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Pink Salmon Message from the Frontlines
September 8, 2005
This is the season when the pink salmon return
to their rivers to spawn and replenish our coast. But in the
Broughton Archipelago where there are 28 salmon farm tenures,
the numbers of these amazing fish are critically low. Elsewhere,
where there are no salmon farms, pink salmon are flourishing.
This run of Broughton salmon has already been reduced by over
80% during its last cycle and now their progeny are not returning.
This is exactly what I feared because this run of salmon was
heavily infested by sea lice when they went to sea (Morton
and Routledge 2005). If these numbers don't rise dramatically
(really dramatically!) very soon, I think few would argue
we are witnessing an extinction.
Over a million pink salmon were expected to
return to the Glendale River and there are only 40,000 to
90,000. The Wakeman River has only 60 pink salmon, instead
of thousands, the Ahta River , a virgin watershed unaffected
by logging has only 200 pink salmon. Pink salmon feed this
coast. Without them will starve next spring and bears will
not have enough fat to sustain them through winter.
I have no idea what to do about this anymore,
it just keeps getting worse. When people ask me whom they
should be contacting about this I'm becoming lost for an answer.
However we must hold our elected representatives accountable
and let them hear us.
While the fish appear closer to annihilation,
the caliber of the alliance of people working on this is far
more diverse and resilient than ever before. The sport fishermen
and wilderness tourism operators of this area, who are witnessing
the absence of salmon in rivers that sustain their businesses'
have joined this fight.
Each run of salmon is like a key, precisely
honed to unlock each river. We have now experienced unprecedented
salmon collapses in the Broughton Archipelago each year there
are salmon feedlots on the wild juvenile salmon migration
route. During the one year the feedlots were fallowed, the
pink salmon flourished. Peer reviewed science has reported
that this has happened everywhere there are salmon feedlots.
We have to stop this madness now as there are solutions. The
juvenile salmon migration route through the Broughton Archipelago
must be fallowed this spring.
Sincerely,
Alexandra Morton
www.raincoastresearch.org
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