How to Save B.C.’s Wild Salmon
Last May, the salmon conservation charity I work for, Watershed Watch Salmon Society, received an anonymous tip. A large number of salmon had died at a remote Vancouver Island farm and were being transferred to Nanaimo for disposal. I wanted to share the story with the public, but I needed evidence. Before I knew it, I was paddling my sea kayak out 18 kilometres, armed with a drone and camping equipment and ready to document the whole thing.
In over 18 years at Watershed Watch, I had never seen anything like what I witnessed at that salmon farm. A fishing vessel moved from pen to pen, sucking dead fish into its hold. A crane loomed overhead, seemingly tasked with moving the nets that housed the salmon, as well as the vacuum tube. I submitted the photos I took to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which confirmed the die-off. Then Watershed Watch alerted the media. A die-off like this was essentially an industry failure.
As a child in Ontario, I loved exploring nature, roaming around creeks and rivers with my family. That passion took me to British Columbia, one of Canada’s most biologically diverse places. Right now, I am the senior science and policy analyst at Watershed Watch Salmon Society, where I study the interactions between salmon farms and wild fish.
Here in B.C., we have a salmon farm problem. Traditionally, the industry has relied on open-net salmon farms, which sit in coastal areas and keep hundreds of thousands of salmon in nets. Last year, a study revealed that mass die-offs of farmed salmon—like the one I documented in June—are on the rise in Canada. At one operation off the Sunshine Coast, researchers found that 3.8 million fish died in the span of one month. (The operation has disputed that figure, contending that only 166,676 fish died.)
B.C. is an outlier on the West Coast: it’s the only area in the region where open-net farms still grow salmon to full size for commercial harvest. Washington, Oregon, California and Alaska have all banned the practice. The Canadian federal government originally pledged completely transition away from these farms by 2025, but last June, it pushed that goal to 2029. Meanwhile, the salmon farming industry’s efforts to resist a ban have skyrocketed. In 2023, there were 214 reported lobbying interactions by industry proponents, almost 27 times more than the eight lobbying interactions reported in 2010. Members of the industry have expressed skepticism about transitioning to other salmon-farming systems, especially within a relatively short five-year timeline. Some have said it’s downright unfeasible, citing high costs and logistical challenges. But phasing out open-net farming is important if we want to protect wild salmon. Here’s why.
Typically, the life cycle of wild Pacific salmon starts and ends with migration. These migration paths span hundreds of miles. But the life of a wild salmon and a farmed salmon could not be more different. Open-net farms keep a huge number of salmon congregated in one area. Because of that high population density, the farms are prime breeding grounds for pathogens and the tiny parasitic crustaceans known as sea lice.
Sea lice typically feed on the blood, mucus and skin of adult salmon in the ocean, causing little harm; they fall off when those salmon migrate back to their freshwater breeding grounds. But most open-net farms are built along wild salmon migration routes, and when juvenile wild salmon, born in freshwater, swim past these farms on their migration to the sea, they run up against a gauntlet of pathogens and parasites before they even come of age. Some sources say that juvenile salmon passing by a farm can be exposed to sea lice at levels up to 73 times higher than they’d encounter in an area without salmon farms. At that point, the fish are small and may be more susceptible to harm. Parasites can be lethal.
Another problem is that salmon farmers prefer to raise Atlantic salmon because they grow quickly and consistently—but Atlantic salmon are not native to the Pacific Northwest. Once loose, Atlantic salmon can put wild Pacific salmon at risk by carrying disease. Some scientists estimate that one per cent of salmon quietly escape their pens each year. In August of 2017, an estimated 250,000 Atlantic salmon escaped a collapsed open-net salmon farm into Puget Sound, which helped convince the state senate to ban Atlantic salmon farming the following year.
If you factor in all the environmental costs and inefficiencies, salmon farming makes little economic sense. The industry argues that salmon farming creates jobs and helps feed a huge population of people, but kilo for kilo, salmon farms produce less fish than they consume. Salmon are carnivorous fish species, and feeding them in the hundreds of thousands on a farm requires people to catch mass quantities of wild fish and process it into fishmeal and oil. It would be like raising tigers for meat—a tiger farmer would have to source animals in the thousands to keep their animals fed. Farmed salmon consume up to six times their body weight in wild fish by the time they are ready to be sold.
If we’re determined to continue farming salmon, the way forward would be a transition to land farming. Land-based salmon farms grow and house fish in specialized tanks, which are regularly disinfected and carefully monitored. Many of these closed-containment environments significantly reduce the risk of parasites like sea lice, as well as the need for antibiotics. In land-based tanks, growing conditions such as temperature and oxygen are controlled, and farm die-offs like the one I saw last spring don’t happen as frequently. As a bonus, land-based salmon farms aren’t limited to coastal areas—they can be built almost anywhere, creating the potential to provide a year-round supply of fresh fish to places far from the ocean. Most importantly, salmon farmed in land-based tanks won’t interact with wild fish. That means these farms won’t directly impact wild salmon habitats and runs—as long as they don’t dump their water into wild salmon–bearing waters.
Of course, there are other threats to wild salmon populations in B.C., with climate change at the top of the list. As temperatures warm and flooding increases, wild salmon face increasingly stressful, dangerous waters in their migration path. Meanwhile, more frequent droughts are trapping salmon in isolated pools, where they lack oxygen and are vulnerable to predators. But eradicating open-net salmon farms in our waters is a tangible, achievable goal that will hugely help the province’s wild salmon.
In 2010, when I had been working in B.C. for a few years, I went to the Adams River near Kamloops to watch sockeye salmon migrate. That year, there was a huge return. When sockeye salmon are ready to spawn, their bodies become bright red and their heads turn green. I watched in awe as thousands of sockeye turned the water a brilliant red as they swam up the river. The photos I took from that trip were unbelievable. It’s been over a decade since that day, and I still remember the sense of wonder I felt watching those salmon. Since then, I’ve watched salmon migrate, swim hundreds of kilometres, dodge bears, and scale waterfalls along migration routes numerous times. They never cease to amaze me. We need to protect these amazing fish while they’re still here.
—As told to Alice Boyle
Stan Proboszcz is the senior science and policy analyst at Watershed Watch Salmon Society.
