The last open-net pen salmon farms in B.C. have until July 2029 to figure out a different way of doing business. Environmental advocates say the shift is long overdue but the industry warns the timeline is impossible. Photo: Jérémy Mathieu / The Narwhal
The Narwhal: Following decades of controversy, open-net pen salmon farming in B.C. will be banned in July 2029. The salmon farming industry says transitioning to land-based systems is expensive, logistically challenging and may not be possible.
On a clear August morning, Skookum John maneuvers his fishing boat, Sweet Marie, out of the Tofino harbour and into the deep blue waters of Clayoquot Sound on Canada’s west coast.
On shore, the late summer sun shines on visitors from all over the world who have flocked to Tofino, a bustling fishing town on Vancouver Island, to wander in and out of surf shops, art galleries and restaurants and pile into small boats in the hope of glimpsing orca, humpback and grey whales.
“You’ll never find this anywhere in the world,” John says, gesturing through Sweet Marie’s window at the mosaic of islands and mountains, cloaked in thick green rainforests, that form part of the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
The Sweet Marie motors deeper into Clayoquot Sound, past a web of inviting channels and inlets, and cruises past a raft of sea otters resting in the gentle swells. Once hunted nearly to extinction, sea otters are one of the iconic species found in the biosphere reserve, along with sea lions, seals, wild salmon and bald eagles.
John, a member of Ahousaht First Nation, makes his living on the water, where he helps train Coast Guard members in marine rescue, ferries passengers to islands and hot springs and takes visitors on whale watching tours. Today, John is taking members of Clayoquot Action, a local conservation organization focused on protecting wild salmon, to the site of one of the area’s more controversial industries: open-net pen salmon farms.
Dan Lewis, the co-founder and executive director of Clayoquot Action, is incredulous that industrial salmon farming is allowed to take place in a globally recognized protected area.
“Why are we doing this here?” he wonders, gesturing at the rich waters, home to a colourful array of sea life that includes giant rock scallops, tufted anemones in green, pink and white, dark green kelp forests, red sea urchins and purple-tinged Dungeness crabs.
Clayoquot Sound is also home to some of the last 60 salmon farms left on Canada’s west coast. For decades, as many as 100 farms in Canadian waters have raised mostly non-native Atlantic salmon in pens in the Pacific Ocean.
But now the salmon farming industry, blamed for contributing to the collapse of wild salmon stocks, faces an uncertain future. In June, the Canadian government announced open-net pen salmon farming will be banned from coastal waters in July 2029, as part of a commitment “to protecting wild salmon and promoting more sustainable aquaculture practices.”
Concerns about the industry’s impact on wild salmon played a major role in the closure of about three dozen farms in the province of British Columbia over the past seven years, after Clayoquot Action and other groups documented sea lice outbreaks and other diseases such as piscine orthoreovirus in farmed fish, including at farms along migration routes for wild salmon.
This story is a collaboration with the newspaper The Guardian.