Broughton teeming with salmon
A trip to an area of the British Columbia coast that was said to be devastated by the effects of salmon farming reveals its extraordinary biodiversity.
Odd Grydeland, FishfarmingXpert, August 12, 2014
Today I returned from a boat cruise of the Broughton Archipelago on the north-east side of Vancouver Island, where the well known, self- proclaimed “biologist” Alexandra Morton first raised the alarm bells about the “utter devastation” that the region’s salmon farms had wrought on much of the local sea life - from clams to porpoises and dolphins and whales - not to mention the local salmon stocks that were all but certainly heading for extinction due to pestilence and sea lice shed by those sick penned-up salmon.
Ms Morton has managed to create headlines in most public media in BC and the rest of Canada - not to mention internationally - by espousing a series of fictitious threats to the marine life so much appreciated by the public at large. It was porpoises and dolphins and killer whales whose presence in the Broughton area was sure to be eliminated due to the noise exuded from salmon farms using those horrible underwater seal scaring devices, and it was the sure extermination of pink salmon to Mainland Inlets (as the area is called by both locals and regulators) due to the unavoidable destruction sure to be extolled on the tiny outmigrating salmon - all as a result of lice-shedding farmed salmon.
I would encourage anybody that might have a concern about the well-being of the ecosystem in the Broughton Archipelago to just go up there and take a look for themselves. There are salmon jumping everywhere - including in Echo Bay, where Ms Morton once lived, and where she started her tirade against one of the main sources of year-round employment in the region. There are birds everywhere - diving ones that flop around with a beak full of forage fish, seagulls stuffed to their gills with the same source of protein, and people in boats happy to land their limit of silvery salmon or “flatty” halibut. A quick and easy dig for some delicious clams secures the main ingredient for that night’s dinner.
We were cruising by a couple of benign-looking salmon farms when we encountered what can-not rightfully be called a “pod” of Pacific white-sided dolphins, as there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them milling around - jumping, doing cartwheels, playing in the front of the boat and generally seeming to have a good time, just like we were having the time of our lives.
And then there were the half-dozen or so killer whales, about the same number of humpback whales, numerous seals, porpoises and eagles. Back out into Johnstone Strait we ran a gauntlet of commercial gill-net boats pulling in nets with sockeye salmon - this following an opening for the harvest of the same Mainland Inlet pink salmon that Ms Morton had predicted would be extinct or close to it by now. And yet some unsuspecting journalist at BCTV recently referred to her as a “biologist”. Too bad.
