New footage released to DeSmog Canada shows deformed and disfigured salmon at two salmon farms on the B.C. coast — just as British Columbia reels from news of the escape of up to 305,000 Atlantic farmed salmon from a Washington salmon pen.

Wild salmon advocate and fisheries biologist Alexandra Morton said she was shocked by the footage.

“I was shocked and frankly disgusted,” Morton told DeSmog Canada. “These fish have open sores, sea lice, blisters all over their skin and a disturbing number of them are going blind.”

Morton said the footage also gives an indication of what is now travelling through Pacific waters after the escape of potentially hundreds of thousands of farmed Atlantic salmon in the San Juan Islands just east of Victoria. Atlantic salmon are considered invasive in Pacific waters.

“Now you have potentially 300,000 farmed salmon traveling with wild salmon. We know that is what they do.”

The footage was shot at two salmon farms owned by Grieg Seafood and located near Broughton Island, B.C., in the traditional territory of the Musgmagw Dzawada’enuwx Nation.

The nation has been vocally opposed to fish farming in its traditional waters for 30 years and has handed out eviction notices to fish farming corporations.

“These fish are really sick,” Ernest Alfred, member of the Nagmis and Lawit’sis from Alert Bay, says in the footage. “These fish are polluting the environment that we call home.”

Greig Seafood did not respond to requests for comment.

In a B.C. Salmon Farmers Association statement provided to DeSmog Canada, executive director Jeremy Dunn said, “abnormalities in farm-raised salmon are rare, but — as with any species — do exist for several reasons: growth deformities from birth, mechanical damage resulting in an injury, or poor performers that are outcompeted for food by more aggressive fish.”

Dunn added if individuals are displeased with farmed salmon brought to market he “recommend they return it to the place of purchase.” *

Alfred and Awahawoo Hereditary Chief George Quocksister Jr. shot the footage while travelling to fish farms aboard the research vessel Martin Sheen, provided by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

‘It’s a Mess Every Way You Look at It’

“When I say there is disease in these farmed salmon, this is not a guess,” Morton said. “Over 80 per cent of farmed salmon are infected with piscine reovirus.”

Morton is currently fighting the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Dominique Leblanc in court to prevent more Atlantic salmon infected with the virus from being placed in B.C. waters.

Morton said the fish pens are a highly concentrated source of waste and disease that threaten other species.

“From a biological point of view this footage gives you an idea of the scale of the pathogens coming out of these farms and we know that a single particle in this ocean can travel 10 kilometres in a short amount of time.”

It’s been a tough week for wild salmon.

While major salmon fisheries in the Fraser and Skeena rivers are closed due to low returns, a new study released this week revealed the federal government has failed to monitor the majority of struggling stocks on B.C.’s north and central coast.

Meantime, fishermen are being called on to catch as many of the escaped Atlantic farmed salmon as possible.

Morton expressed concern that fishermen will be mixed up with struggling Fraser sockeye salmon that may be caught as bycatch.

“It’s a mess every way you look at it.”

Farming Salmon On Land Reduces Risks

Aaron Hill, executive director of Watershed Watch Salmon Society, told the CBC an easy solution to the multiple problems posed by salmon farms is to move pens onland and out of wild salmon waterways.

“We can farm salmon on land where they’re not going to pose any risks to our wild salmon populations.”

Disturbing New Footage Shows Diseased, Deformed #Salmon in BC #FishFarms https://t.co/XIlbwq74ji #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 23, 2017

“Escapes aren’t the only risk,” he added. “There is growing evidence that these net pens spread diseases, viruses and parasites to our wild salmon populations that make it harder for many of our at risk populations to rebuild.”

Alfred said the window to protect wild salmon stocks in B.C. is closing.

“You know, when I think about our people’s history, I think about the colonization, the stripping of our rights, the stripping of our identity, the fact that our language is disappearing, the potlatch ban, the fish is all we have left and they can’t take our fish.”

“We don’t exist here without our fish.”

* Updated August 23, 2017 at 4:54 pm PST to include a statement from Jeremy Dunn of the B.C. Farmed Salmon Association.

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Members of the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw First Nation say salmon farms in their territory are destroying wild salmon runs and polluting clam beds and they must leave.

On Thursday and Friday a small flotilla of boats from Kingcome Village, Gilford Village and Alert Bay, with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s research vessel “Martin Sheen” in the background, handed eviction notices to four Cermaq Canada salmon farms. Hereditary chiefs say notices will be issued to all 27 farms in their territory.

With chiefs in traditional robes, drumming and singing, the group ignored efforts by Cermaq employees to prevent them from landing, handed over the notice and then held a cleansing ceremony and wild salmon barbecue at one of the farms.

“Our people have spoken. We want salmon farms out of our territory,” said chief councillor Willie Moon, the first to pull into the farm off northern Vancouver Island.

Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw consists of five nations, with 576 members, whose territory encompasses the Broughton Archipelago east of Alert Bay. Cermaq and Marine Harvest have farms in the area.

“I just told them they were trespassing and we had every right to be there. This land belongs to our people,” Moon said in an interview.

Last spring 40 per cent of young salmon leaving the territory were killed by sea lice, Moon said.

Beaches and clam beds are also being polluted, said Melissa Willie, Dzawada’enuxw councillor and fisheries coordinator.

“All that shit going into the water. I don’t believe it is being flushed out and the beaches are becoming muck. It’s our whole food chain. We want them totally out of our territory and I just hope someone is listening,” she said.

Musgamagw Dzawada’enux leaders, who say they have the support of many other coastal bands, are demanding that no more farm fish be transferred into their territory, all farm salmon should be removed within three months, that First Nations have access to the fish so they can assess what diseases exist and the right to have an observer present during harvest.

Two previous attempts to evict the farms have failed and, this time, the First Nation is sending a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asking him to live up to his promise to honour the rights of First Nations as a “sacred obligation.”

The letter reads:

“We, the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw view the destruction of wild fish by the fish farming industry as part of the long history of genocide forced on our people by the governments of Canada. Salmon are essential to our well-being and the well-being of our world.”

People are now ready to fight for their traditional way of life, Willie said.

“One of our youth said ‘are we prepared to die for this?’ I think we are now,” she said.

“The fight is on.. . . This is just the beginning.”

#FirstNations Hand Eviction Notices to #FishFarms #bcpoli #cdnpoli https://t.co/q53UMLJyJC

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 24, 2016

There has been no support from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who, in 2015, allowed the number of salmon at several farms in their territory to almost triple, even though each tribe had rejected the applications, the leaders said.

After the first eviction notice was issued on Thursday, the leaders received a letter from Cermaq offering to meet them.

“But all they want to talk about are their operations and we are just talking about getting them out. That’s the bottom line, so I don’t think there’s much point,” Willie said.

Jeremy Dunn, B.C. Salmon Farmers Association executive director, said salmon farms in the area have a two-decade history of positive working relationships with First Nations and farmers have 20 social and economic agreements with B.C. bands

Those agreements cover 78 per cent of the salmon raised in B.C., he said.

“Thirty years ago there were no First Nations agreements and salmon farmers were one of the first to put together agreements to respect their territories and to share in the benefits of the activity,” Dunn said.

Cermaq is open to meeting with the First Nation to discuss the issue, but having the group landing on the farms has been disconcerting for staff, Dunn said.

“Imagine if 30 people came to your workplace when there are four or five of you in the middle of the ocean. It is challenging,” he said.

The eviction notices appear to be part of a campaign being orchestrated by Sea Shepherd, Dunn said.

The “Martin Sheen” crew are helping independent biologist Alexandra Morton on a virus-hunting voyage around salmon farms.

Morton is taking samples to investigate which diseases could be spreading from farmed fish to wild salmon.

Cermaq also suspects Sea Shepherd is behind the eviction notices.

“Over the past few weeks, our employees have been harassed by the Sea Shepherd Society and other activists,” says a statement on the Cermaq website.

But Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw members say their only aim is to cleanse their waters for their children, future generations and ancestors.

“The people who are benefitting from these farms are benefitting over the suffering of our people,” said Dzawada’enuxw hereditary leader Farron Soukochoff.

Image: Hereditary chiefs and supporters from the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw First Nation hold a cleansing ceremony at a Cermaq Canada salmon farm  off northern Vancouver Island. The First Nation has issued eviction notices to four farms and say they plan to try to evict all 27 farms in their territory

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By Jeffrey Monaghan, researcher with the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University and Kevin Walby, Assistant Professor, Sociology, University of Victoria.

A recent example of RCMP surveillance of environmental activists was reported last month by the Montreal Gazette.  According to documents released under the Access to Information Act, it appears that a branch of the expansive RCMP national security apparatus – the Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Team – has been monitoring a group of Quebec residents opposed to shale gas development.  The group under surveillance – la Regroupement Interrégional sur le gaz de schiste de la Vallée du St-Laurent – represents more than 100 anti-shale gas citizen committees in Quebec. 

Surveillance practices targeting the environmental movement should not be surprising given recent trends toward an increasing allocation of resources to counter-terrorism programs across the country.

The RCMP’s rationale behind their surveillance of shale gas opponents relies on the potential threat of ‘homegrown extremism.’ As an increasingly visible ploy (particular since Minister Joe Oliver’s polemic regarding opponents of the Northern Gateway pipeline), references to domestic extremism represents a shift in the working definition of terrorism where groups like al-Qaida or the Taliban are no longer the central antagonists.

Instead, national security agencies have presented a conflated threat of terrorism and extremism to castigate a host of groups and causes, including pacifists that organize petitions against shale gas development.

While troubling, these practices have become the norm within national security agencies.

We have recently published an academic report on security preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics using access to information requests with the RCMP and CSIS. Examining threat assessments from 2005 and 2010, our findings show how terminology of ‘extremism’ was used as a code word to describe critics of the Games.

As the Games approached, the category of ‘extremism’ was used to refer to a surprising range of actors but mostly as a catch-all for a host of left wing groups, particularly those associated with the global justice movement, environmentalists, anti-capitalists, and animal rights activists. Groups like Greenpeace, PETA, and Sea Shepherd were frequently mentioned in these threat assessments.

Groups that are catalogued in these surveillance campaigns cannot challenge such accusations, nor can they see the substantive materials that gathered by state surveillance practices. Labels like ‘extremist’ cannot be challenged.

What is important to understand about the category of ‘extremism’ is that almost any activity or communication contrary to the government can get you labeled this way.

Looking at primary documents from the RCMP and CSIS, it appears that a range of innocuous low-level political activities (i.e. riding on a bus to a protest, attending an environmental rally, advocating maple syrup boycotts) can get you lumped under this label. Further, there is a troubling association between this category and threats of violence.

RCMP and CSIS view a number of activist activities – particularly civil disobedience – as forms of attack.  Blocking access to roads or buildings are framed as violence, depicting pacifists as national security threats. In the lead up to the Olympics in Vancouver, national security agencies also used the label in association with private property destruction, specifically the property of corporate sponsors. During this time period, the label of extremism allowed national security resources to be mobilized for the protection of tarsands companies and other sponsors. 

Expanded categories for policing and surveillance practices can have a number of ripple effects. Namely, these practices can lead to the criminalization of public advocates and a broad ‘chilling effect’ on participatory democratic practices.

This is entirely consistent with the Conservative agenda on security and crime that aims to neutralize and invalidate those who challenge their policy positions. This approach is troubling given their support for controversial projects like the Northern Gateway pipeline and the groundswell of political opposition that it has garnered.

This all begs a larger question: what exactly does the government mean when it conflates ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism’ in their counter-terrorism policies?

It is no longer clear whom the RCMP, Stephen Harper or Vic Toews count as terrorists. If almost any dissent can get one’s actions classified as ‘extremism’ how much more does it take to be labeled and prosecuted as a terrorist in Harper’s Canada? 

Notably, one shale gas opponent has been charged under the Anti-Terrorism Act because of allegations concerning threatening letters. Likewise, student activists from Quebec are facing terrorism-related criminal charges for allegedly releasing smoke bombs during last year’s student strike.

These prosecutions point to a significant expansion of criminal liability for ‘terrorism activities.’ Coupled with efforts to include damage to, or disruption of, private property as acts of terrorism, the environmental movement should take note of the changing field of struggle – and the resources that are being amassed against it.  


Expanding the definition of terrorism allows for national security agencies to broaden their scope of operations and cast their surveillance net upon a larger spectrum of groups and activities. In an era where Canada increasingly resembles a petro-state, surveillance agencies are regularly caricaturizing activists as threats to national security. With an appetite for larger budgets and greater resources, Canada’s counter-terrorism strategies seem to be making up new threats that are used to justify further surveillance.

But what the RCMP will rarely disclose is that the threat of terrorism attacks in Canada is very low and Canadian spending on national security issues is completely incommensurate with these risks.

A much larger threat – the RCMP won’t mention – are the impacts of these surveillance campaigns on social movements: suspicion, paranoia, stress, internal divisiveness, and the potential for significant ‘chilling effects’ on supposedly protected activities like speech, association, and rights to organize. Part of contesting these mega environmental catastrophes in-the-making must also be ongoing critique of state attempts to categorize, frame, slander and maim dissent.

Looking at the flipside to these surveillance projects reveals another important dynamic at-play: the strength of ecological movements is being acknowledged.

While government would like to dismiss opposition to the current growth-at-any-cost model as a threat to national security, the PR-games associated with labeling environmental groups as terrorists might just backfire. This is likely only the beginning of a long standoff. 

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