As B.C.’s landscapes are fragmented by industrial activities and the province faces biodiversity collapse, with more than 2,000 species at risk of extinction, guide outfitters, hunters, fishers and trappers are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with naturalists, ecotourism operators and conservation organizations in a new coalition calling on the province to protect B.C.’s ecosystems before it’s too late.

The Fish, Wildlife and Habitat Coalition launched in May with the hope that the diversity of its members will force the province to listen and take action. The unlikely alliance includes 25 organizations, representing around 275,000 British Columbians and over 900 businesses — and new members continue to join the ranks.

“Within the coalition, there’s a recognition or consensus that we’re losing these values in British Columbia,” Jesse Zeman, director of fish and wildlife restoration at the B.C. Wildlife Federation, told The Narwhal in an interview. “We’re at a fork in the trail: one [path] is the status quo, which will ensure that we end up with more ecosystems and fish and wildlife populations that move towards endangered, extirpated and extinction, and the other is where we jointly advocate…to drive positive change for those values.”

Tim Burkhart, of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, said he’s not surprised so many groups and organizations have signed on.

“I think what we’ve seen is that stakeholders from across all sorts of different sectors are losing or have completely lost faith with the province,” he said in an interview, noting the province’s failure to act on its promise to implement the recommendations of the 2020 Old-Growth Strategic Review as a timely example. One of the key recommendations said the province should immediately defer logging old-growth in ecosystems facing irreversible biodiversity loss. 

“They’ve had plenty of time and there has been no meaningful change to the status quo of destroying old-growth, no deferrals, and it’s just not acceptable anymore.” 

The ongoing conflict at Caycuse and Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island, where more than 100 protestors have been arrested while trying to prevent logging of old-growth forest, is indicative of how provincial policies put ecosystem values at odds with economic interests. 

“You’d think that we should be taking care of fish, wildlife and habitat first, and operating industry and resource extraction within those constraints — but we’re not,” Zeman said.

The Narwhal requested an interview with Premier John Horgan but did not receive a response prior to publication.

‘We align on almost every concern’

Scott Ellis, executive director of the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C., said it wasn’t easy to convince his membership and board of directors to join forces with organizations that are anti-hunting. He told The Narwhal in an interview he was surprised to discover how many issues the groups agreed on. 

“It probably sounds corny but it warms my heart a little bit that we have so much alignment,” he said. “If we can come together as unlikely allies, I think government should be like, ‘Holy shit, we need to pay attention.’ ”

He said he first started bridging the divide during roundtable discussions with the former Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, Doug Donaldson, senior provincial staff and organizations like Raincoast Conservation Foundation and West Coast Environmental Law.

“I didn’t see a bunch of pottery-making, marijuana-growing, tie-dye-wearing, dreadlocked freaks and hopefully they didn’t see a bunch of trophy-hunting, beer-drinking knuckle draggers,” he said. “We align on almost every concern about our water, our forest, our harvest rates, about climate change concerns, our fish populations [and] our wildlife populations.”

Scott Ellis, executive director of the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C., says his group aligns with conservationists “on almost every concern about our water, our forest, our harvest rates, about climate change concerns, our fish populations [and] our wildlife populations.” Photo: Scott Ellis

Ellis credited Zeman for keeping the conversation going and setting up a framework to ensure members agree to put aside their differences and focus on those alignments.

“All of these groups and interests care about the sustainability of fish, wildlife and habitat,” Zeman said. “We can fight over what’s out there, and what we know is in decline, or we can work together to ensure the sustainability of those things that we care about.”

Katherine MacRae, executive director of the Commercial Bear Viewing Association of B.C., told The Narwhal she has worked with the Guide Outfitters Association on other initiatives and is hopeful this coalition will have a positive impact.

“We never speak about wildlife management or bear viewing or grizzly bear hunting or anything like that — we leave that at the door,” she said in an interview. “Ultimately, it’s habitat management in British Columbia that is failing right now and if we can join forces to make the voice stronger, then we want to be a part of it.”

Burkhart described the alliance as “unlikely bedfellows” and said he believes the coalition has great potential.

“There might be challenges and challenging conversations but by focusing on what unites us, I think it’s a really empowering step to take.”

Coalition calls on the province to create a vision for fish, wildlife and habitat

The coalition is asking the province to prioritize fish, wildlife and habitat through legislation and regulation and commit to using independent science to inform its decisions. It is also advocating for increased funding for protection and a new governance model to support restoration and conservation efforts, all in partnership with First Nations.

Zeman said it’s vital that the province first establish a clear vision for what protection looks like, and then back that vision up with appropriate regulatory tools.

“We need to have a goal for what we want B.C. to look like 50 years down the road,” he said. “We know what it looks like without a goal, because we have no salmon in the Fraser River, endangered steelhead [and] endangered caribou. We cannot continue to repeat those same mistakes.”

A lone caribou in Tahltan territory in northwest B.C. Jesse Zeman, director of fish and wildlife restoration at the B.C. Wildlife Federation, says unless B.C. sets clear goals for protection of habitat, we’ll continue to repeat the same mistakes, resulting in “no salmon in the Fraser River, endangered steelhead [and] endangered caribou.” Photo: Jeremy Koreski / The Narwhal

Burkhart said B.C. has many opportunities to live up to its promises, such as enacting provincial species-at-risk legislation which it committed to doing after the 2017 election, but agreed that landscape-level solutions have to start with the big-picture vision.

“There are many ways in which [the province] can take action right now,” he said. “We want to see that vision articulated and put into action, and we’re going to be there to hold them to account. We don’t need campaign commitments — we need action on the ground.”

British Columbia’s looming extinction crisis

He added that the province has an opportunity to show the world a better way of balancing industry and conservation.

“With our incredible biodiversity and incredible natural values, B.C. should be a global leader in conservation,” he said. “Instead, we’re falling way behind as species wink out and different caribou herds go extinct and more and more habitat is lost across the province with zero vision for what fish, wildlife and habitat could look like in British Columbia.”

B.C. forest policy lacks clear objectives for habitat and species 

While the coalition is focused on pushing the province to create that big-picture vision, it is also looking at leveraging amendments to existing legislation, such as the Forest and Range Practices Act.

“When we talk about the forestry industry, a big industry that employs lots of British Columbians [and] brings a lot of economic value to this province, we’re not asking for it to stop,” MacRae said. “We’re asking for different value guidelines to be added into the forestry act.”

She explains that the value of tourism, for example, is not considered in any forestry-related decisions, adding that adventure tourism alone is a $3.2 billion industry.

“At what point are we going to look and say that there are other values in this province that need to be considered?” 

Ellis agreed and said he believes the forest industry can coexist with habitat protection, but warned there will be more conflicts unless the province acts quickly to implement significant change. 

“Let’s do a better job. Let’s deactivate some roads, let’s plant some deciduous [trees], let’s have a kind of mosaic of tree species out there.” 

Five ways B.C.’s new forestry plan sets the stage for more old-growth conflict

He added he’s been unsuccessfully advocating for change in how the province manages B.C.’s forests for over a decade.

“Government doesn’t care, doesn’t listen,” he said. “Or if they listen, they just blow it off. And it is regardless of government — green, orange or red, we’ve talked to them all.”

The Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development declined requests for an interview and the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy was unable to provide an interview prior to publication.

B.C.’s cultural identity is intertwined with the natural world

Zeman said the members of the coalition are coordinating how best to work together and to ensure growth is sustainable. The next step is to start actively engaging with the province, and later the federal government as well.  

“We would like to see legislated objectives and outcomes tied to fish, wildlife and habitat,” he said. “Because we know that if we don’t have those, we won’t have any fish, wildlife and habitat.”

If B.C. continues to lose species and its landscapes are increasingly fractured, Burkhart said there will be far-reaching impacts, not only in the natural world but also to the province’s cultural identity.  

“The tourism slogans, ‘Beautiful British Columbia’ and ‘Super, Natural B.C.’ aren’t going to hold up for long if we keep seeing all the habitat disappear, and more and more species on the brink.”

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This story is published courtesy of the Guardian as part of the ongoing series This Land is Your Land.

First Nations and conservationists are warning that Pacific herring populations are “collapsing” off Canada’s western coast, and are appealing for a moratorium on commercial fishing until the critical species can rebuild.

Emmie Page, a marine campaigner with the organization Pacific Wild, said in the past, five large commercial herring fisheries opened each year on the coast.

“Four have since closed because they have very little to no spawn,” she said.

A recent report by Pacific Wild concludes that the Pacific herring fishery is unsustainable and warns that if the government continues to allow fishing at the current level, “herring along Canada’s west coast will teeter on the edge of complete collapse.”

“Currently, we are managing herring to economic and biological decimation,” the report argued.

The small, oily fish are a key food source for various species along the coast including chinook salmon, which are in turn the main food source for endangered southern resident killer whales. According to Pacific Wild, up to 88 per cent of the commercial catch is reduced to meal and oil to feed farmed Atlantic salmon. Herring roe, equaling about 12 per cent of the catch, is sold, but declining in value, the group’s analysis states.

The Tsawout hereditary chief, Eric Pelkey, said his community enjoyed a healthy herring fishery for generations, and it was a staple food in his community as well as a valued trading item. He added that his nation hasn’t been able to fish for herring for about two decades because the stocks have been decimated.

“There’s no availability to us in our area, our people haven’t been accessing the fishery, there’s been very little herring in our territory,” he said in an interview.

“It is pretty apparent to everybody that it’s collapsing.”

Pacific herring play a crucial role in the ecosystem off the coast of B.C. The small fish are a key food source chinook salmon and other coastal species. They are also a staple food for many First Nations. Photo: Ian McAllister / Pacific Wild

The W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council, which represents Pelkey’s nation and two others, has written letters to the fisheries minister asking for a moratorium on commercial Pacific herring fishing since February 2020, but has never received a response, Pelkey said.

The fisheries department said it was committed to responsibly managing the commercial Pacific herring fisheries to ensure the sustainability of the stock. It says that herring populations have long been stable in the remaining major fishery, which opened this year at a 20 per cent harvest rate.

Read more: B.C.’s last great herring fishery

“Herring populations naturally fluctuate from year to year,” it said. “The department’s management approach is designed to respond to a varying abundance of herring by adjusting fishing opportunities accordingly to protect the stock.”

Another First Nation, the Gwa’sala-’Nakwaxda’xw Nations, recently filed an injunction application in federal court seeking to stop the fisheries department from granting a smaller commercial herring fishing license in its territories. It was denied.

Seine net fishing boats harvesting herring in the Strait of Georgia, the location of B.C.’s last commercial herring harvest. Photo: Ian McAllister / Pacific Wild

The nation said in a statement that for the third year in a row, community members will need to purchase herring roe from other nations instead of harvesting it themselves, out of concern for dwindling herring numbers.

“We continue to be surprised by the way the Department of Fisheries and Oceans ignores our input and concerns,” said Patty Walkus, elected chief.

“We have been fishing these waters for thousands of years … We are extremely disappointed that, once again, our traditional laws and knowledge have not been taken into account.”

Pacific herring is a coastal schooling species that can be found from Alaska to Mexico. In the U.S., scientists have also marked declines in certain Pacific herring populations, but did not consider them significant enough to warrant listing herring under the Endangered Species Act, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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On the Nass River in northern B.C., the current spins six fishwheels managed by the Nisg̱a’a Lisims Government. The fishwheels, which carry baskets round and round, are like “ferris wheels for fish,” according to Andrea Reid, a Nisg̱a’a fisheries scientist.

After fish are caught, the baskets drop them into a holding pen submerged in water next to the wheel.

“It’s a friendly way to capture fish because it doesn’t really stress them out,” said Reid, adding that the fish aren’t exposed to air and are rarely damaged.

These fishwheels are just one example of Indigenous fishing technologies that allow for a selective harvest, meaning fish from strong populations can be harvested and those from weak populations can be released. Such technologies were widely used across First Nations territories prior to colonization, when they were banned by the Canadian government. Reid said Indigenous fishing systems were outlawed and destroyed because they were “a source of power” for Indigenous Peoples and “a way for nations to have sovereignty.” 

Today, Indigenous fishing technologies are used on a much smaller scale and for various purposes across the province — for instance, the Nass River fishwheels are used for research rather than harvesting — but experts say expanding their use could help save imperiled populations of salmon.

In a new paper published in the journal BioScience, Reid and more than 20 co-authors, including scientists and community leaders, conclude that revitalizing Indigenous fishing management systems and technologies — such as dip nets, fish traps and weirs — could support the sustainable harvest of salmon and strengthen Indigenous governance, unlike contemporary management systems, which have contributed to declining populations. 

The authors also note that Indigenous fishing systems are centred on a reciprocal relationship with the environment in which harvesters are also salmon stewards.

“This research is a reminder that if we do things in the right way, as humans, we can continue to have prospering, healthy, rich, beautiful cultures that come from healthy, rich, beautiful ecosystems,” said Spencer La’goot Greening, a member of Gitga’at First Nation of the Tsimshian People and a co-author of the paper.

“The current paradigm has demonstratively failed.”

Doing things the right way is more important now than ever before. This year, Fraser River sockeye returns were the lowest ever recorded. In November, 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 and three populations could not be assessed due to deficient data. 

Salmon face many threats, such as resource development that leads to habitat degradation and warming waters due to climate change. Some scientists estimate thousands of wild salmon die every year from sea lice picked up from salmon farms. B.C.’s commercial fishery usually catched more than a million salmon mid-migration, but in 2019, returns were so low that just 629,000 salmon were caught. (2020 stats are not yet available.)

“The current paradigm has demonstratively failed,” said Will Atlas, lead author of the paper and a scientist with the Wild Salmon Centre. “That’s a travesty. But it’s also an opportunity to reimagine the way we fish.”

Authors advocate for return to selective, in-river B.C. fisheries

Atlas said one of the biggest changes in fishing that took place after colonization was shifting away from in-river fisheries to large-scale, mixed-stock ocean fisheries. In-river fisheries target specific populations, while mixed-stock ocean fisheries intercept many populations. Indigenous Peoples had marine fisheries pre-contact, but they were much smaller than today’s commercial fisheries.

The paper concludes that “there is an urgent need to realign the scales of fisheries with biologically relevant scales,” such as the size of individual salmon runs. The authors suggest doing this by scaling back commercial marine fisheries and refocusing on in-river harvesting. However, they emphasize it’s just as important to make sure in-river fisheries — which can net as many fish as mixed-stock ocean fisheries — don’t overharvest either.

They also recommend fisheries managers support the implementation of selective fishing technologies. Additionally, they suggest policy reform to make harvesters responsible for monitoring and managing fishery impacts and “redistributing some of their catch within their communities.”

A weir on the Koeye River on B.C.’s central coast was built with locally sourced materials and is weighed down with rocks and sandbags. This simple technology comes from millennia of Indigenous salmon management and has provided estimates of sockeye abundance in the Koeye River since 2013. Photo: B Deroy

Sunlight hits the downstream side of the Koeye River weir at high tide. This weir is a cedar fence that spans the river to trap salmon. Photo: B Deroy

Indigenous systems like fishwheels and weirs, which are essentially river-spanning fences, also allow for more monitoring than commercial fisheries, Atlas said. Since these technologies catch salmon in rivers at the end of their journeys in what’s known as a “terminal fishery,” harvesters are “essentially generating information about populations that they’re catching in real time,” he said. 

Harvesters can get an idea of the abundance of populations and fish accordingly. 

“You can do much more precise, adaptive, in-season management at a terminal fishery than you can do at a mixed-stock fishery, where you don’t know how many fish there were until after the fact,” Atlas said.

He added there are many challenges in shifting from marine fisheries to terminal fisheries, the most central questions being who gets to fish and where — and who decides.

“You can’t assign a commercial fisher with a north central coast area licence a river in a First Nation territory and say, ‘Go fish there with a weir,’ ” Atlas said. “That may create conflicts between First Nations and other users.”

The authors also aren’t suggesting doing away with commercial fisheries completely. 

“There is nothing wrong with the existence of [marine mixed-stock] fisheries,” Reid said. “It’s about not putting all of our eggs in that basket and relieving pressure on salmon.”

Several B.C. First Nations have revitalized traditional technologies, but scaling up remains a challenge

Since colonization disrupted Indigenous fishing practices, use of these selective technologies today varies across territories. 

Many people continue to use dip nets, which operate just as their name suggests. The fisher uses a simple net with a long handle, often in narrow canyons where salmon hug the shoreline. A family will often pass down its dip net site for generations. 

The Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Nation operates a fish weir on the Koeye River on B.C.’s central coast. The weir, a cedar fence that spans the river and guides the salmon to a trap, is being used to monitor the salmon population, so all of the fish that are caught are tagged and released. Atlas participated in the ongoing research project, which is being done in collaboration with Simon Fraser University and the Hakai Institute. 

On Vancouver Island, the W̱SÁNEĆ Nation is revitalizing its reef net fishery, a journey that began in 2014 when XEMŦOLTW̱ Nick Claxton built a net for his Master’s thesis at Simon Fraser University. He and other community members went reef net fishing for the first time that year, about a century after the fishery was banned. A second net was launched last August by a group of youth. Reef net fishing involves drawing a central net between two boats and lifting the sides of the net so fish can be selectively harvested or released. 

And, last year, the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation, in partnership with the Wild Fish Conservancy, submitted a proposal to Fisheries and Oceans Canada to establish a net fish trap in the Lower Skeena River that would be used for harvesting as well as monitoring. The project is still pending approval.

First Nations have various resources and needs to revitalize their traditional fishing systems. For example, the Nisg̱a’a fishwheels are funded by the Lisims Fisheries Conservation Trust, which was established under the Nisg̱a’a Final Agreement. The treaty established the trust to promote sustainable fisheries and Nisg̱a’a stewardship, with the federal and provincial governments contributing $5.75 million each and the Nisg̱a’a Lisims Government contributing $3 million.

Heiltsuk fisheries technicians Scott Lawson and Robert Duncan move cedar weir panels into the Koeye River. Photo: Grant Callegari

Significant investment is needed to rebuild these systems harmed by colonization, according to Qixitasu, or Elroy White, an archeologist from the Haíɫzaqv Nation. He said more than 300 stone fish traps remain in Haíɫzaqv territory, but none of them is in use. Thousands more dot rivers and streams along the west coast, from Alaska to Washington state. 

These traps, which are often at the mouth of the river, are stone walls that are below the surface of the water at high tide. Salmon swim into the trap area, and when the tide lowers, they’re confined in the water behind the trap walls. 

White wrote his thesis on stone fish traps, grounded in oral history. People want to revitalize stone fish traps, he said, but the nation faces challenges after decades of disruption.

“To revitalize our stone traps is going to take an incredible amount of money, logistics and support,” he said.

The traps caught many fish, but harvesters would only pick out the ones they wanted to smoke dry, White said. Less oily salmon are better for smoking, and smokehouses would be set up near the trap seasonally. A single family smokehouse would smoke at least 14,000 salmon during the fall, he added, since salmon was so plentiful.

“You’d store [the smoked salmon] in the winter,” he said. “You could store it anywhere — indoors, outdoors, in the rain, in the sun — and it would never rot. You would use it for trade and then use it for food and for ceremonial purposes.”

Seeing the hundreds of fish traps still standing in his territory is significant to White.

“Stone fish traps are a physical reminder of our ancestors’ ingenuity in creating something so simple that helped sustain the salmon population,” White said.

Now salmon numbers are so low, traps wouldn’t catch that many fish, White said. 

“Colonization disrupted systems of management that worked pretty darn well for 10,000 years,” Atlas said. “All of us — and salmon and ecosystems that depend on salmon — are suffering the consequences.”

To truly build up Indigenous-led selective fishing projects, he said Fisheries and Oceans Canada will have to “put some money and some teeth behind it.”

“We’ve got to start writing policy … and resourcing communities and fishers to make these kinds of transitions,” he said.

Indigenous fisheries management systems provide social, economic and ecological benefits

The authors argue that while many modern fisheries in B.C. are “struggling to provide sustainable social, economic and ecological benefits,” Indigenous systems demonstrate benefits in all those arenas.

“Fish are economies for us,” Greening said. “They have been for thousands of years. So highly tuned systems of resource management were necessary for these economies to survive.”

The paper describes how resource management decisions were made at a local level and were geographically specific. In contrast, large commercial mixed-stock fisheries intercept many salmon runs and follow federal government quotas. 

B.C. salmon face many threats, including warming waters due to climate change. Photo: J Armstrong / University of Washington

When Fisheries and Oceans Canada introduces restrictions to manage the impacts of mixed-stock fisheries on salmon, those measures can wind up hurting coastal communities by reducing fishing opportunities for locally abundant populations, Atlas said.

“I think a real challenge with our current top-down, bureaucracy-driven fish management is that local people are just fundamentally disempowered,” he said.

Smaller fisheries led by local governments lead to a closer connection with that environment, Greening said.

“Humans are a part of this environment. We can add to it, we can make it diverse and we can make it thrive,” he said. 

“The more localized and human relationship you have with the process — that human to ecosystem relationship — the more sustainable it becomes.”

In B.C., fishing — or not fishing — can be ‘a political act’

Greening remembers ice fishing with an Elder from Lake Babine Nation in central British Columbia when he was three or four years old. It’s his first memory of harvesting fish.

“It was explained to us that when we’re given a fish, it’s the fish consciously giving itself to us,” he said. “They have agency in this role of providing for us as long as we uphold our responsibilities to them.”

Greening carried those lessons with him. He is pursuing his PhD focused on the connections between language, place-based knowledge and environmental stewardship in Gitga’at territory. When he began his research, Elders didn’t want him to simply write down their answers to his questions.

“They didn’t want me to just learn about what it took to be a Tsimshian fisherman. They wanted me to become that,” he said. “They started teaching me to make nets.”

Fishing, he said, can be “an exercise in reconnecting with your ancestral ways” and can become “a political act.”

Salmon holds cultural significance for First Nations in B.C. Here, salmon is prepared in a smoke house on Heiltsuk territory in Bella Bella, B.C. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

It’s also an act of ceremony. Along the west coast, the First Salmon Ceremony, is a near-ubiquitous practice “honoring and encouraging the life-giving return of salmon,” the authors describe in the paper. 

Following the ceremony, there’s often a short-term moratorium on fishing, allowing the first runs to reach their spawning grounds.

“Indigenous people don’t want non-Indigenous people to just adopt their spirituality, but they want to see these things as connected to something bigger than just profit,” Greening said.

Some Indigenous leaders have called for a moratorium on salmon fishing to save stocks, and, indeed, a study published in September found that closing fisheries in Canada would help rebuild stocks and even lead to economic gains. 

At a local level, the Wet’suwet’en First Nation saw Skeena sockeye increase by 50 per cent over three years following nearly two decades of closing or limiting the catch in their food fishery in the Skeena watershed.

They are not alone. Other First Nations, like the Tsilhqot’in, have voluntarily closed their salmon fisheries in recent years, sacrificing their right to fish to conserve struggling salmon.

Greening hopes this paper will end up on the desks of policymakers and members of Indigenous communities to help guide them in restoring Indigenous systems of fishing.

“There’s just that reminder that … our ecosystems don’t have to be crashing in order for us to thrive as humans.”

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 is the first part of The Narwhal’s three-part series on the future of sustainable salmon.

Damien Claire stands inside an industrial complex on the outskirts of Miami, watching thousands of salmon fry dart this way and that in a circular tank. At nine weeks old, the youngsters are the size of paperclips and learning to feed. Instinctively, they school, turning into a swirling dark ball in the lime green light. 

Claire wears a bright safety vest and a white hardhat stamped with the logo of the company he works for, Atlantic Sapphire. It’s a brand that pops up frequently these days in seafood industry publications with names like Salmon Business and Intrafish. 

Founded by two Norwegian cousins with an environmental ethos, Atlantic Sapphire got its start in Hvide Sande, a windswept Danish fishing village on the North Sea, where the company raised small batches of market-ready salmon that never dipped a fin in the ocean or a river. Today, the company is poised to become the largest producer of land-based Atlantic salmon in the world.

Claire, originally from France, is Atlantic Sapphire’s chief sales and marketing officer. He’s clean-shaven, has a movie-star accent and waves his hands around when he speaks. His enthusiasm is palpable, even through Zoom and a wonky internet connection. 

The fry, he explains, were transferred about two weeks earlier from an onsite hatchery, where they spent the first weeks of their lives eating their yolk sacs. In another 18 to 20 months, after moving through five more tanks that mimic the natural stages of their life cycle, from freshwater to saltwater, and something in between, they will be ready for the grill.

“It’s a little bit faster than in net pens because the fish always have ideal conditions,” says Claire, who previously worked for a large distribution company selling Chilean farmed salmon. “There is no winter here, there are no diseases, there are no sea lice. We optimize everything the fish needs.”

More than three million Atlantic salmon, in various stages of development, are swimming and schooling in what Atlantic Sapphire calls a Bluehouse. Think of a greenhouse, only for fish. The Bluehouse, a name trademarked by the company, is an hour’s drive from downtown Miami and 25 kilometres from the turquoise waters of Biscayne Bay near the Florida Keys. From the air, the complex appears as a blaze of white bobbing in a sea of fields. The flotsam and jetsam of small farm buildings and plant nurseries fleck the surrounding landscape. 

Land-raised Atlantic salmon seen swimming in Atlantic Sapphire’s Bluehouse facility, which completed its first commercial harvest in September. Atlantic Sapphire has plans to dramatically increase their harvest, which could have market repercussions felt by B.C. salmon farmers who sell 95 per cent of their fish to the U.S. Photo: Atlantic Sapphire

As global demand for protein grows, and wild fisheries collapse or reach peak harvest, Atlantic Sapphire hopes to help fill the gap with land-based salmon from the Sunshine State. The Bluehouse is close to major U.S. markets, avoiding the carbon footprint of farmed salmon flown in fresh from countries like Canada, Chile and Norway. Raising salmon on land side-steps the controversy that continues to entangle the open net pen salmon industry, which has been marred by mass escapes of Atlantic salmon into the Pacific Ocean — where it’s feared they could displace dwindling native salmon stocks — and accused of spreading disease and parasites to wild salmon. 

Atlantic Sapphire markets its salmon as ocean safe and planet friendly. “All natural,” the company advertises. “No hormones, no antibiotics, no parasites, no pressure.”

First Bluehouse harvest goes to market 

In late September, the Bluehouse completed its first commercial harvest of salmon. The fish were packed whole on ice and dispatched to an initial 120 grocery stores by truck, where they were sold with a “USA raised” stamp and an American flag. It took 48 hours for one truck to drive to Quebec, where the sushi-grade salmon — rated a “best choice” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch certification program and recommended by Ocean Wise — are sold at IGA stores.

Johan Andreassen, an Atlantic Sapphire co-founder who calls himself a salmon entrepreneur, tweeted a photo of an empty U.S. grocery store tray behind a Bluehouse Salmon label, saying, “When you raise truly sustainable Bluehouse Salmon that is super fresh, mild and delicious in the USA this is what can happen. SOLD OUT!” One commercial customer, Acme Smoked Fish, heralded the harvest as a “seismic shift” for the global seafood industry.  

By January, Atlantic Sapphire, which currently harvests salmon several times a week — selling Bluehouse fish in grocery stores as far away as Texas and California — plans to send fish to market every day. The industrial complex continues to mushroom over a former tomato field as the company adds more capacity. 

Commercial salmon, harvested from the Bluhouse facilities in Florida, have made their way into Canadian markets and have been sold at IGA grocery stores in Quebec. Illustration: Atlantic Sapphire

Ten years from now, Atlantic Sapphire plans to harvest 220,000 tonnes of salmon annually — more than one-half of all farmed salmon consumed in the U.S. in 2018. That’s more than twice B.C.’s yearly farmed salmon production. 

“In the near future,” the Bluehouse salmon website says, “it will be as natural for consumers to prefer salmon from Florida as it is for them to seek lobsters from Maine and potatoes from Idaho.”

For British Columbia, which sells 95 per cent of its farmed salmon to the U.S., the repercussions are enormous. Claire says Atlantic Sapphire doesn’t intend to displace open net pen salmon farming. Rather, the company says it is helping to conserve dwindling populations of wild fish populations by decreasing demand for wild fish, thus protecting threatened habitats. But Atlantic Sapphire offers a shining, even glaring, example of what the B.C. salmon farming industry says it cannot do — raise commercially viable salmon on land instead of in the sea. 

As the Trudeau government promises a transition away from open net pen salmon farming by 2025, the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, representing some of the world’s largest salmon farming companies, is hooking itself to a large part of the status quo: raising Atlantic salmon in the Pacific Ocean. An animated video released by the association in October, as part of a new “Deeper Dive” platform to correct what it calls “misinformation and disinformation,” says the technology does not exist to successfully replace all of B.C.’s open net pen salmon farms with land-based operations. 

“Lots has been said about land-based salmon farming, that it’s the future,” says the video’s deep-voiced narrator. “But the reality is B.C. is considered a world leader in innovation and responsible farming, today.”

Today, virtually all B.C.’s farmed salmon — 99.4 per cent — are raised in open net pens up and down the coast, in sheltered bays where the tide flushes away part of their waste. 

Some, like those in the Discovery Islands, are along migration routes for Pacific salmon, where scientists like Alexandra Morton have raised the alarm about the transfer of sea lice to vulnerable wild juveniles leaving their natal rivers. Sea lice are a parasite that feed on fish, causing stress and damage to their immune systems and making them more vulnerable to disease. 

An open net pen salmon farm off the B.C. coast. Photo: Tavish Campbell

Only a smidgeon of the province’s farmed salmon production — 0.6 per cent — comes from land-based operations. Kuterra, on northern Vancouver Island, owned by the ‘Namgis First Nation, produces Atlantic salmon while West Creek Aquaculture in Agassiz raises coho sold in the Prairie provinces. 

Elsewhere in the world, land-based salmon farming is revving its engines for take-off. Investors are sinking funds into land-based containment systems close to markets, slashing transportation costs by avoiding air travel and offering a lower carbon product that doesn’t require antibiotics, pesticides or elaborate attempts to vanquish harmful sea lice, such as a barge with a “hydrolicer” that pressure washes lice from farmed salmon on Vancouver Island’s west coast. 

At least 75 land-based salmon farms are operating, planned or in construction around the world. In the United Arab Emirates, a short drive from Dubai, salmon are raised in the desert, in a facility that has environmental controls to create tides, sunrise, sunset and automatic currents that mimic a river or ocean. Sea water is cleaned and filtered for the tanks, and the company plans to install solar panels for energy. “It’s the realization of a dream — it fits perfectly within the UAE’s drive for food security,” Nigel Lewis, the technical manager at Fish Farm UAE, a company backed by the Crown Prince of Dubai, told Salmon Business. 

One salmon farm in a Swiss mountain village caters to the luxury food market, advertising “pure alpine salmon,” while Poland’s Jurassic salmon, three kilometres from the shores of the Baltic Sea, uses filtered saline geothermal water to fill its tanks, converting fish faeces into fertilizer for nearby agricultural operations.

Land-based salmon farms are also causing ripples in countries like Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Japan, Chile and South Africa. China has jumped into the land-based salmon business with a splash, planning to produce 130,000 tonnes over the next decade, making it the world’s largest land-based salmon farming country after the U.S., in the top spot, and Norway. At the end of November, the Norwegian company Norsal unveiled plans to build a $400 million land-based salmon farm in Yantai, China, an industrial city in Shandong province along the country’s northeast coast.

Wild, juvenile salmon infested with sea lice, captured near open net pen Atlantic salmon farms. A single sea louse, which will feed on the tissue, mucus and blood, is enough to kill a juvenile salmon. Photo: Tavish Campbell

Salmon farms can amplify sea lice populations, putting wild salmon stocks at risk. Photo: Tavish Campbell

Across the U.S., land-based salmon farms are in the works from coast to coast. In Wisconsin, a state not normally associated with ocean products, Superior Fresh is off to such a promising start with land-based salmon production that it’s boosting capacity. Nordic Aquafarms, a company already raising salmon on land in Norway, is building two massive closed-containment projects “close to large markets,” one north of San Francisco and the other in Belfast, Maine — where other land-based salmon farming companies are also setting up shop. 

As demand for protein climbs in tandem with the world’s growing population, expected to top nine billion before 2050, investors are becoming ever more creative. It might stretch consumer imaginations to source salmon from the land instead of the sea but, as Ethan Brown, founder and CEO of the wildly successful plant-based protein company Beyond Meat, puts it, a new idea is only “crazy until it’s not.” Beyond Meat, which makes vegan burgers that seep red juices to mimic blood in meat, is now valued at US$12 billion, while Atlantic Sapphire’s share price has increased by 280 per cent over the past three years and continues to inch upward despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic, if anything, has given land-based salmon farming even more of a boost as it disrupts the global supply chain and the air freight sector takes a hit. But even before 2020, Claire says consumers were turning toward more locally made products and home-grown foods. “Having a shorter value chain and a fresher product is really a big driver.” 

The world’s demand for protein is expected to climb with the globe’s growing population. Illustration: Atlantic Sapphire

There are at least 75 land-based salmon farms planned, operating or under construction around the world. Illustration: Atlantic Sapphire

Seafood customers searching for eco-friendly products

Daisy Berg, the first seafood buyer in North America to source Atlantic Sapphire salmon, says consumers are also increasingly looking for products that have a minimal environmental impact. “This customer base is willing to pay a little bit more … I’ve always believed that seafood customers vote with their forks.”

Berg, who prefers her salmon grilled, with a sprinkle of salt and pepper, is the seafood program and category manager for 18 New Seasons Market grocery stores in Portland, Oregon, and six New Leaf Community Markets in California. 

In 2017, she was tasked with trying to find Atlantic salmon for the Portland stores that met the company’s desire to source as much healthy, eco-friendly food as possible. New Seasons hoped to offer fresh salmon year-round, and that meant searching for alternatives to frozen wild salmon in wintertime.

“From day one, we said we were not wanting to carry farmed salmon until there was a change in the industry that aligned with our mission for seafood sustainability,” Berg says in a Zoom interview from Portland. “That’s always been a concern — the waste getting into the ocean and having an impact on the environment.”

Daisy Berg is a seafood buyer for New Seasons Market, a chain of about 25 stores in Oregon and California. Berg said she applauds Bluehouse Salmon for its taste and sustainability. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

Heading off to the Seafood Expo in Boston, North America’s premiere seafood event of the year, Berg was skeptical she would find the right product. She lined up meetings with four farmed salmon suppliers, including Atlantic Sapphire. All were eager to show they were taking concerted steps to mitigate the environmental impacts of their operations. But Berg couldn’t help feeling she was just going through the motions. 

“I’d been digging in my heels for years,” said Berg, who grew up in New Mexico, far from the ocean, working at her parent’s fish market, selling fresh seafood flown in from the east and west coasts. “I’ll look to see if there’s anything,” she thought at the time, “and at the end of it there’s not going to be, and so we can just move on and stick with wild salmon.” 

Berg processes fish from Bluehouse Salmon at Ocean Beauty, a distributors warehouse in Portland, Oregon. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

Berg unpacks a Bluehouse Salmon from her first order shipped from Florida. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

At the seafood expo, Berg partook in blind tastings of farmed salmon from the four companies, cooked without any flavourings: “a very blank slate, just to get the true flavour.” The Atlantic Sapphire salmon was comparable to chinook salmon, but milder, she says. “It has a pretty buttery, rich consistency.” 

A tour of the Bluehouse sealed the deal. Berg and other seafood buyers saw the first batch of silvery smolts schooling in tanks that recirculated 99 per cent of the water they used. “It just became a very obvious choice,” Berg says. “It just really hit me that this literally has zero impact on the ocean. None of it comes from the ocean. None of the waste will go to the ocean. There’s no chance for the fish to escape. It was really, really amazing.”

The subtropical Miami location, far from the natural range of cold-water Atlantic salmon, offers three things that are indispensable for land-based salmon production: fresh water, salt water and a place to dispose of waste. The fresh water comes from the Biscayne aquifer, the first of three subterranean water layers and also the source of Miami’s drinking and irrigation water. Only five per cent of the water used at the Bluehouse is fresh, according to Claire. And he says the facility uses less fresh water than the former tomato field, he says, because 99 per cent is recirculated — every 30 minutes throughout the facility — following filtration.

Next in the underground pancake layer comes the Floridan aquifer, a body of saltwater that stretches all the way to the Carolinas. The salmon are moved to tanks with saltier water in the smolt stage, when they would naturally spend time in estuaries where fresh and saltwater mix, and are kept in Floridan aquifer water for the year-long “grow-out” stage — the food industry term for fattening up. “There’s no commercial use for it, nobody wants saltwater,” Claire says. 

The Floridian aquifer has another advantage; its salty water has burbled there, untouched, for many thousands of years. “There are no viruses, no bacteria, no nothing. And because it’s so ancient, there is no man-made contamination.” As more microplastics wind up in fish, Atlantic Sapphire advertises its salmon as pollutant free.

A boulder zone, 1,000 metres below the earth’s surface, forms the third layer. Here, along with the city of Miami, the Bluehouse injects its waste, once solids and particles are filtered out. “We think it’s the most sustainable way to get rid of our wastewater,” Claire says.  

Packaging holding Bluehouse salmon at a seafood processing facility in Portland. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

Bluehouse salmon sits on ice after being transported from Florida to Oregon. Berg described the fish as having a “buttery, rich consistency.” Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

The Bluehouse has ambitious — some would say visionary — plans to become ever more environmentally friendly. Local farmers are starting to use its wastewater solids for fertilizer. Atlantic Sapphire aims to use fish by-products, such as guts, head and bones, to make calcium and protein powder. Eventually, the company plans to power its operations by installing solar panels on the ample roof of the Bluehouse. It hopes to do away with the single-use Styrofoam used by the farmed salmon industry to ship fresh fish, replacing it with compostable packaging. It also sends fish to market by truck instead of by air, simultaneously shrinking both its carbon footprint and transportation costs. “One of our missions is that we do not put fish on airplanes,” Claire says.

The Bluehouse salmon sold in New Seasons Market stores starting in 2017 were a temporary exception. Berg was so keen to sell land-based salmon that, following her trip to the Boston Seafood Expo, she brokered a deal with Atlantic Sapphire to buy Bluehouse salmon from the company’s upstart facility in Denmark, which flew the fish to the Pacific Northwest. In early October, the Danish fish were swapped for the first order of 2,500 pounds — or 250 fish — from the Florida Bluehouse. The Florida fish will arrive by truck on an ongoing basis.

At first, Berg fretted that New Seasons customers wouldn’t accept any type of farmed salmon. “There was a lot of fear [about] introducing this fish into our market because of the bad rep that farmed salmon has had. But we put a lot of effort into the marketing piece of it.” 

Yet, she needn’t have worried. Soon, customers were asking for Atlantic Sapphire or Bluehouse salmon by name. 

“I truly believe that the entire [recirculating aquaculture systems] industry was waiting for Atlantic Sapphire to either succeed or fail,” Berg says. “I think the success they’re seeing right now, with the first harvest out of the Miami facility, is starting to get those other companies to really ramp up.”

Bluehouse Salmon are reared in fresh water and saltwater from Florida aquifers and Atlantic Sapphire has ambitions to sell waste byproducts as fertilizer. Berg said she was impressed to learn Bluehouse salmon have no impact on the ocean. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

When Berg visited the Bluehouse facility, she was impressed at how sustainably Atlantic Sapphire’s fish were raised. “It just really hit me that this literally has zero impact on the ocean. … None of the waste will go to the ocean. … It was really, really amazing.” Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

Berg said she believes the entire land-based salmon farming industry has been watching closely to see if Atlantic Sapphire’s Bluehouse facilities would be a success. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

The New Seasons Market was concerned customers wouldn’t want to buy land-based salmon because farmed salmon have a bad reputation. But that has not affected sales, according to Berg. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

Challenges for land-based salmon farming 

Recirculating aquaculture systems is the technology used in land-based salmon farming. Water is pumped through special filters to prevent disease or contamination, or treated with ultraviolet light. Atlantic Sapphire is not the only company that recirculates 99 per cent of its water; it’s an industry standard. 

But as the boom in recirculating aquaculture systems gets underway, Trond Davidsen, deputy managing director of the Norwegian Seafood Federation, cautions that land-based farming is still in its infancy, noting it’s challenging for companies to turn a profit. The multinational corporations — such as Mowi and Cermaq, two major players in B.C. — that have dominated the industry since it began to expand in the 1980s, are notably absent from land-based ventures, he points out. 

“Someday, we will succeed with land-based production,” Davidsen says in an interview. “But we’re not there yet.” 

Land-based fish farming is very capital intensive, and the financing, planning, construction and farming of the first generation of salmon can take five years or longer, Claire says. “These systems are also not plug and play. It takes a lot of experience to raise delicious five-kilogram salmon on land.” 

Water treated with ultraviolet light is pumped through Atlantic Sapphire’s Bluehouse systems. Although the company has been successful harvesting Atlantic salmon, it can be costly for other salmon farming companies to transition to land-based systems. Photo: Atlantic Sapphire

The spurt of investments in land-based salmon farming are largely driven by rising demand and higher prices for salmon worldwide, according to Davidsen. And as global demand for fish increases, salmon farming companies are finding it increasingly difficult to get access to ocean production in countries that have traditionally welcomed them, including Canada, Norway, Ireland and Iceland. In August 2019, for instance, the Danish government announced a ban on new aquaculture projects, including expansions of existing projects, saying any new production would have to take place on land. Washington State has banned net pen Atlantic salmon farms as of 2022.

According to the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association’s video, land-based salmon farming is ten times more expensive than ocean farming, with extra costs passed on to consumers. But Berg says Bluehouse salmon retails for US$15.99 per pound at New Seasons Market stores, on par with wild sockeye and wild coho. Farmed salmon raised in open net pens, by comparison, generally sells in the U.S. for US$7.99 to US$9.99 per pound, she notes. 

Land-based salmon farming also faces some of the same challenges that confront ocean-based open net pen farming. One major issue is how to source ingredients for salmon feed. 

“Already, the salmon has become a vegetarian,” Davidsen jokes. Up to 80 per cent of salmon feed is now derived from products such as soybeans or corn, a huge shift from the early days of salmon farming when pellets were manufactured from small wild fish such as herring, anchovies and capelin. Feed companies are now experimenting with insect proteins and microalgae as ingredients.

“Feeding the salmon with fish that can be eaten by humans is not very popular,” Davidsen says. “We need to find some new raw materials to produce fish feed in the future if we’re going to expand production.”

Aquaculture feed giant Skretting, which supplies Atlantic Sapphire’s operations, estimates that another one million tonnes of salmon feed will be required to keep pace with the boom in land-based salmon production. Skretting has developed a special food for salmon raised in recirculating aquaculture systems, which it calls Nutra RC. While the list of ingredients is proprietary, Skretting says Nutra RC binds faecal matter, “making it easier to filter and remove solid waste particles.”

The Bluehouse facility near Miami, Florida, uses enormous tanks to mimic the fresh water and saltwater salmon move through during various stages of their development. Photo: Atlantic Sapphire

The Zoom video clicks off as Claire walks to another section of the Bluehouse facility, where 450,000-gallon tanks, as deep as a two-storey building, hold salmon for the salt water “grow-out” phase. (An Olympic-sized swimming pool, by comparison, holds close to 660,400 gallons of water.) 

There are 36 grow-out tanks in the Bluehouse, which has six separate systems, each taking salmon through seven different stages, from eggs to harvest size. The six systems, which Atlantic Sapphire plans to double to 12, are completely separate from one another. If something goes wrong in one, others are likely to remain secure. 

“Every single stage is using the same technology,” Claire says when the camera comes back on. “The only thing is that as the fish get bigger the tanks get bigger; we have more water and more filtration power.” 

“It takes about one year for the fish to go from egg to smolt, about 300 grams. And then it takes another year to grow from 300 grams to five kilos, like the ones you’re seeing in the tank.” 

Dark shapes flit past in the foamy, sea green water: fully grown salmon, up to one metre long, that will be harvested that week. 

Asked what he would say to people who doubt that land-based salmon farming is viable, Claire chuckles and gestures beside him.

“Here is my response,” he says, “right there, swimming in the tanks.” 

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Prince Rupert has a long and storied history in the seafood industry, once home to large-scale commercial fishing operations, canneries and processing plants. But much of that history is just that — history. Now, Coastal Shellfish, an Indigenous aquaculture company, is slowly changing the tides as it builds its business and sells its first product: Great Bear Scallops. 

“Prince Rupert produces some of the most iconic seafood in the world,” Michael Uehara, president and CEO of the company, said in an interview. 

Coastal First Nations — an alliance of nine nations on B.C.’s central and north coast — started exploring the viability of shellfish aquaculture in the region in 2003, testing various species including oysters and geoducks. In 2013, the nations formed Coastal Shellfish, with Metlakatla First Nation as the majority owner, and started producing scallops. Three-quarters of employees are Indigenous. 

Last year, Coastal Shellfish took over the former Canfisco Seal Cove processing plant in Prince Rupert. Photo: Prince Rupert Port Authority

The decision to focus on scallops was based on sustainability, Uehara said. Scallops are filter feeders, so farming them in the ocean means they clean the water while they grow. 

“Our idea essentially establishes what amounts to a restorative ocean patch that would create ecological benefits, but more importantly, not create ecological harm, and delivers, at least calorically, a tremendous amount of sustenance.”

Coastal Shellfish operates a hatchery and ocean farm sites, and last year opened a processing plant. Uehara said it’s the first seafood plant on the north coast to open its doors in about 15 years. 

“A couple of years ago, I said that once we started selling scallops live in Prince Rupert, we would become the live scallop capital of North America by virtue of the fact that nobody else is doing it,” he said with a laugh.

‘Nothing says inclusion like ownership’

The concept of establishing sustainable Indigenous-led businesses on the West Coast was a prominent part of the Great Bear Rainforest Act, an agreement between the B.C. government, the Coastal First Nations and other First Nations whose territories are within the area. The agreement became official in 2016 and had been in the works since the late 1990s.

The agreement includes land and marine use management plans, which were announced in 2006. As part of these plans, the provincial and federal governments each contributed $30 million to support conservation and sustainable economic development projects, matching $60 million contributed by philanthropists and conservation groups.  

The donors, governments and First Nations agreed to set up a trust called Coast Funds to administer the money to Indigenous projects that meet the goals of the agreement. Coastal Shellfish was the first project Coast Funds supported.

Coastal Shellfish staff show off their harvest. Photo: Michael Uehara

Brodie Guy, executive director of Coast Funds, said the trust has invested $4.7 million to date in Coastal Shellfish, including providing funding last year to support the development of the processing plant. He added the intent of all this investment is to shift the north coast economy from one based on extraction by outside interests to one that is driven by local and First Nations interests. 

“Coastal Shellfish is really an amazing result of the vision that communities had 20 years ago,” he said.

Uehara said seeing the vision become reality is gratifying. “Our goal has been fairly ambitious to produce … an economy of inclusion for Indigenous communities in coastal British Columbia,” Uehara said. “And quite frankly, nothing says inclusion like ownership.”

Scallop aquaculture is new to B.C. waters

Marine biologist Brian Kingzett is vice-president of the company and runs the technical side of operations. He said the project has had its fair share of challenges. Scallop larvae are microscopic and extremely sensitive. 

“If you look at them sideways, they die,” he said in an interview. 

Scallops produce as many as 30 million eggs in a single spawning event, he said. “The idea is that one will survive.” 

To successfully grow scallops for a commercial operation, the Coastal Shellfish technical team had to figure out how to increase that survival rate. In the hatchery environment, naturally occurring bacteria in the water can either sustain the scallops or kill them. It took years of trial and error to determine the right mixture of bacteria that allows the animals to survive and thrive.

“We’ve found a recipe of probiotic marine bacteria just like the probiotics in your yogurt,” Kingzett said. 

In the hatchery, the scallops also need a food source. “They have very high nutritional requirements, so we spend most of our time actually growing the food, the phytoplankton that we feed them,” he said. 

A Japanese scallop cultured by Coastal Shellfish. Photo: Brian Kingzett

Young scallops in a collapsed lantern net. Photo: Brian Kingzett

From the hatchery, the shellfish are transferred to the ocean, where they are susceptible to the smallest changes in the marine environment. “We’re a lot like a terrestrial farmer trying to learn what his farm will do, except we can’t add nutrients to the soil,” Kingzett said.

Unlike farming fish such as salmon, shellfish aquaculture poses very little ecological risk. Farmed fish are fed a variety of ingredients in pellet form, while farmed shellfish get their food from the natural environment. Wasted pellets and faeces from farmed fish enter the marine landscape and can cause the oxygen content of the water to decrease, impacting other aquatic species. 

Fish aquaculture also introduces chemicals into the ocean from feed, disease treatments and cleaning products used on containment structures. Farmed salmon in particular can transfer diseases and sea lice to wild salmon. 

Farmed fish can also escape from containment areas and compete with wild populations. The very nature of shellfish like scallops means the chance of escape is slim. And in restorative aquaculture operations like Coastal Shellfish, sustaining the natural ecosystem is embedded in the process.       

B.C. salmon farms regularly under-counting sea lice, study finds

Because there are very few scallop aquaculture operations in North America, Coastal Shellfish has largely had to rely on ingenuity to achieve success. The company recently hired a young biologist from Hokkaido, Japan, with experience in scallop aquaculture. 

“At least on the farming side, we’re trying to borrow more tech and ideas from Japan, where it’s very well established,” Kingzett said. 

He added that there are still a lot of unknowns, but Coastal Shellfish has steadily increased its operations and the product itself is quickly becoming a sought-after item in high-end Vancouver restaurants.  

Sustainability and food security at forefront

While Vancouver makes up a large part of Coastal Shellfish’s market, Uehara stressed the importance of creating food security in the northwest and pointed to the pandemic as an indicator of that need. B.C. imports much of what ends up on grocery store shelves — in the early days of the pandemic, a lot of those shelves were suddenly empty.

“We’re facing incidental shortages of things that we have no idea where they came from,” Uehara said. “I think we owe it to ourselves to start exploring the possibility of supplying ourselves.”

Kingzett agreed and said it’s a global issue. “We’re gonna hit 10 billion people whether we like it or not by 2050. And because seafood consumption is increasing rapidly, the pressure on the world’s oceans is huge.”

The commercial fishing industry in northwest B.C. still exists, but much of what is caught is shipped south for processing and isn’t available to locals. “The long and short of it is the seafood economy of Prince Rupert and the north coast is a shadow of its former self,” Kingzett said. 

How do you revive that local seafood economy? Look for long-term sustainability.

“We’ve got a history of resource extraction, either in wood or fish or mining or whatever, and to a certain degree that’s still happening,” Kingzett said. “The idea here is to hit all pillars of sustainability.” 

The new plant is located in a former fish processing plant and offers jobs to people who previously worked there. 

Coastal Shellfish crew members harvest scallops from one of their ocean farm sites. Photo: Brian Kingzett

Before the plant opened, Coastal Shellfish wasn’t able to sell the live scallops directly to local businesses because they had to first go through a licensed plant. The nearest plant was in Vancouver, 16 hours away by truck. As soon as the company opened the local plant, its first customer was Daisuke Fukasaku, owner and chef of Fukasaku restaurant on Prince Rupert’s waterfront.

“The focus of my business is sustainability and locality,” he said in an interview. “The first thing I want to do is to show my customers how fresh scallops are. So having scallops on the shell in my fridge is one of my greatest appreciations.”

Before Coastal Shellfish, Fukasaku could only buy scallops from Vancouver, after they’d been shucked and cleaned. “All I wanted was scallops in the shell.” 

Now, he proudly features the product on his menu. “They have [a] really great mindset,” he said of the people behind Coastal Shellfish. “I always have fun working with them and they support my business in so many ways. We are like good partners, like best partners.”

Uehara said Coastal Shellfish has been steadily selling scallops to several local businesses. “I was so happy to see that the local consumers here have become a viable part of the market.”

One unlikely customer is the local brewery, Wheelhouse Brewing. Head brewer Craig Outhet wanted to try reviving an old beer recipe he’d stumbled upon. He said the history of oyster stouts goes back to Victorian times, when oysters were a bar snack.

Briny beer, anyone? Photo: Wheelhouse Brewing

“In the 1920s, some breweries in New Zealand started adding oysters directly into their stouts during the brewing process,” he said in an interview. 

Outhet thought it would be interesting to try substituting scallops for oysters, so he bought a large quantity from Coastal Shellfish, shucked and cleaned them, and put them in during mashing, the first part of the brewing process.

“I took the scallops out of the mash and they were warm and partially cooked, so I ate them — and they were good.” 

When he transferred the partially brewed beer to the kettle, it had already acquired a strong briny flavour. He had intended to add a number of shells but found he didn’t need to. “Now I use a lot less scallops than I’d originally intended and I eat them all.”

Uehara said he hasn’t tried the stout but is a regular Fukasaku customer.      

Coastal Shellfish explores vertical farming, growing ‘zombie urchins’

With local and regional markets established and growing, Coastal Shellfish is starting to explore expansion plans and the possibility of producing other species. The company is also looking into vertical farming, which involves suspending apparatuses at different levels in the water. 

Coastal Shellfish is considering farming kelp and sea urchins, also known as “zombie urchins” due to their insatiable appetite for kelp. When sea otters were hunted to near-extinction in the 19th century, sea urchins suddenly had no predators and decimated kelp forests. While sea otters have made a comeback, there is still an imbalance in the ecosystem, which the company thinks it could help rectify. 

Kingzett said the idea is to take the urchins out of the fishery, bring them to the vertical ocean farm and feed them with farmed kelp until they’re big enough to sell. Sea urchin gonads, known as uni, are a delicacy in Japan and popular in sushi. 

Kingzett said he can grow more kelp in Prince Rupert than anywhere on the coast because of its clean, cold and productive waters but doesn’t have a market to sell it. By using farmed kelp to feed urchins, the company could provide a solution that not only helps the ecosystem but also continues to build a sustainable local economy.

“The idea is to use what we’re doing with the scallops as the backbone of rebuilding this Indigenous-driven seafood economy.”

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Kevin Smith stands at the helm of his 42-metre luxury catamaran Cascadia, sailing north from Vancouver Island to the central coast of B.C. and the Great Bear Rainforest. On a typical trip, he would be guiding 24 guests on a week-long ecotourism expedition, sharing his love and intimate knowledge of the rugged B.C. coast — its wildlife, history and culture. 

Today, Smith, co-owner of Maple Leaf Adventures, has no guests. Instead, he’s joined by eight other boats with a total of more than 100 crew members as he embarks on the second three-week expedition to clean up remote areas of the coastline supported by the B.C. government’s Clean Coast, Clean Waters Initiative Fund.

The project sustains ecotourism businesses as they navigate the devastating effects of the pandemic while protecting the ecosystems they rely on. Five companies from the Small Ship Tour Operators Association are involved in the clean-up. 

Crew members head out to collect debris. Photo: Simon Ager

The province contributed $3.5 million to fund the project. The expeditions involve collecting debris on the coastline, using a helicopter to transfer the debris to a barge and shipping the debris to Vancouver Island for recycling and disposal. 

The first expedition, which was also to the central coast, wrapped up Sept. 7. In total, 61 tonnes of garbage were removed. 

“The first expedition was way more successful than anybody dared to imagine it could be in terms of finding ocean debris,” Smith says via satellite phone. “It was quite startling to us, just the sheer volume and tonnage of debris that we were able to find and get onto the barge and off the coast.”

Debris is shipped down the coast on a barge. Photo: Simon Ager

Ocean debris poses serious threats to marine life

In 2019, B.C. Premier John Horgan asked Parliamentary Secretary for Environment Sheila Malcolmson to find solutions to the issues of abandoned vessels, marine debris and ocean plastics. To better understand these issues, she travelled along the coast, meeting with local governments, First Nations, industry and environmental organizations. The message she heard was clear: “People in British Columbia want action to stop ocean plastics from polluting their communities and shorelines,” she said in a statement to The Narwhal.

In a report on her findings published in February, the province highlighted the primary sources of the pollution, including mooring buoys, fishing gear, aquaculture debris and polystyrene foam used for marine infrastructure such as docks and aquaculture facilities. 

Fishing debris, whether lost or abandoned, poses a serious threat to marine mammals such as whales. According to the Marine Education and Research Society, there are currently three humpback whales known to be entangled off the coast of B.C. On Sept. 10, a fourth entangled whale, named Checkmate, was confirmed to be free through drone footage. 

About 70 per cent of what crew members collected on the first expedition was fishing gear. Photo: Simon Ager

Entanglements can wound or kill whales. Fisheries and Oceans Canada says nearly half of all humpbacks they’ve identified in the province have scars from entanglements. For ecotourism operators on B.C.’s coast, whales are one of the selling points. “Our peak experience for our guests is usually around wildlife viewing,” Smith says.

Plastic pollution also poses serious problems. Plastics break down into smaller pieces, eventually ending up as microplastics, which make their way into the food chain as fish and seabirds eat them. Microplastics can’t be digested, so they stay in the animals’ guts and are starting to show up in humans. 

Some marine animals — including endangered and threatened species — also ingest larger pieces of plastic. Last year, a sperm whale was found dead on a Scottish beach with over 200 pounds of debris in its guts, including plastics and rope. Recent research shows that loggerhead turtles mistake plastics for food. Studies have also shown that up to 90 per cent of seabirds are ingesting plastics. 

The clean-up was on an industrial scale, but crew members did find some smaller items, such as flip-flops, seen on the left. Photo: Simon Ager

Debris in the marine environment is also changing the way species travel through the world’s oceans. After the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, nearly 300 small marine species, including 30 known invasive species, ended up in North America after travelling on marine debris, such as buoys and broken boats, across the ocean.  

The province’s report on ocean pollution emphasized the need for providing funding and creating better systems for recycling and disposal. It also recommended prioritizing education and outreach and developing better regulations and enforcement procedures to prevent debris from getting into the marine environment. Cleaning up the debris that’s already out there is a first step toward reaching a solution.

Positive solutions for negative times

As Smith prepares to cross Queen Charlotte Sound at the north end of Vancouver Island, he explains that decades ago he worked on a large-scale beach clean-up on Cape Scott. When COVID-19 forced his company to cancel all the trips that were booked for the year, he thought back to that experience. 

“I was genuinely worried about how we were going to survive,” he says. “And I was thinking, what can we do that’s positive in this world in such a negative time for our company? I recalled how good it felt to be part of that clean-up.”

Smith roughed out his ideas for the project and took them to his colleague, marine ecologist and founder of Outer Shores Expeditions Russell Markel. “Russ was the first one to see the vision and say, ‘Yeah, I think we could do that.’ ” 

Crew members faced harsh weather during the clean-up. Photo: Simon Ager

The two worked on a plan together and proposed it to other tour operators. The group then took the proposal to the Kitasoo/Xai’Xais, Heiltsuk, Gitga’at, Wuikinuxv and Nuxalk First Nations to get support and permission to conduct the operation. With the support in hand, they requested funding from the province and received it through the Clean Coast, Clean Waters Initiative Fund.

“We have this year where we can get out there and try to make the coast a cleaner place and get rid of decades and decades of all this plastic debris,” Smith says.

Tour guides use intimate knowledge and technical skill

Most of B.C.’s exposed coastline is rugged, remote and subject to dramatic weather conditions. Cleaning it up requires knowledge of the area, technical skill, good timing and extremely hard work.

“We weren’t really sure how we were going to deal with it once we got there,” says Neil Shearar, lead captain with Bluewater Adventures. “We went to lots of different stores, bought equipment, saws, things to chop things and things to carry things.”

Smith emphasizes that the project is not like gathering litter. “This isn’t walking down beaches and picking up a chip bag or something,” he says. “This is on an industrial scale, in really harsh environments.” 

The logistics of tackling a clean-up operation in such remote locations are complex. As storm after storm bashes into the land, debris is thrown up into the forest. 

Storms throw debris, like this tangle of ropes, into the forest. Photo: Simon Ager

To get to all this garbage, crew members first have to get onto the land — and even that can be challenging. They launch zodiacs from the larger ships and when they get close they have to jump onto the slippery rocks. Once on land, the clean-up crew often has to climb over piles of wet, slippery logs, a ubiquitous feature on the coast. Finally, they get to the debris, but then they have to load it all into massive bags that are later lifted by helicopter to a barge.

“It’s backbreaking work,” Smith says. “We had to work hard and fast and exhausted ourselves, working way longer hours than we said we’d be working — because we were totally inspired to get this work done.”

Despite the extra hours and hard work, they still couldn’t reach all of the areas they originally targeted and have had to scale back plans. “Instead of spending the day clearing the whole beach, you could spend the whole day on just one net or a pile of rope,” Shearar says. 

Crew members climb over piles of slippery logs to get to debris. Photo: Simon Ager

Majority of debris is fishing gear

Not only were they surprised by how much debris they found, they were also surprised by what they found.

“You go there thinking you’re gonna go and pick up a bunch of plastic bottles … and all of a sudden you’re finding this stuff that’s on a massive industrial scale,” Shearar says. “You’re finding stuff that’s really pretty horrific in a sense, and in places that you thought were so remote and untouchable.” 

He gave an example of finding a 100-metre PVC pipe, half-buried and filled with sand. Crews had to cut it into manageable pieces to remove it from the shore.

“There’s all sorts of weird and wonderful items being tossed off ships at sea, or lost in storms,” Smith says. “We found two small freezers — maybe they’d been lashed on a ship or maybe it was from the tsunami in Japan. They were full of insulation, so they float.” 

Some ocean debris has been on the coast for so long, it’s become a mini-ecosystem. Photo: Bluewater Adventures / Eddy Savage

They also found a few shipwrecks and other oddities, but the vast majority of the debris collected was fishing gear. 

“Mostly it’s just plastic, styrofoam and tons and tons of fishing equipment. Like 70 per cent of what we’re finding is industrial fishing debris, and most of it is international.”

Shearar was shocked by the amount of fishing gear they found. “I’m a mariner and I’m out there looking at it and going, ‘Wow, are we that disrespectful of the space we occupy?’ I don’t want to think of mariners as being that way. I work in an ecotourism industry and we’re constantly vigilant relating to what our impact is, but it’s disturbing to think that others may not be operating anywhere near that sort of level of awareness.”

He added that we all have a role to play in keeping the shoreline clean. “It’s all of us. It’s everybody who uses plastics all the time. We have to figure out how to not be wasteful like we are.”

A helicopter delivers debris to a barge to be shipped down the coast. Photo: Simon Ager

Heiltsuk reuse debris in sustainable fishery

Not all of the debris the crew members collect is garbage. 

One of the items they found in large quantities is a dragger ball, a fishing float about the size of a basketball, used in offshore fisheries.

Dragger balls are also used in a Heiltsuk fishery. “They’re considered just the absolute best float for the Indigenous spawn-on-kelp fishery,” Smith says. 

A traditional First Nations fishing practice, spawn-on-kelp involves suspending weighted strands of kelp underwater for herring to lay their eggs on. It’s a sustainable practice as the fish live on to spawn again or become food for other marine species. Spawn-on-kelp is also a healthy food source for the Heiltsuk and an important part of the local economy as it is a delicacy in Japan. 

Crew members cleaned up West Beach on Calvert Island in Heiltsuk territory. Photo: Simon Ager

Smith contracted a Heiltsuk barge to use for the clean-up and some eagle-eyed workers spotted the floats.

“The guys on board, of course they live in the community and they recognized these hundreds of dragger balls,” he says. 

The barge operators brought the dragger balls back to their community, and the floats will be put aside for them on the second expedition.

Data on debris will inform future projects

As part of the clean-up, the crew is collecting data to hopefully inform future projects and promote awareness of the problem. This research component will provide valuable information on the sites that accumulate the most debris, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy told The Narwhal in a statement. 

“A final project report will include quantitative data, such as GPS coordinates for locations, number of beaches [and] kilometres covered and cleaned, volume of debris cleaned, key learnings, organizations and businesses involved, as well as photo evidence to support the work,” the ministry said.    

In early September, the Coastal First Nations — an alliance of nine nations on B.C.’s central and north coast and Haida Gwaii — received $1.33 million from the province to continue the work of cleaning up the coastline. This initiative will focus on food gathering areas on the central coast and include training and education for Indigenous youth.

Crew members are collecting data on where debris is found to inform future efforts. Photo: Simon Ager

“Even if we only get 50 per cent of what’s out there, we will achieve something phenomenal,” Shearar says. “Let’s just get what we can, go for the low-hanging fruit, if you will. It’s such a sad thing that the situation is so horrendous.”

But both Shearar and Smith are hopeful that this project will act as an impetus to continue the work.

“We’ve got so many crew and captains and dedicated people that want to see this,” Smith says. “And when you’re working with people that are passionate and dedicated to the cause, you can push through any amount of hardship and any amount of long days — it feels good.”

Shearar agrees it was inspiring to see how motivated everyone was. 

“You have to start. And that’s what this feels like to me. We were making a start.”

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At least a quarter of major fish stocks in Canada are in decline, but efforts to rebuild them  — such as closing fisheries or setting catch limits — are often met with strong opposition due to negative socioeconomic effects. Now a new study by University of British Columbia researchers shows the short-term financial pain can lead to long-term gain — and that pain can be eased by providing fishers with social and economic assistance.

The study, published in the September 2020 issue of Ocean & Coastal Management, found the most optimistic rebuilding scenario would lead to economic gains of up to 10 times above the status quo after 30 years for five of the six studied species. The analysis also found the gains would continue to climb over 50 and 100 years.

“If you look at societal, national or provincial problems, the struggle between the short term and the long term is huge. Most of us think of today, today, today,” co-author and professor of bioeconomics Rashid Sumaila said in an interview. 

Sumaila said the First Nations concept of creating sustainability over multiple generations inspired his work. 

“We shouldn’t discount the fish of our grandchildren.” 

University of British Columbia professor of bioeconomics Rashid Sumaila says it’s important to look far into the future when deciding how to manage decline fish stocks today. Photo: Martin Dee / UBC

Rebuilding would result in gains for Pacific herring, losses for yelloweye rockfish

In the study, the researchers looked at six Canadian fish stocks — Pacific and Atlantic herring, Atlantic cod, Atlantic redfish, west coast Vancouver Island chinook and Vancouver Island yelloweye rockfish — under six scenarios. 

The species were selected for their role in commercial and recreational fisheries as well as their importance to First Nations. Apart from Pacific herring, they are all in decline, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada. (However, groups such as Pacific Wild claim there is insufficient data to say Pacific herring is not in decline.)

The researchers considered if the fisheries were closed or if a low level of catch was permitted and if the fish had fast, slow or expected biological responses. The length of the closures and restriction periods depended on the species and speed of recovery, ranging from a few years to several decades. The researchers then projected the catch for each stock under each scenario for 30, 50 and 100 years and calculated the net benefit. 

The study showed that in most cases, closing a fishery would result in higher economic gains than setting low-catch limits. While closing a fishery leads to higher economic losses at the outset than reducing the catch, when the species rebounds fishers can resume harvesting at higher levels than they could if the fishery was left open to a low catch. 

The Pacific herring fishery showed significant gains in every scenario. Costs associated with fishing for herring are extremely high, so any increase in the population will correspondingly increase profits. 

Chinook, on the other hand, saw negligible economic gains or losses under the different scenarios because the species is slow to rebound and the fishery fetches an estimated $57.5 million per year. Closing the chinook fishery, even for just a few years, means those losses would have to be made up by increased harvests as the population rebuilds. 

“If you leave nature alone, nature will come back … except if you destroy it completely.”

Rockfish showed losses under all of the scenarios. This is because the species has a significantly longer life cycle — about 18 years — than the other species studied. But Sumaila said that “given enough time and patience,” rockfish could recover enough to yield a positive economic benefit. 

“When you have slow recovery, economists will tell you it’s not worthwhile. I really struggle with this,” he said. “If you leave nature alone, nature will come back … except if you destroy it completely.”

Sumaila points to the Norwegian spring spawning herring. In the 1980s, he said the fish population was reduced to “almost zero,” despite a 1970 moratorium being placed on harvesting the species during the spawning season. It took over 20 years for the population to begin to bounce back and now, 50 years later, the fishery is thriving once again. 

Conservation scientist Michael Price said it’s hard to get people to look far into the future but agrees it’s necessary. “You do need to look at these longer timeframes.”

Price studied over 100 years of historical Skeena sockeye salmon data to build a better understanding of how a species responds over time. “There was a sockeye crash in the mid-1950s,” he said, “and 65 years later we’re seeing signs they have increased in abundance, but they’re nowhere near what they were in the 1940s.”

Conservation scientist Michael Price reviewed a century of Skeena sockeye salmon data, some of it contained in these old journals, to better understand how the species responds over time. Photo: Michael Price

Price is now studying salmon populations in Wet’suwet’en territory in northwest B.C., incorporating economics into the study in hopes it will have more impact with decision-makers. He said applying economic analysis to a conservation issue is “a step in the right direction.”

Economic modelling isn’t without limitations, Sumaila admitted, adding that there could be additional losses not accounted for, such as the loss of processing facilities and markets for species that aren’t harvested. 

Fish stocks in urgent need of rebuilding 

The six species in the study are all vitally important for supporting socioeconomic well-being in Canadian Pacific and Atlantic communities, according to the authors. The three Pacific fish species are particularly important as they play a key role in the social, cultural and food practices of First Nations. 

However, they all face a range of threats. While the analysis assumed that fishing is the primary factor driving exploitation of fish stock populations, climate change, plastic pollution in oceans and industrial development both upstream in watersheds and on the coast are responsible for additional pressures on numerous fish species. As The Narwhal recently reported, Fraser River sockeye are currently experiencing one of the lowest returns on record. 

The importance of starting to rebuild Canadian fisheries now can’t be overstated, Price said. 

“We’re having a hard time making a dramatic shift and saying enough is enough,” he said. “It’s almost like we’re waiting for the final blow to make that call. And then what else are you going to do except say there’s no fishing because there’s no fish?”

Fisheries and Oceans Canada slow to implement rebuilding plans

In June 2019, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) made a suite of changes to the Fisheries Act, including mandating that depleted fish stocks require rebuilding plans. 

According to the federal agency’s 2018 Fisheries Sustainability Survey, only 58 of 177 major stocks assessed were at healthy levels.  

In an emailed statement, the federal agency told The Narwhal its focus is on rebuilding stocks for the 19 species listed as critical on the survey, including Pacific and Atlantic herring, Atlantic cod and yelloweye rockfish.

Yelloweye rockfish was listed as critical on Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s 2018 Fisheries Sustainability Survey. Photo: California Department of Fish and Wildlife

Since the 2018 survey, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has completed rebuilding plans for six species, and a further two have improved to the point where they are no longer in the critical zone. 

“For the remaining priority stocks without rebuilding plans, DFO has specific fishery management measures in place, based on the best available science,” the statement said. “These measures will ensure that the limited fishing of the stocks does not compromise their rebuilding.”

In advance of the changes to the Fisheries Act, the federal government committed $107 million to support the rebuilding efforts. “To contribute to better managed fisheries, these resources will increase scientific capacity for stock assessment of Canada’s fish stocks,” the statement said.

This is important because 41 per cent of major fish stocks in Canada are classified as uncertain, which means experts don’t know enough about them to gauge whether their populations are healthy or threatened. Without additional scientific data, these species will continue to be harvested, albeit on a cautious basis. 

Critics say the rebuilding plans that have been developed fall short, pointing in particular to an absence of legally binding requirements and a lack of specific management strategies.

Sumaila hopes people in the fishing sector can use the information from his study to pressure the government to implement the rebuilding plans that have been mandated. 

He explained that it can be a hard sell to close an entire fishery for an extended period of time, but new organizations like the B.C.Young Fishermen’s Network are willing to listen. 

“A lot of young people say, ‘Look, we want to be able to fish but in this smart, intelligent, sustainable way.’ It meets societal and food needs without wrecking the fisheries.”

Social and economic support for fishers key to rebuilding stocks 

More than 5,000 fishers — about 12 per cent of all Canadian harvesters — are involved in the six stocks examined in the study and closing fisheries or setting catch limits can have a range of negative effects on them, from wiping out their income to harming their physical and mental health by eliminating an important food source and cultural practice. 

Both Price and Sumaila warned that continuing to commercially harvest a declining fishery doesn’t ultimately help the fishers in the long term. 

“Are we really doing people any favours by helping them limp along?” Price asked. “For salmon, some years there’s a commercial fishery, some years there isn’t — people are kind of just hanging on life support.” 

Fishing is a vital part of the food security, health, livelihoods and cultural practices of thousands of Indigenous people in Canada. Here, Troy Jack stands in a salmon smoke house in Bella Bella, B.C. Photo: Louis Whitehouse / The Narwhal

But both also agree there needs to be support for the industry. 

To mitigate negative effects, Sumaila suggested the federal government implement economic and social assistance programs to help fishers transition out of fishing or provide them with alternative sources of income during the rebuilding period.

Sumaila said he was involved in a study of Hong Kong fisheries struggling with overfishing and over 75 per cent of the fishers surveyed said they would be happy to transition out of the industry given sufficient support. In that study, the transition model included supporting fishers to launch ecotourism operations and become whale- and dolphin-watching guides. 

“If we could help people to find alternative jobs, this could lead to an amazing change, socially and ecologically. Meanwhile, we’re giving out subsidies to help them go farther and deeper,” he said, referring to subsidizing fuel costs for large-scale commercial fisheries. 

Sumaila said closing a fishery for several years or decades will always be challenging, but the rewards are there waiting. “The ultimate goal is to stop harming the fish and their habitat and their ecosystem so they can regenerate year in and year out.” 

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The Canadian government has removed observers from all fishing vessels for at least 45 days due to COVID-19.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s at-sea observer program monitors what is caught and what is discarded by ships engaged in many major fisheries. The observers are stationed aboard fishing vessels and report what they see to the government.

The new order came into effect on April 2.

“Given the nature of the work of at-sea observers, who can be deployed to fishing vessels for up to 45 days at a time, it is not possible for them to effectively implement isolation and quarantine guidelines, potentially increasing exposure to COVID-19,” Fisheries and Oceans Canada said in an FAQ section on its website regarding its coronavirus response. The department was unable to provide a comment prior to publication.

Fishermen say they were not consulted or informed ahead of the announcement.

“The biggest part that hurts for us is they give us no notice and we’re not even part of a process,” says Brian Mose, executive director of the Deep Sea Trawlers Association of B.C. “We just get told at 4 o’clock Friday afternoon.”

The ground trawl industry, which catches fish like turbot, hake and rockfish, will be affected most. Until April 2, that fishery had an observer on every ship.

The ground trawl industry has fought a decades-long battle to win over those who see the industry as destructive and unsustainable because of its history of overfishing and its intensive impacts on the sea-floor (bottom trawlers drag large nets along the bottom of the ocean). The adoption of at-sea observers, beginning in 1996, was a major part of that rehabilitation effort.

In an industry-wide meeting on Tuesday, the consensus was that the decision to remove observers presented an almost-existential threat to the reputation of the industry.

“Everybody — and I mean everybody — was equally concerned about the data, the truth of the data, the credibility of our fishery,” Mose says. “People were afraid that by allowing even a little crack in the door, we would be seen as not defensible.”

Scott Wallace, a research scientist with the David Suzuki Foundation, was on the call. He says he was heartened to hear the full-throated support for the observer system.

“You do hear a lot of industries using [the pandemic] as an opportunity to relax regulations,” he says. But that was not the case among the fishermen. “They don’t want to be targeted as getting away with anything.”

However, there are fears within the industry that unscrupulous fishermen may take advantage of the lack of oversight.

“Fishermen want to be able to trust what everyone else is putting down — that there’s a level playing field,” says Bruce Turris, executive manager of the Canadian Groundfish Research and Conservation Society.

Acceleration of new technology

In a letter to the federal government, the Groundfish Trawl Advisory Committee recommended a number of steps to help bridge the gap while observers are banned from its ships.

Foremost among their recommendations was expanding an electronic monitoring pilot program by putting more cameras and sensors on ships. The cameras pick up all the fish that come aboard the ships and what is discarded. Random samples of the footage are then audited to make sure they line up with what the fishermen report.

Adding cameras to more ships has been looked at for months anyway, and the department’s ban on at-sea observers has forced the issue.

“We’ve talked about that for a long time,” Turris says. “There shouldn’t be any trips without at least electronic monitoring on board.”

The industry is also recommending that more of the footage be audited to make up for the lack of observers.

Another major decision the industry has proposed to accelerate is the mandatory retention of all rockfish — meaning any rockfish that are caught have to be kept on the ship rather than discarded. That would make it more difficult for trawlers who catch the wrong fish to get away with it.

Given the circumstances, the recommendations sit well with fisherman Brian Dickens.

“These people that want to cheat, they don’t seem to have the same idea that most of us have: that we want our grandchildren to be able to fish,” he says.

Observers out of work

The observers who would normally be on the ships are out of a job for at least 45 days.

Archipelago Marine Research, the company that provides the most observers to the fishing industry in B.C., sent out an email to its staff on Friday, two hours after hearing the news.

“This was communicated to us very last minute and without consultation,” wrote Ian Hamilton, who oversees Archipelago’s observers at sea.

At any given time, Archipelago employs about 30 observers. Hamilton told staff the company would try to find alternative employment for them during the 45-day period, such as monitoring what comes off boats from docks.

But the industry representatives questioned whether 45 days would be enough.

“May 18 is when the 45 days runs out; it’s hard to imagine that things are going to be resolved by May 18,” Turris says. “It’s entirely possible that it could go longer.”

The day after the observers were pulled, Fisheries and Oceans Canada sent a tweet asking the public to “Help us protect natural resources in #BC. Observe, Record and Report illegal #Fishing activity.”

The department did not release guidance on how it expects the public to carry that out.

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One morning in 1984, a pair of ships bobbed together in the swell 250 kilometres off the coast of Vancouver Island. The scientists aboard American research vessels Wacoma and Atlantis were about to make history.

Slowly and deliberately, two scientists and a pilot were lowered into the water in a submersible about the size of a shipping container. 

The sub, Alvin, was there to confirm what a 1982 bottom-dredging expedition had accidentally stumbled across: deep down, chimneys were spewing volcanic heat and gases into the ocean. Scientists had discovered the first deepsea vents in the world seven years prior, along the Galápagos Rift, inspiring a flurry of research and public interest into what became one of the greatest biological discoveries of the 20th century. Alvin had been there, too. 

Alvin had recovered hydrogen bombs and would later dive on the wreck of the Titanic, but many of its most valuable contributions have been to science. This day would be one of the latter.

Alvin is prepared for launch off the deck of Atlantis. Photo: Taollan82 via Wikipedia

It took Alvin two hours to descend the 2,200 metres to the sea floor. 

“It’s just a long way down,” says chemical oceanographer Marvin Lilley, who was aboard the Wacoma that day. The discovery was startling: six-storey towers looming over the ridge, two kilometres down, one after another after another.

“In my experience, it’s the most active 15 kilometres anywhere,” Lilley says. 

That activity fuels an alien ecosystem. The gas emanating from the sea floor is rich in sulphides, which can only be converted to food by extremely specialized organisms. Creatures that host these microbes in their gut dart in and out of the superheated water in a dance with death, gathering enough of the life-giving gas to feed their microbes without being cooked alive. A dozen species would eventually be discovered there that exist nowhere else on the planet, even at other vent sites — including the record-holder for the upper temperature limit for life, 121 degrees C.

On a normal patch of sea floor you could find a handful of worms or brittle stars in a square metre. A plot of the same size at what became known as the “Endeavour vent field” could hold up to half a million animals. The sheer volume of creatures is comparable to what would be found in a tropical rainforest. 

This explosion of life exists far below where any light can reach. Hydrothermal vents are the only known ecosystems on the planet that exist completely independent of the sunlight that directly or indirectly feeds every other living thing.

Endeavour hydrothermal vent summit. Photo: CSSF/ Ocean Networks Canada

The alien landscape, with its huge spires crawling with life, was “mind-blowing,” says Kim Juniper, one of the pioneers of hot vent science. “Nothing had ever been seen like that anywhere in the world.” 

Juniper is now chief scientist for Ocean Networks Canada, which has established an extensive network of underwater observatories around the vent fields.

But it wasn’t long after that first discovery that the destruction began. By 1997, when Canada passed the Oceans Act, the Endeavour field was besieged by high-tech plundering in the name of science.

“We were at the point there where people were going down with chainsaws on the front ends of submersibles to slice off large pieces of these chimneys,” Juniper says. “It was a bit like the Wild West.” 

That damage was only a shadow of a much more destructive force that threatens the ocean floor. Still unproven and with shaky financial justifications, deepsea mining has the potential to lay waste to entire vent systems in search of the valuable metals that can concentrate there.

Juniper and his colleagues pleaded the case for setting strict rules for what could and couldn’t be done at Endeavour.

In 2001, the federal government announced it would protect this “Underwater Yellowstone,” as the Globe and Mail described it, and two years later, the Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents became Canada’s first Marine Protected Area. It protects 97 square kilometres of sea floor and the water column above it. 

Now, there’s a good chance the government will increase that 97 square kilometres by a factor of nearly 1500 times. The 139,700 square kilometre area would make up 2.43 per cent of Canada’s ocean territory, adding significant progress to meeting Canada’s Aichi commitments to protect 10 per cent of the ocean by 2020. 

It would protect the vents as well as an enormous swath of ocean on all sides of it from bottom-contact fishing, deepsea mining, dumping and more growing threats, far from the public eye — and would in the process create an oasis for the weird, the unique and the imperilled creatures of the sea floor. 

Black smoker activity in Endeavour vent field. Photo: Ocean Networks Canada

Octopus at Davidson seamount. Photo: Ocean Exploration Trust / Northeast Pacific Seamount Partners

An ‘oasis’ in the deep

The “Offshore Pacific Area of Interest” is four and a half times the size of Vancouver Island, the nearest point of land, and extends all the way to the outer edge of Canadian jurisdiction. It would be the biggest protected area of any kind in Canada, and nearly triple the total size of all current marine protected areas.

It would protect against just about anything that affects the ocean floor, including mining, bottom-contact fishing, oil and gas exploration and dumping. It would not protect against fishing higher up in the water column.

The proposal has been in the works since 2017, and could be officially designated by late 2020. It will likely be co-governed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and coastal First Nations, though those groups are still negotiating the exact nature of that relationship.

The Offshore Pacific includes the Endeavour vent field, but it also holds many more undersea treasures — in particular, seamounts.

“If you think about a seamount as an offshore volcanic island that just happens to be slightly underwater, you’ve wrapped your head around what a seamount is,” says Cherisse Du Preez, a marine biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

The location of the proposed “Offshore Pacific Area of Interest” marine protected area off the coast of Vancouver Island. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Eighty-seven per cent of Canada’s seamounts fall within the area of interest. 

“Although we have a lot of them, it is incredibly rare in this world to have stewardship over this amount of ecologically and biologically significant ecosystems,” says Du Preez, who studied under Juniper, and now finds herself at the same table as her mentor as the regulations for the protected area are worked out.

Du Preez speaks about the seamounts and vent systems with barely contained excitement. It’s clear that, for her, these are not remote, cold physical features on a map; they’re living miracles that Canada has a chance to protect.

“We’re out there and we’re looking, and we’re making discoveries that have global significance,” she says. The designation of a marine protected area would require that Fisheries and Oceans Canada invest in monitoring and research programs, which would lead to a better understanding of the environment there.

“There are probably many species we’ve never discovered out there,” says Jay Ritchlin, director of the western region for the David Suzuki Foundation. That organization, along with several other conservation groups, has branded the area the “Deepsea Oasis” in recognition of its rarity among the abyssal plain.

Coral and rockfish at SGaan Kinglas Bowie seamount. Photo: Ocean Exploration Trust / Northeast Pacific Seamount Partners

The mysterious plain of the deep sea is covered in thick mud, the result of eons of slow deposition of dead things and silt. It doesn’t encourage much known life. But seamounts’ steep-sided, rocky slopes ascend for thousands of metres from the muddy bottom, providing rare anchor points for bottom-dwelling animals like corals and sea anemones that need something hard to hang onto. Those in turn provide habitat for mobile creatures like crabs and octopus — and, “it’s a huge snowball from there,” Du Preez says.

Sharks and other oceangoing fish are able to find prey there. Jellies, turtles and whales join the party. What would otherwise be a desolate muddy landscape becomes an oasis of life, far offshore. 

The shape of the seamounts is important as well. It works as a ramp, guiding the currents upward. That cold, nutrient-rich water swirls up to meet the sunlight and powers another bloom of life — from microscopic algae all the way up to whales and birds — in a giant whirlpool around the seamount. 

Wherever there aren’t seamounts or deepsea vents, the muddy plain stretches on, featureless and dark. But here and there, with no rhyme nor reason, there’s a crush of activity. A dead whale has dropped to the sea floor, and a bizarre assortment of creatures take advantage of the feast from above. These bonanzas attract crabs, hagfish, ancient sharks and many other scavengers that will slowly break the carcass down to a skeleton. Then they’ll eat the skeleton. 

“You can’t plan for them, and you can’t necessarily draw a marine protected area around them,” says Du Preez. But protecting a big area ensures that some of these hubs of activity will be protected as well. “So we know that we’re catching a lot of them in this area of interest, too.” 

Co-governance or co-opting?

Fisheries and Oceans Canada brought their proposal for the area to the Haida, Nuu-Chah-Nulth, Quatsino and Pacheedaht First Nations in 2016. That, explains Nuu-Chah-Nulth fisheries manager Eric Angel, was their first mistake. 

“We would much rather be involved in the conversations at the very start — not when they’re saying, ‘this is what we want to protect,’ ” he says. “We have concerns about what’s happening in the ocean much closer to shore, and those aren’t being addressed.”

The First Nations responded with a proposal to co-govern the area, making decisions as full partners — a notion he says Fisheries and Oceans Canada seems willing to entertain but has so far been unwilling to put in writing. The government “wanted it vague,” he says. 

Statements from ministers and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promising “nation-to-nation relationships” and “reconciliation” don’t amount to much, Angel argues, when the actual process of dealing with the government has proven to be much more rigid. 

Despite the procedural letdowns of the process and the mismatched priorities, Angel says the goals of the marine protected area align with those of the coastal First Nations. Parts of the Offshore Pacific area are part of their respective traditional territories, as places where whaling boats would have hunted far offshore. 

Angel says working on this proposal has provided a catalyst for the First Nations to learn how to work together and has spurred new partnerships. They’re now building their own “oceans dialogue forum” between coastal First Nations to discuss pressing issues that bridge their territories.

The process is also helping to teach a new generation of homegrown researchers. Two young Nuu-Chah-Nulth student scientists, Joshua Watts and Aline Carrier, will be aboard the Tully, a Fisheries and Oceans research vessel, this summer, building relationships with government scientists and conducting their own fieldwork. 

“Each generation you make a little bit of progress and you leave it for the next generation,” Angel says. 

A shield and a buffer

The marine protected area designation would protect both the seamounts and the deepsea vents to some extent. Bottom-contact fishing would be ruled out. Oil and gas exploration, which is not of much interest in the area anyway, would also be prohibited. Scientific research would require permits and specific research plans. Deepsea mining, the aforementioned new technology with the potential to Fern Gully entire vent fields, will be preemptively banned in the area.

“There’s not a ton of industrial activity out there at the moment, which is good,” says Ross Jameson, ocean conservation manager at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. “It’s an opportunity to get all marine users and all interested parties on board.” 

ROV Hercules exploring sponge colony at Explorer seamount. Research in the marine protected area would require permits. Photo: Ocean Exploration Trust / Northeast Pacific Seamount Partners

Just 94 vessels reported fishing for groundfish in the area of interest between 2007 and 2016, according to a slide deck prepared by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. That fishing generated an average of under $150,000 per year in total. The fishing industry argues that’s an underestimate but more current numbers are not publicly available due to privacy concerns.

Tuna, meanwhile, was a much larger fishery in the area. As many as 220 ships fished for tuna in the area of interest over a decade. That fishery, worth up to $2.9 million year on average, and making up about a fifth of Canada’s tuna catch, would be allowed to continue under the new rules since tuna are mostly caught closer to the surface.

Representatives of the bottom-contact fishing industry have expressed opposition to some restrictions in the area.

But there is only so much the government can actually protect against. Some limits are natural, and others jurisdictional. 

For example, Canada is not allowed to tell ships they can’t pass through its marine protected areas. Normal ship traffic — and its associated noise, risk of ship strikes, discharge of bilge water and other pollution — will be allowed just like everywhere else. 

Deck team prepares ROV Odysseus for deployment. Photo: Ocean Networks Canada

The core of the protected area as it stands now will also only cover an area of water well below the surface in most areas. Where the seamounts rise above the bottom, the protection will rise as well. Higher up in the water, an “adaptive management zone” will take over, which has significantly fewer protections.

“We’re really pushing back that they have an obligation to protect the entire water column, from sea floor to surface,” Jameson says. “So that’s one battle that we’re continuing to wage.”

The protected area used to overlap with an operations area used for exercises and testing by the Royal Canadian Navy. That was changed in later versions, but the two areas will still be side-by-side, and noise pollution does not respect lines on a map.

Short-term stressors like ship traffic and fishing are one facet of the risks facing the area. Meanwhile, climate change is mutating offshore ecosystems. 

“We’ve been seeing tropical animals inside Canadian waters for the first time,” Du Preez says. Species like bottlenose dolphins and thresher sharks, which should be found off Mexico or maybe California — have been found following warmer water north in the same process that’s happening all over the planet. 

Big protected areas, like the Offshore Pacific, create havens for wildlife where they aren’t put under additional stress from humans. They can act as nurseries, helping fish populations expand free from fishing impacts. They can also act as buffers against climate change and ocean acidification. But without action on climate change, they can only do so much.

“They’re not the only solution, and they’re not a magic bullet,” says Ritchlin, of the David Suzuki Foundation. “A huge protected area like this is fabulous but it’s not the end of the story.”

Updated at 1:30 p.m. on July 1, 2019: The article originally attributed quotes from chemical oceanographer Dr. Marvin Lilley to chemical oceanographer Dr. John Lupton. 

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Clouds hang low over the hills and a sporadic, warm rain slicks the docks at the Pacific Gateway Marina in Port Renfrew.

It should be a good day for anglers around the small southern Vancouver Island community, which advertises sports fishing as its specialty, attracting British Columbians and tourists from around the world who want to catch salmon and halibut.

But, despite the impending long weekend that would normally see anglers flocking to Port Renfrew, more than half the marina’s slips are empty and the remainder are occupied by charter boats sitting idle, unused fishing rods pointing skywards.

In April, after most spring and summer fishing charter and local accommodation bookings had been made, Fisheries and Oceans Canada announced sweeping restrictions to commercial and recreational Chinook salmon fisheries around B.C.’s south coast due to plummeting stocks.

“Chinook are the driving force here,” explains John Wells, owner of Port Renfrew’s Hindsight Fishing Charter.

“It’s a daily income for the town … This has a ripple effect on everyone from sports stores to the marina operators,” he says.

“We rely on this. It’s our town and our livelihood and we care about this and we don’t want to lose it.”

Fishing rods sit idle at the Pacific Gateway Marina in Port Renfrew, following new federal restrictions on Chinook fishing. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

The changes mean that Chinook caught this summer must be released and the total annual limit has been reduced from 30 to 10 Chinook per person. The commercial Chinook fishery is also closed until August 20 instead of opening in June as it usually does.

The restrictions are part of a federal government effort to reverse drastic declines in Fraser River Chinook populations and make more fish available for endangered southern resident killer whales, whose preferred diet is Chinook.

But they’ve left Port Renfrew, a village of 150, struggling to reinvent itself after earning a reputation as the fishing capital of southern Vancouver Island, with “some of the best salmon and halibut fishing in North America,” according to the town’s website.

Crab traps are a common sight on the weathered docks of the Pacific Gateway Marina in Port Renfrew. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Locals call this the Marge Simpson Rock. The waters around the rock have traditionally been a favourite fishing spot for Chinook. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Clients cancel as effect of Chinook fishing restrictions takes hold

Sports fishing for other species remains open, but the large Chinook are the lifeblood of the industry, and, in Port Renfrew, charter cancellations started immediately after the announcement, with customers making it clear they did not want to pay thousands of dollars to go home without a salmon.

A survey of 364 businesses and companies, 82 per cent of which are linked to the fishing industry, conducted for a coalition of 17 Vancouver Island chambers of commerce, found 71 per cent had cancellations after the Chinook restrictions, with 22 per cent saying bookings were down by more than 50 per cent.

A total of 96 per cent said they are losing customers and clients, with 37 per cent expecting to lay off staff and 27 per cent saying they will have to close their business this season or next.

Dan Quigley (left) is a director of the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce who has been fishing in the area for 40 years. Quigley heads out on the water with Nolan Fisher but they won’t be bringing home Chinook due to new rules that aim to help save diminishing stocks. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Boat owners are now scrambling to explain that catch and release provides a great West Coast fishing experience, even if the fish must be returned to the ocean, and that other species also provide good sport.

But Alberta resident Jean Pigeon, throwing lines off the marina dock after returning from a guided fishing trip, says he and his friends will not pay for a fishing trip if they can’t take fish home with them.

“We almost cancelled the trip when we got the information that we couldn’t get Chinook,” Pigeon tells The Narwhal.

The group was told that fishing for species such as halibut and ling cod remains open and there are areas further afield (and more expensive to reach) where Chinook can be retained, meaning the trio is returning to Alberta with Chinook and halibut.

Port Renfrew attracts visitors from around the world. These fishermen from Alberta and Quebec almost cancelled their trip because of confusion over new fishing rules that mean Chinook caught this summer must be released. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

On the water near Port Renfrew, conversations revolve around the restrictions. Some such as Nolan and Sandy Fisher, who, enticed by good fishing, built a waterfront home in Port Renfrew, say they are satisfied to catch other species, even though they feel the federal government should be looking at bigger issues such as fish farms and cruise ships.

“I love halibut and cod and maybe we’ll get more mussels and cod,” says Sandy Fisher.

As Nolan Fisher manoeuvres his boat around the inlet, the depth sounder shows shoals of fish. “They are probably Chinook which means we could catch them, but we have to let them go,” he says wistfully.

Port Renfrew resident Sandra Fisher misses catching Chinook but says she is content fishing for halibut and cod. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Trust with DFO ‘has been broken’

Few dispute that Fraser River Chinook are in trouble, but, in a community where so many livelihoods are linked to recreational fishing, there is a visceral distrust of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and a general belief that anglers are being singled out as easy targets.

Sports fishermen say the federal government, instead of paying attention to those living in coastal communities, is listening to environmental groups or fish-farming companies, the latter of which — in a rare point of agreement — are widely believed by both conservation organizations and anglers to be negatively affecting wild runs by spreading sea lice and pathogens.

“The trust with DFO has been broken,” says Dan Quigley, a Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce director who has been fishing in the area for 40 years. “We had hoped to build some alliances, but they stomped all over that and the communications have not been good.”

Dan Quigley says trust with DFO has been broken. He believes Port Renfrew’s fishing industry can survive if people start thinking differently about fishing. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Members of Port Renfrew’s fishing community believe they are scapegoats for decades of salmon mismanagement even though the province’s recreational fishery catches less than 10 per cent of all salmon species, contributes $1.1 billion to the provincial economy and provides 9,000 jobs.

“We are the low-hanging fruit with government making it look good for the general public,” says Wells, pointing out that, when thousands of SNC-Lavalin jobs were at stake in Quebec, the federal government was anxious to take action, but DFO appears unwilling to save fishing jobs in B.C.

John Wells, owner of Port Renfrew’s Hindsight Fishing Charter, says the Chinook restrictions have had a ripple effect on businesses ranging from sports stores to marina operators. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Charter boat operators say their data shows most Chinook caught in the area are either hatchery stock or U.S. fish.

“Ninety-nine per cent of the Chinook that we intercept are American fish,” says Brent Story of Pacific Pro Charters, who says he’s seen a 20 per cent drop in bookings, forcing him to put business expansion plans on hold.

“We know what rivers the fish are from and have the data to back it up.” he says.

Pacific Chinook salmon are in ‘a critical state’

But data can be collected in several ways and Greg Taylor, fisheries advisor with Watershed Watch — a science-based charity that advocates for the conservation of B.C.’s wild salmon — says data used by charter boat operators looks at the catch across 12 months instead of the critical months when endangered stocks are passing through the area.

“The science is provided by DFO based on DNA. [Charter boat operators] actually have a significant impact on the stocks of concern — the spring and summer chinook that are endangered — when those fish are migrating through their fishery,” says Taylor, who spent 30 years in the commercial fishing industry and is a member of the marine conservation caucus, a group of nine conservation organizations mandated to provide advice to DFO.

“They are intercepting a significant proportion of those fish that are passing through in the months of May, June and July,” he says.

An added concern is the mortality rate of fish that are caught and released. While DFO estimates that 15 per cent do not survive, a recently released paper puts the mortality rates much higher, Taylor says, adding he would like to see a complete closure of chinook fishing during the critical months.

But the hard truth is that populations of Pacific salmon are shrinking and it is unlikely that the glory days of sports fishing will return in the foreseeable future.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada has found that 12 out of 13 Fraser River Chinook populations are at risk. Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, announcing the restrictions, said stocks must not knowingly be put on the path to extinction.

“The science is clear: Pacific Chinook salmon are in a critical state. Without immediate action, this species could be lost forever,” Wilkinson said.

Hammond Rocks at the edge of Port Renfrew’s bay has traditionally been a rich fishing spot for Chinook. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

The ‘dragon’ of Port Renfrew. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

The quest to reinvent Port Renfrew

Quigley is one of a group of businessmen and residents leading a push to look for new directions for Port Renfrew. While he believes the fishing industry can survive if, in part, people start thinking differently about fishing, he says new strategies are needed to keep tourists in the area.

“Not everyone wants to retain a salmon. What they say is ‘the tug is the drug.’ It’s getting the fish on and releasing it. A lot of the guides now have purchased new, rubber-coated nets that help the salmon so they can take a picture of it without harming the fish,” says Quigley, a retired federal administrative judge.

“It’s a new mindset that it’s not just a meat fishery, it’s an experience. Coming out to Renfrew and enjoying the fight with the fish and then letting it go. Seeing some whales and seeing the West Coast Trail and those sorts of things,” he says.

“We’ve got to get the word out that fishing is not closed. It’s far from being closed.”

A fishing boat at the Pacific Gateway Marina in Port Renfrew, a town now striving to re-invent itself. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Paul McFadden, vice president of Mill Bay Marine Group, which built Pacific Gateway Marina four years ago, agrees that a partial solution is changing angler attitudes.

“We don’t have to kill the fish. Look at the Fraser River sturgeon … At the end of the day, it’s time to change the culture of the angler,” McFadden says.

Paul McFadden is vice president of Mill Bay Marine Group, which built Pacific Gateway Marina four years ago as sports fishers flocked to the town. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

The need for an economic makeover is a scenario familiar to long-time Port Renfrew residents who’ve lived through booms and busts before.

The first logging camp was built in the area in 1923 and, for decades, industrial logging provided jobs and wealth, but in 1990 Fletcher Challenge moved operations to Cowichan Lake and Port Renfrew started a sometimes painful transition to a tourism and fishing-based economy.

When the Ancient Forest Alliance started a campaign to save massive trees in the area and promote them as a tourist attraction, it was initially greeted with scorn by long-time supporters of the logging industry.

But, with a growing interest in the vital role of old-growth forests, tourists came to Port Renfrew to gaze at massive Douglas fir and spruce trees and awe-inspiring stands such as Avatar Grove.

The community started billing itself as the Tall Tree Capital of Canada and, combined with fishing and hiking, a tourism economy took root.

However, tourists gazing at trees or visiting Botanical Beach tend to come for the day or stay for one night, while anglers stay longer, either taking charter fishing trips or setting up camp for weeks at a time, Quigley says.

Still waters at the Pacific Gateway Marina in Port Renfrew. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Seagulls perch atop rocks at the Pacific Gateway Marina, waiting for the day’s catch to be gutted. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Some say B.C. government needs to take control of salmon from feds

Quigley believes a partial answer to Port Renfrew’s conundrum is for the provincial government to take control of salmon from the federal government, a change he says would provide more opportunities for local input and for pressure to be put on logging companies to restore habitat.

“The B.C. government needs to get it through their heads that these salmon are born in B.C. They are born in our streams and our rivers and they need to take jurisdiction,” Quigley says.

Quigley’s passion for fishing is reflected in wall art at his Port Renfrew home. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Dan Quigley heads downstairs in his West Coast-themed house in Port Renfrew. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Forest clearcut near Port Renfrew, British Columbia. Photo: TJ Watt

The province has not indicated it is interested in wresting control of salmon from the federal government, but Premier John Horgan said after the restrictions were announced that he was disappointed that “years of bad decisions” have led to the need for such conservation measures and acknowledged there would be a significant impact on communities.

Adam Olsen of the B.C. Green Party agrees B.C.’s wild salmon stocks are crashing because of government policies and he believes the province has played a role.

“For decades the federal government has mismanaged the salmon harvest while the provincial government has mismanaged land-based resource harvesting and now we are paying the consequences,” Olsen wrote in his blog.

Despite the obvious need for regulation, the salmon harvest has continued as if it was the Wild West. Instead of conservation measures being rolled out over the last decade, they were dropped on fishing communities just before this fishing season, devastating coastal communities, he wrote.

DFO spokeswoman Lara Sloan said in an emailed response to questions from The Narwhal that there was consultation about the restrictions and, in February, DFO circulated a letter outlining the need for new management actions for Fraser River Chinook because of the fall assessments and poor 2018 returns.

Restrictions needed to be put in place in April to protect early migrations of the endangered Chinook, Sloan said.

Hatcheries not a silver bullet

From the fishing guides’ point of view, one of the latest slights from DFO was a decision not to fund applications for Chinook hatchery projects, even though the Sport Fishing Institute of B.C. is advocating to protect wild fish by moving the harvest away from threatened stocks and on to hatchery fish.

Sloan said the department is funding new hatchery conservation measures on at least three low-abundance stocks of Fraser River Chinook and additional use of hatcheries may be considered, but would require careful planning and evaluation.

“The ratio of hatchery-produced fish to wild fish on spawning grounds would need to be monitored to ensure genetic diversity is maintained and potential competition with wild stocks would need to be considered,” she said.

Aaron Hill, executive director of Watershed Watch, says hatcheries are needed in extreme  circumstances to keep populations from going extinct, but there is growing scientific evidence they present a risk to wild populations.

“They lower the genetic fitness of the wild populations. They are genetically inferior because they haven’t undergone natural selection and then they interbreed with the wild fish and lower their viability,” Hill says, adding that hatchery runs mean increased fishing and wild fish are then caught as bycatch.

“They also compete with wild fish for food and there’s increasing evidence that that is having a substantial impact on some populations. It’s an increasing concern with climate change because the warming ocean conditions are reducing the quantity and quality of food available  for salmon in the ocean,” he says.

Watershed Watch is asking the federal government to put all new and existing hatcheries through a full biological risk assessment.

“There are conservation benefits to hatcheries, but, if you are just putting those fish out there to catch, it’s not providing a conservation benefit, it’s providing a fishing benefit that might be detrimental,” Hill says.

A lone charter boat fishing in a regulated area far from Port Renfrew. A charter this far out could cost the operator up to $250 in diesel a day. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

First Nations Chinook fisheries continue

Another touchy topic for many Port Renfrew fishermen are First Nations Chinook net fisheries on the Fraser, which boat owners say are pushing a wedge between communities as they are sidelined while fish heading for spawning grounds are intercepted.

“They should be letting those fish get up the river,” Wells says.

However, Sloan said First Nations openings are limited, accounting for approximately five per cent of returns, and must be allowed to meet constitutionally protected rights to harvest small numbers of Chinook for food, social and ceremonial purposes.

Under the constitution, conservation is the first priority, followed by First Nations fisheries, with commercial and recreational fisheries taking third place. Any deviation would likely spark a lawsuit against the federal government.

Murray Ned, executive director of the Lower Fraser Fisheries Alliance, which represents Indigenous communities along the river, says conservation is of prime importance and full communal fisheries are not being conducted this year.

The federal government does give permission for small ceremonial fisheries when a community member dies, in which case about three salmon are taken to feed people at the funeral, or for historical ceremonies honouring the return of the Chinook.

“It is only one person going out for about eight hours to try and capture those fish,” he says.

Mountain biking, ecotourism eyed for economic diversification

The Chamber of Commerce and a new opportunities committee is working with Pacheedaht First Nation on strategies ranging from ecotourism, with fishing guides running trips to view wildlife such as bears and cougars, to promoting Port Renfrew as the new West Coast mountain bike capital.

“Everyone wants to compare us to the next Tofino, but I think we can do much better than that. Our mountains are higher and we have one of the most gorgeous beaches on the planet and wonderful campsites,” McFadden says.

Mountain biking, one of the major growth industries, offers huge opportunities, he points out.

“We can offer trails of 385 kilometres in three different directions and we have the most frost-free days in Canada.”

That optimism is echoed by Karl Ablack, vice-president of Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, who heads Port Renfrew Management, which owns about 175 hectares in the area.

Ablack envisages a new town centre, surrounded by affordable housing and a multitude of tourism opportunities.

“There is definitely short-term pain … but it now gives us a reason to be talking about diversification and not relying on one industry like fishing and logging,” he says.

Taylor of Watershed Watch points out that “it took a long time to get in this terrible position and it’s going to take us a long time to get out.”

“There’s no easy answer, there’s no magic bullet,” he says. “It’s not killing seals or enhancing fish.”

“The most important, immediate solution we can have is to identify those populations of Fraser River chinook that are classified as endangered and stop killing them.”

Updated June 18, 2019, at 3:12 p.m.: The article originally stated Alberta fishermen were told they could fish for red snapper. The article has been updated to reflect the fact red snapper can not currently be retained.

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.

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