B.C. economy.

In previous years, an estimated 4.5 million sockeye have returned to the Fraser watershed during spawning season. This year only about one-third of that is expected.

Price said some test are performed to gauge the general size of returning salmon populations based on a daily catch plugged into a population formula.

This year those tests were used to hit pause on a few major commercial fisheries, which Price said will provide some relief to populations.

But much more detailed and consistent information is needed on specific “conservation units,” which Price said can be made up of anywhere between one and 200 salmon populations.

“We show that 10 of 24 Conservation Units assessed as Red (Poor) would have improved in status had Canadian fisheries been reduced over the last decade,” Price and Reynolds wrote in their study.

A more cautious approach to fisheries, which targets abundant populations while allowing vulnerable populations to recover, would help maintain commercial fisheries while protecting threatened fish, the study suggests.

“We need to assess the health of populations and act on those considered red, poor or threatened,” Price said.

Price emphasized the answer doesn’t necessarily lie in ending commercial or recreational fishing, but in targeting healthy populations while giving unhealthy populations time to rebound.

Climate Change ‘Greatest Threat’ to Future of Wild Salmon

Climate change is “arguably the greatest threat to the future of wild salmon,” the study states.

Price said warmer temperatures translate into earlier spring melts, longer ice-free periods on lakes, low water flow in rivers, high stream temperatures, disease and plankton blooms can all affect wild salmon health.

A second study, also released Monday by researchers at the University of British Columbia, found warmer, less-oxygenated waters are expected to dramatically shrink the size of fish.

“Fish, as cold-blooded animals, cannot regulate their own body temperatures,” explains William Cheung, co-author of the study and associate professor at the Institute for Ocean and Fisheries and director of science for the Nippon Foundation-UBC Nereus Program.

“There is a point where the gills cannot supply enough oxygen for a larger body, so the fish just stops growing larger.”

Cheung and study lead author Daniel Pauly estimate fish will shrink 20 to 30 per cent if ocean temperatures continue to climb due to climate change.

Price said broad-reaching salmon conservation is the best insurance against climate change and the affects it will have on populations.

“With climate change we don’t know exactly what affects it will have on what populations, so the best insurance is in diversity and abundance. Some of those smaller populations today that we might deem insignificant may hold the genetic key that we’ll rely on in the future.”

Lack of Salmon Data ‘Problematic’ for Major Project Approvals

A lack of adequate baseline data is “problematic” when it comes to assessing the impact of major projects such as pipelines, salmon farms and LNG projects, Price said.

“How are we going to know whether a project is going to impact a given population if we don’t have basic information on how well that population is doing before a project came online?” he said.

Greg Knox, executive director at SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, said the federal government has put a lot of resources into supporting mining and oil and gas projects.

“It’s obvious they’re putting more effort into moving large scale development forward than assessing the impacts of development on wild salmon,” Knox said.

“Maybe it’s just easier not to know. But it does pose the question whether they do have any interest in protecting salmon and salmon habitat over large-scale projects.”

B.C.  saw more progress on wild salmon policy implementation under the Harper government than so far under Trudeau, Knox said. “Under the Trudeau Liberals we’ve see a continuation of cuts for science and stock assessment and no resources towards implementing the wild salmon policy.”

He added much of the work of conservation groups, local communities and First Nations goes ignored by the federal government. “There is a lot of data out there they don’t incorporate and there is a lot of capacity in First Nations communities and citizen science that exists.”

Price said he believes local, place-based conservation and management is at the heart of effective salmon policy.

“It may seem daunting when you think of monitoring the nearly 3,000 spawning populations in B.C. and all of these streams,” he said.

DFO could partner with more with non-profits, local First Nations and academics and engage more in citizen science, Price said. We’ve had this paternal relationship with DFO for a long time now and it’s time for that to switch,” he said. “A more inclusive process would be a more healthy process for all.”

*Article updated August 23, 2017 at 10:37am PST to include mention of Raincoast Conservation Foundation’s partnership in the study.

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.