About 170 years ago, land surveyors walked through the floodplains of the lower Fraser River, making careful note of the types of vegetation they came across. The information contained in their 1859 to 1890 notebooks is part of what allowed researchers in 2021 to conduct a study that found up to 85 per cent of historical salmon habitat has been lost or obstructed by human-made structures. 

According to lead author Riley Finn, a research associate with the Conservation Decisions Lab in the faculty of forestry at UBC, this study is the first to comprehensively quantify how much floodplain and upstream salmon habitat has been lost to structures like dams, flood gates and pump stations in the lower Fraser River — a key spawning and rearing habitat for Pacific salmon in B.C. that spans 20,203 square kilometres between Hope and Boundary Bay in South Delta.

“There always is this challenge in looking into history because we don’t explicitly have satellite imagery or the good data that we might have currently,” Finn told The Narwhal, explaining that access to vegetation records from the mid-1800s allowed him and his team to map where floodplain fish habitat used to be.

Complete and relevant datasets from historical surveys can be difficult to come by, Finn said, adding this kind of survey work can also tend to reflect the priorities of the people who were conducting them at the time. In this instance, the surveyors’ mission was part of a colonization expedition called the Dominion Land Survey, designed to identify how much agricultural land was available to be divided amongst settlers in the lower Fraser region.

That focused objective brought about a shortcoming in the historic data: the surveyors didn’t bother to study salt flats or any other places that wouldn’t have made for good farmland.

Still, the 170-year-old data provides a unique entry point to assessing the impact of habitat loss for salmon, a species that is struggling, particularly in the Fraser River.

Last year saw the lowest sockeye salmon returns in the Fraser River on record. Although runs are forecast to be higher this year — at 1.3 million fish versus around 280,000 in 2020 — numbers still aren’t high enough to support a fishery. Last summer, Fisheries and Oceans Canada launched an emergency plan to restore and recover habitat for Chinook and limit commercial fishing, noting that 12 of the 13 wild Fraser River Chinook populations, assessed by a committee that identifies endangered species, were found to be at risk. 

Finn and his co-authors argue that while declining marine conditions due to climate change are an important factor in causing record low numbers of some salmon populations in the region in recent years, the magnitude of freshwater habitat loss is also playing a major role.

On top of the loss of the majority of floodplain habitat, the new study also found that in-stream flood protection barriers are cutting off migrating salmon in up to 64 per cent of the streams in the lower Fraser watershed.

Culverts — tunnels built under roads to channel streams from one side to the other — created to expand forestry activities on the lower mainland also often do not allow salmon to pass through, creating another type of barrier.

Over the years, these structures have served to disconnect historical salmon habitats, taking away precious spawning and rearing grounds and lowering the capacity of the region’s freshwater systems to produce wild salmon. 

Researchers estimate that there are over 1,200 barriers blocking salmon access to about 2,224 kilometres of streams in the lower mainland. Of this, about 1,727 kilometres of in-stream habitat is believed to be lost after cities sprung up on top of them. 

“When you’re in the lower Fraser, closer to the city of Vancouver and Burnaby, there’s habitat that’s just been completely lost,” said Dave Scott, the Raincoast Conservation Foundation’s Fraser Estuary Research and Restoration Coordinator, who is also a PhD student at UBC. “In Vancouver, there’s a number of streams that were completely paved over as urban development occurred.”

Finding a balance

It is unrealistic to expect that historical salmon habitats will ever return to where they were in the 1850s given the large population of the Lower Mainland today, according to Scott. 

“A lot of these barriers are related to flood control and the municipalities are not just going to remove these structures and allow their [communities] to flood,” Scott said.

The Fraser floodplain is home to over 300,000 people who are at risk of floods, and the Fraser Basin Council estimates a major flood could cost up to $30 billion in damages.

Scott also pointed out the need to work with agricultural land owners to come up with better ways to provide fish passage through their streams and waterways, while still maintaining the ability to farm. 

Land conversion to agriculture is one of the ways in which freshwater stream systems have been disconnected and degraded in the area. Sumas Lake in the eastern portion of the Fraser Valley, for example, was drained in 1924 and is still kept dry with canals and pumps used for farming. 

But, Scott said, finding a balance between human needs and salmon needs in the area could help restore Pacific salmon populations to sustainable levels. This balance can be struck by upgrading the existing infrastructure to create a way for salmon to pass through unharmed. 

“A road culvert is really just supposed to pass water from one side of the road to the other, and maybe it does that now but it might not do it in a way that also allows salmon access,” Finn said. “It’s really about opening the conversation to having that infrastructure do more than just one thing, which is moving water, but also make sure that salmon capacity is [doing] well.”

With over 1,200 structures keeping salmon from their historical habitats, the next step is to find ways to prioritize which barriers to upgrade first — something Finn says his next paper, to be published at a later date, focuses on. 

The process he has developed involves identifying areas that can be easily restored, figuring out how much habitat there is, and matching them with political will and funding opportunities.

Solutions in the works

Several organizations in B.C., like the Watershed Watch Salmon Society and Raincoast Conservation Foundation, are already working on figuring out which flood control structures should be upgraded first. 

But even though the technology exists to build fish-friendly infrastructure, municipalities often continue to use outdated mechanisms that keep waterways off limits to salmon. 

In February 2020, for example, residents of Pitt Meadows saw hundreds of dead fish at the McKechnie pump station — used to remove water from the stream and pump it into the main river to prevent flooding when water levels get high — when the animals got caught in the machinery and were killed. 

Still, last year the city received one government grant and applied for another to replace two other pump stations with fish-friendly models. One of the major factors that keeps municipalities from switching to fish-friendly pumps is cost — machines that would allow salmon to pass through can be more expensive than existing designs.

A spokesperson from the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development previously told The Narwhal  the province “encourages” fish-friendly infrastructure, but local authorities are responsible for developing that infrastructure.

For their part, the province and federal government have invested in a nearly $150-million salmon restoration and innovation fund to be distributed over five years to projects that protect and restore salmon populations. 

One of the beneficiaries of this fund, MakeWay (formerly Tides Canada) received nearly $600,000 in 2019 to partner with Watershed Watch Salmon Society to identify flood control structures across the lower Fraser River watershed that need to be prioritized for infrastructure upgrades. 

What these projects have not yet looked at are culverts in more rural or forested areas that also cut off in-stream access to migratory salmon.

“It’s kind of a mix of looking at the larger structures on the really large tributaries, and then the smaller structures that happen to isolate a lot of upstream habitat,” Scott said. “There’s definitely a lot of pieces to the puzzle to still figure out.” 

For Finn, this paper provides important context for what has been lost by mapping out where salmon used to be able to spawn. Its findings should also be taken into consideration when coming up with current development projects, he says, so as not to continue limiting salmon access to the lower Fraser waterways. 

Scott finds a silver lining in the study: “There’s a lot that we can actually do. I think our work shows the scale of habitat loss, but also shows the opportunity,” he said. “A lot of this habitat isn’t completely lost; it’s just behind a barrier.”

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B.C. is failing to protect nature and has missed international targets for conserving wildlife and biodiversity, according to a report card released on Thursday that gives the provincial government a failing grade in four out of five key categories. 

“Biodiversity is the backbone of life,” said Charlotte Dawe, conservation and policy campaigner for the Wilderness Committee, which co-published the report with environmental law charity Ecojustice. “Yet B.C. governments, past and present, somehow remain ignorant to this reality. Their dismal actions prove they don’t understand the severity of the biodiversity crisis.”

The 22-page report calls B.C. a “poster child” for the global biodiversity crisis because it has both the greatest biodiversity in Canada and the most species — more than 1,300 — at risk of extinction. 

“It’s disappointing to see that the province still has far to go to implement the necessary measures to protect biodiversity and habitat for species at risk,” Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said in a statement. 

Grades in the report card are based, in part, on whether B.C. has met 2020 international targets to conserve the planet’s wildlife and biodiversity — targets which Canada committed to in 2010 at an Aichi, Japan, meeting of signatories to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

“We are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis on par with the climate crisis, and all governments need to step up to meet this challenge,” says the report, released two days before the International Day for Biological Diversity. “At the end of the Aichi decade, it’s time to evaluate how B.C. did.” 

In the category of protection and recovery of species at risk, B.C. earns an “F” for being one of the few Canadian provinces without an endangered species law. 

The NDP government promised to enact such legislation during the 2017 election campaign — a pledge upheld in Premier John Horgan’s first mandate letter for Environment Minister George Heyman. But, once elected, the party reneged on its commitment. Heyman’s 2020 mandate letter does not mention endangered species legislation. 

The report notes the province hasn’t met the requirements it agreed to in the 1996 Accord for the Protection of Species at Risk in Canada. Shortfalls include failing to provide immediate protection from harm and long-term habitat protection for threatened and endangered species and preventative measures to keep species from becoming at-risk. 

The report uses the fisher, a furry animal the size of a cat but stretched out like a limo, as a case study. Even though interior fisher populations were red-listed last year, meaning they are endangered, and boreal populations remain blue-listed, meaning they are vulnerable to extinction, the B.C. government approved winter trapping for fisher, the report points out, saying “it is not typical for red-listed species to be harvested.”

Ecojustice and Wilderness Committee are calling on B.C. to enact a stand-alone endangered species law or an overarching biodiversity law to protect and recover species, underscoring in the report that “habitat protection is the ultimate test of whether a species or other biodiversity law is likely to be effective.” 

B.C. gets ‘F’ for ecosystem protection and recovery

The report also debunks the B.C. government’s claims that it protects and recovers species at risk through “complex” ecosystem approaches, noting, “It doesn’t,” and giving the province a “F” for protection and recovery of ecosystems. 

“When paired with effective endangered species laws, protecting ecosystems can be a good way to protect and recover biodiversity,” the report states. 

To protect and recover ecosystems, the province would generally need to protect 50 per cent or more of each ecosystem or region for this approach to save most of B.C.’s wildlife, according to the report. “B.C. protects far less than this, with many endangered habitats receiving well under 10 per cent protection.”

The report uses the example of B.C.’s coastal Douglas-fir zone, found on low elevation areas on parts of the mainland coast, the Gulf Islands and the southeastern coast of Vancouver Island. The zone is one of the smallest and rarest biogeoclimatic zones in B.C., covering only 0.3 per cent of the province, and is one of Canada’s most endangered ecosystems. It’s also home to the highest number of species at risk in B.C, including Garry oak trees, northern goshawk, marbled murrelet and the Vancouver Island screech owl. 

But despite its rarity and importance, the Douglas-fir ecosystem is the least protected zone in B.C. and has the lowest number of protected areas greater than 250 hectares, most in “small, isolated parcels surrounded by development,” the report notes.

Another Aichi commitment requires the province to reduce the loss of all natural habitats by 50 per cent from 2010 levels. “B.C. failed to achieve this,” the report says, assigning another “F” and noting that B.C. does not have the laws necessary to achieve this target.

For example, the province’s forestry laws prohibit the government from reducing the industrial timber harvest by more than one per cent, “even when much greater reductions are needed to protect biodiversity,” the report says. Yet it also notes B.C. has an opportunity to make up for lost time by protecting significant proportions of native ecosystems and ensuring habitat loss is reduced by more than 50 per cent from 2010 levels.

In a fourth category, called “other laws to protect biodiversity,” B.C. also scored an “F.” B.C. claims to protect biodiversity through several different laws that regulate specific industry sectors, such as forestry or oil and gas. “It doesn’t,” the report bluntly states.

The B.C. government’s sector-specific approach “has created a patchwork of rules that do not effectively or consistently protect all species at risk or their habitats from all types of human-related impacts across all types of land use,” the report observes.

It points to an old-growth strategic review panel established by the NDP government which proposed that the province enact a new, overarching biodiversity law to prioritize ecosystem health and biodiversity conservation across all sectors. 

“B.C. has not made any progress towards enacting such a law,” the report says, noting B.C. could become a world leader in the protection of the natural world if it developed a strong, innovative biodiversity law in cooperation with Indigenous groups. 

B.C. scores slightly better on parks and protected areas, though still falls short

Only in the area of parks and protected areas did B.C. achieve a passing grade, scoring a “C-.” The Aichi biodiversity targets required that Canada protect at least 17 per cent of its land-base by 2020 and the province came close to the goal, protecting 15.5 per cent.

B.C.’s grade was not higher in this category because it received poor marks for the transparency and reliability of claims about the amount of land covered by what the province calls “other conserved” areas and for the “poor connectivity and representativeness” of protected areas. 

The B.C. government says almost 20 per cent of the province has been protected, but the report says that claim is based on “dubious provincial accounting.” 

B.C. is the only province to make significant use of a category called “other conserved areas,” which the provincial government says adds an additional four per cent to the protected areas tally. But most of the four per cent has not been set aside for long-term protection and falls into areas where considerable industrial development is still permitted, Ecojustice and Wilderness Committee note.

According to standards accepted by B.C., areas should only be considered protected or conserved “if all industrial development incompatible with biodiversity conservation is prohibited, and if protections are intended to be permanent,” the report notes. 

It says B.C. must develop and implement a strategy for meeting future Canadian and international targets for its legitimate protected areas, including 25 per cent by 2025 and 30 per cent by 2030. 

Wilderness Committee and Ecojustice are also calling on the B.C. government to promote Indigenous-led conservation in order to meet Canada’s targets for protected areas and commitments in keeping with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. 

A UBC-led study that analyzed data from Australia, Brazil and Canada found the total numbers of birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles were the highest on lands managed or co-managed by Indigenous communities.

Grand Chief Phillip said it is “well past time” for the province to prioritize biodiversity conservation and work with First Nations to establish protected areas in accordance with their own conservation commitments and the Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples Act.

The report card comes as scientists around the world warn we are witnessing the sixth mass extinction event in the planet’s four-billion-year history. As many as half of all species on the planet may be headed toward extinction in the next 30 years, largely due to habitat destruction.

Ecojustice executive director Devon Page said the B.C. government has a window of opportunity to take strong, innovative action in partnership with Indigenous groups to protect and restore the province’s species and natural systems. 

“Without that action, we stand to lose much of what makes B.C. a beautiful and healthy place to live,” Page said. “To borrow a phrase from Premier [John] Horgan, ‘do not blow this for the rest of us.’” 

Updated April 27, 2021, at 10:46 a.m. PT: This article was updated to clarify that B.C. isn’t the only province to have a category of “other conserved areas” but is the only province to make significant use of such areas.

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“The fact that they knowingly withheld this information from First Nations consultations is absolutely appalling,” Bob Chamberlin, chair of the First Nations Wild Salmon Alliance and a member of the Kwikwasutinuxw Haxwa’mis First Nation, told The Narwhal.

Details about the bacterium — found in significant concentrations in the water column around active Discovery Islands salmon farms on the east coast of Vancouver Island — are contained in the response to a federal access to information request obtained by the non-profit group Watershed Watch Salmon Society. The response shows that federal scientists also expressed concern about the risk of population level impacts to wild chinook, coho and sockeye salmon.

Mouth rot, which is affecting Atlantic salmon in farms all over the B.C. coast, presents with lesions on the upper and lower jaws, making it difficult for fish to feed. Mortality rates can reach 30 per cent, according to DFO. Once established, the disease can re-occur in populations over several months. Treatments such as sulpha antibiotics “have been found to be useful” in controlling the disease, DFO says, noting that multiple treatments are often required.

Chamberlin said DFO knew about the potential risks Tenacibaculum maritimum posed to wild salmon at the end of September and subsequently engaged with B.C.’s salmon farming industry. 

From October to December, First Nations were involved in consultations with the federal government, setting the stage for Ottawa’s decision to phase out open-net pen salmon farms in the Discovery Islands by June 2022.

 “And they never said a word,” said Chamberlin, who took part in the consultations. 

“What’s coming out now about the department’s behaviour in DFO Pacific should be of concern to all British Columbians and Canadians at large. This is a federal department meaningfully and intentionally undermining consultation with First Nations.” 

Bacteria concentrated around fish farms, creating risk for wild salmon: scientist

Stan Proboszcz, science and campaign advisor for the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, said revelations about the Tenacibaculum maritimum bacterium should convince the federal government to advance its 2025 deadline for ending open-net pen salmon farming in B.C. 

“We have parasites, sea lice. We now have a bacterium that is impacting wild fish. And we already know there is a virus called piscine orthoreovirus, or PRV,” Proboszcz said in an interview. “It’s like this perfect storm of pathogens emanating from these farms and impacting B.C.’s wild salmon.” 

PRV is a disease found in 80 per cent of farmed Atlantic salmon that is linked to a host of fish health problems, including heart and skeletal muscle inflammation and haemorrhages in internal organs. It gained notoriety after a video of bloody discharge from packing plants in Tofino and Campbell River went viral in December 2017.

Federal fisheries scientist Kristi Miller-Saunders recently told the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans that the highest incidence of infection with the bacterium that causes mouth rot in Atlantic salmon was found in fish migrating past Discovery Island salmon farms. 

“We were also able to show that in the water column Tenacibaculum maritimum was one of the agents most strongly concentrated around active farms, compared to fallow farms,” Miller-Saunders told the committee. “So there was a lot of Tenacibaculum maritimum in the water column.”

Miller-Saunders said DFO examined whether or not treatment of mouth rot in salmon farms was a correlated factor with potential transmission into wild fish. 

“We did not find that there was any effective treatment,” she told the committee. “Simply a farm being stocked with fish was enough to create a risk to wild migrating salmon.”

Questions raised about DFO role in managing both farmed and wild salmon stocks

In the documents obtained by Watershed Watch, Carmel Lowe, DFO’s regional director of science, noted that infection with the bacterium in wild chinook, coho and juvenile sockeye salmon is “associated with poor body condition and potentially indicative of poor health outcomes and subsequent returns.” 

Allison Webb, director of DFO’s aquaculture management division, said DFO models raise “realistic and serious concerns about farm-origin transmission of Tenacibaculum maritimum to Fraser River sockeye salmon and population level impacts to chinook, coho and sockeye.” 

“As with any statistical findings, there remains uncertainty in our model results, but it is the bulk of evidence, rather than any one particular model, that should give pause,” Webb wrote in an email, included in the documents. 

“Taken together, results from wild-salmon screening … highlight Tenacibaculum maritimum as one of the most likely candidates for population-level impacts on wild populations, and present evidence that infections in Fraser River sockeye may originate from salmon-farm sources, especially in the Discovery Island regions.” 

“Given knowledge about the depressed state of Fraser River sockeye stocks, the evidence we have presented suggests extreme caution and further research are required,” she said.

In a Dec. 16 email, DFO regional director general Rebecca Reid wondered if the deputy minister wanted more information about Tenacibaculum maritimum, noting that “nobody likes surprises.” 

But when Gord Johns, federal NDP fisheries critic (Courtenay-Alberni), asked during an April standing committee meeting if Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan had been briefed, he didn’t receive a straight answer either from Reid or a second DFO employee.

“It begs the question if the office of the minister knew and they were in consultations with First Nations around the Discovery Islands, then why did they hold back the information?” Johns said in an interview.

“That’s pretty disturbing. How are they supposed to build trust? And how are Indigenous people supposed to trust government? When we talk about reconciliation and meaningful relationships, you don’t hold back information …” 

In response to questions, the BC Salmon Farmers Association said in an email that mouth rot is caused by the marine bacteria Tenacibaculum maritimum “that naturally occurs in the Pacific Ocean and is common around the world.”

“Our fish enter the ocean environment vaccinated and healthy, but as the bacteria exists in the ocean waters, they can become exposed once in the marine environment,” the association said.  

It said farmed fish receive regular health checks, up to several times a day. “If during these inspections symptoms of the bacteria is detected, immediate treatment with infeed antibiotics is administered by a veterinarian, as vaccine trials in this area are ongoing,” the association said, adding that natural immunity to the bacteria is typically achieved about four to six months after fish enter the marine environment. 

“This bacteria has been extensively studied, and initial research indicates that wild Pacific salmon are not affected by the bacteria, and we have not seen reported cases of mouth rot on wild Pacific salmon.” 

Calling DFO’s information about Tenacibaculum maritimum “alarming and deeply disturbing,” Johns said it points to the pressing need for the federal government to follow through on a 2015 election promise and remove responsibility for aquaculture industry promotion from DFO, as recommended by the Cohen Commission report, the result of a three-year inquiry into the 2009 collapse of the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery.

“DFO’s role should be to protect wild salmon,” Johns said. That should be their sole responsibility.” 

Chamberlin also said the decision to withhold the information about Tenacibaculum maritimum from First Nations highlights the inherent conflict of interest in DFO’s dual role. 

“It clouds their judgement for their primary responsibility of looking after the wild salmon and their environment.”

After the federal government announced its decision to close all 19 Discovery Island salmon farms by June 2022, salmon farming giant Cermaq sought a judicial review, arguing the process was unfair and the decision, supported by seven local First Nations, needed to be revisited.

Cermaq also filed written arguments and evidence to support an injunction application by Mowi Canada West (formerly Marine Harvest) and a numbered company that sought to transfer hundreds of thousands of fish to Discovery Island farms this year, despite a federal decision prohibiting the farms from being restocked.

In April, a federal court judge suspended the ban on restocking three fish farms, saying the two companies would suffer real and irreparable harm if they weren’t allowed to restock farms. 

Johns said the fisheries minister should declare a wild salmon emergency in B.C. given that the province has just seen two of the lowest returns in recorded history in the Fraser River, the largest sockeye salmon bearing river in the world. 

“We’re seeing river systems from Kitimat to the west coast of Vancouver Island that are collapsing.”

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As the state of Montana moves to set more stringent selenium limits for a cross-border body of water, environmental groups are concerned British Columbia is stalling similar efforts aimed at reducing pollution from coal mines in the province’s southeast.

B.C. and Montana have been working to develop a new limit for selenium pollution in the Lake Koocanusa watershed since 2015. 

Ninety-five per cent of the selenium entering Lake Koocanusa, a reservoir that spans the B.C.-Montana border, comes from the Elk River, according to a September 2020 presentation from Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality.

The element leaches into the waterways from piles of waste rock at coal mines operated by Teck Resources in the Elk Valley, and with a number of proposed mines undergoing environmental assessments there are concerns the problem could get worse.

“If we have a [selenium] limit going into those assessments then it’s going to be really clear to everyone and we can make decisions based on those limits,” said Lars Sander-Green, mining lead with Wildsight, a conservation group based in the Kootenays. 

“We really want to … get this limit adopted soon so that we can have some certainty,” he said.

Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality announced on Sept. 24 that it had begun the process to establish a proposed site-specific selenium limit for the water column in Lake Koocanusa of 0.8 parts per billion. 

“The goal for both Montana and British Columbia is to adopt aligned standards that protect aquatic life,” the department’s press release noted.

B.C.’s existing water quality guidelines recommend selenium levels be kept to two parts per billion to protect aquatic life. In waters tested throughout the Elk Valley, however, selenium levels have been found to exceed 150 parts per billion near mining activities. In the last year, Teck reported major population declines of westslope cutthroat trout in three waterways downstream of the company’s Elk Valley coal mines. 

Average selenium levels in Lake Koocanusa, which straddles the Canada-U.S. border about 100 kilometres south of the Elk Valley mines, are currently about one part per billion, according to the Montana Department of Environmental Quality’s presentation.

Teck’s metallurgical coal mines are all upstream of the transboundary Koocanusa Reservoir. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

In late September, B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy released a statement saying the province had not yet selected its own proposed water-quality objective for selenium in Lake Koocanusa.

“B.C. is committed to a science-based process informed by the best available data,” the statement said.

“A selenium-level target will only be established once B.C. is fully confident that the process has met this high standard and after seeking consensus with the Ktunaxa Nation Council on a recommended standard for selenium for this transboundary waterbody,” it said.

The statement was “disappointing,” Sander-Green said.

“There’s no reason to delay, the province can go ahead and get this limit set and then we can move on to figuring out how Teck is actually going to reach this limit,” he said.

Teck’s public relations manager Chris Stannell noted in a statement to The Narwhal that the company has two water treatment facilities currently treating 17.5 million litres of water per day and plans to be able to treat 47.5 million litres per day in 2021.

“We have made significant progress implementing the Elk Valley Water Quality Plan, a long-term approach to maintaining the health of the watershed,” he said. The water quality plan allows Teck to continue operating as long as the company is working toward stabilizing selenium pollution levels by 2023 with efforts to reduce levels after 2030.

Stannell did not directly respond to a question from The Narwhal asking if the company has concerns about being able to meet a possible selenium limit of 0.8 parts per billion in Lake Koocanusa.

While people, animals and aquatic life all need a little bit of selenium, “there’s a fine line of too little selenium and too much selenium,” said Myla Kelly, water quality standards manager with Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality.

When fish are exposed to too much selenium it can result in lower production of viable eggs, reduced growth, deformities and mortality, Kelly explained.

Too much selenium can also pose a risk to humans. A report released last month by the Health Professionals Advisory Board of the International Joint Commission, which focuses on transboundary water issues, notes people can experience health problems when they regularly consume more than the maximum recommended limit of 400 parts per billion per day.

“Selenosis is the condition resulting from chronic selenium intoxication; symptoms include diarrhea, nausea, fatigue, muscle aches and hair and nail damage or loss,” the report says.

Selenium was the first priority for the Lake Koocanusa Monitoring and Research Working Group when it came together in 2015 and a technical subcommittee focused on selenium was formed soon after. 

The subcommittee’s work was guided by the foremost selenium experts in both the U.S. and Canada, Kelly said.

The goal was “to establish this scientifically defensible, accurate standard for selenium, a standard that we had confidence was going to protect our aquatic life,” she said.

Kelly said Montana and B.C. agreed to a 2020 timeline to bring in new standards, and given Montana’s rulemaking process that meant her department had to bring forward proposed standards this fall.

“It’s our understanding that they’re working through their process as well,” she said of the B.C. government.

In a statement, Kathryn Teneese, chair of the Ktunaxa Nation Council, said “as a government, the Ktunaxa Nation Council respects that each government at the table has their own respective timelines and processes for engagement and decision making, and we are confident there is still an opportunity to achieve the common goal for a single objective for the Koocanusa Reservoir, which will reflect the efforts that have been made on both sides of the 49th parallel in the past five years.”

In the meantime, new and expanded coal mines are being planned for the region, including Teck’s Castle Mountain project, which the company bills as an expansion of its Fording River mine — the largest coal mine in the province. The mining project would increase the area of mining operations by more than 2,000 hectares.

According to Teck, steelmaking coal from Castle Mountain would be processed at its Fording River operations for several decades. 

In August, Ottawa announced that the Castle Mountain project would be subject to a federal review in addition to a provincial one after several environmental organizations, Indigenous groups and U.S. government agencies called for a more comprehensive assessment.

Numerous groups that called for the federal review raised concerns about increased selenium pollution from the mining project.

Now environmental groups are pushing for B.C. to establish the more stringent 0.8 parts per billion selenium limit before Castle or other proposed coal mining projects proceed further through the review process.

“It’s time for B.C. and Montana to both make this limit law before the pollution situation in Koocanusa gets any worse,” said Dave Hadden, the executive director of Headwaters Montana, in a joint statement with Wildsight.

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A skipper accused by several fisheries observers of abuse aboard his trawlers has resigned his position as a director of the Canadian Groundfish Research and Conservation Society, The Narwhal has learned.

Kelly Andersen resigned on May 19, two weeks after The Narwhal published an investigation into workplace harassment within the at-sea fisheries observer program.

According to his resignation letter, Andersen said he held the director position for more than 20 years. He did not respond to a request for a comment.

Andersen was one of several skippers named by more than a dozen whistleblowers who reported facing threats and harassment while gathering data at sea. They said that led them to underreport bycatch pulled up in bottom trawler nets, resulting in a vastly underestimated quantity of wasted and illegally harvested fish.

“Recently, I have unfortunately become the focal point of negative discourse within and around the industry I have grown up in and care deeply for,” Andersen wrote in the May 19 letter obtained by The Narwhal.

During the reporting for the investigation, Fisheries and Oceans Canada told The Narwhal that an investigation into allegations made against Andersen is ongoing.

A copy of Kelly Andersen’s resignation letter, obtained by The Narwhal.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada to prioritize harassment response in new policy

In a May 14 emailed statement to The Narwhal following publication of the investigation, a spokesperson with Fisheries and Oceans Canada said the department “takes the issue of harassment of at-sea observers very seriously, and follows up on every reported instance.”

Fisheries and Oceans Canada has been holding annual face-to-face meetings to discuss how the observer program can be improved, the spokesperson said, adding, “most recently, these discussions have included how best to report and handle instances of harassment.”

The department is now prioritizing harassment reporting and response as part of a renewal of policies related to the program, the spokesperson said. New policy is expected to be revealed later this year.

“DFO [Fisheries and Oceans Canada] does not and will not tolerate harassment of at-sea observers. Every worker has the right to a safe and healthy workplace.”

Fisheries and Oceans Canada declined to provide any specific information regarding ongoing or previous investigations into harassment of observers.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to a temporary hold on the at-sea observer program; observers were removed from the ships in April, though fishing is still taking place. The United States has done the same.

The industry is using the time as a chance to pilot its electronic monitoring systems, which they argue are immune to the kinds of harassment that might cause an observer to under-report fish.

Long-term problems for observers

In the original investigation The Narwhal detailed three specific cases in which Andersen was accused of pressuring observers, usually with threats and other forms of harassment, to encourage under-reporting of bycatch.

Jon Eis, a former observer who spoke with The Narwhal, said he felt so threatened by Andersen he took to locking his cabin door at night.

Jon Eis came forward as a whistleblower to expose workplace abuse suffered by at-sea observers. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Since the investigation was published, several other observers have come forward to corroborate the findings of the investigation and share similar experiences. Many of the observers who came forward to speak with The Narwhal said Archipelago Marine Research, the company responsible for providing observers to industrial trawlers under the federal at-sea observer program, did little to intervene when complaints of harassment were made.

The company has denied that it fails to support its employees who bring forward such allegations.

In an email sent to staff, later obtained by The Narwhal, the company also denies that the issue of bycatch under-reporting is widespread.

“Mr. Thompson’s [sic] article is informative and entertaining, but it does not represent the fishery and at-sea observer program as a whole. Nor does it provide any recognition for the hard work done by our staff to collect independent and reliable data for the fishery,” the company wrote.

“It is very much focused on exposing something some individuals feel is wrong within the program without understanding if the examples presented actually represent a widespread, chronic problem.”

A freedom of information request for documents related to enforcement of at-sea observer laws and regulations submitted to Fisheries and Oceans Canada yielded a heavily redacted 37-page document. (The Narwhal is pursuing a complaint with the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada regarding the redactions.)

The documents contained references to court summonses for crew of the Raw Spirit — a bottom trawling ship co-owned by Andersen, Jim Pattison’s Canadian Fishing Company and two others — dating back to August of 2017, more than a year before Eis submitted an official complaint with the federal department.

The Canadian Fishing Company has not responded to a request for comment regarding its ongoing business relationship with Andersen following his resignation from the trawl society.

Heavily redacted pages released from Fisheries and Oceans Canada to The Narwhal in response to a freedom of information request. The request sought documents related to incidents of harassment and workplace abuse within the at-sea observer program.

Industry response

In an email to members announcing Andersen’s resignation, the society’s executive director, Bruce Turris, thanked Andersen “for his unwavering support” and “the many valuable contributions he has made as a director over the last two decades.”

Turris was contacted for comment but did not immediately respond.

In a letter to The Narwhal responding to the investigation, and copied to a wide swath of fisheries stakeholders including company executives and even boat brokers, Turris disputed many of the allegations of unsustainable practices that were presented.

“Observer programs don’t guarantee sustainability, they provide data used in managing a fishery sustainably,” he wrote. “Conservation of groundfish is much more robust than portrayed in the article.”

Turris cited many of the measures that have been taken to help improve the sustainability of the trawl fishery, such as the closure of the 800 Line in Haida Gwaii, the mandatory retention of rockfish and the implementation of a program to protect glass sponge reefs.

The latter program involves a system to avoid damaging the reefs by making certain areas out of bounds and reporting any areas where sponges are caught accidentally.

Observers have reported multiple instances of the glass sponge reef program being ignored or undermined.

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