Investigative photojournalist Tavish Campbell reveals the impact Atlantic salmon farms are having on local Pacific populations in the wilds of British Columbia - an ecosystem built upon the flesh and bones of fish.
The ambient light dimmed as I kicked away from the surface. Zipped tightly into my drysuit with a cylinder of compressed air strapped to my back, nothing but the grainy sound of my own inhalations accompanied me downwards into the ocean.
20, 25, 30 metres deep and I was forced to brighten my underwater lights to identify a large pipe leading away from the industrial farmed salmon processing plant I was investigating. As I neared the end of the pipe the lights illuminated a massive plume of billowing red blood, dispersing directly into Canada’s largest wild salmon migration route. It was a sickening sight; I struggled not to choke on my regulator. This blood water had come from farmed Atlantic salmon grown in open net-pens in British Columbia’s cold seas, but I was not diving for them. I was there for the Pacific salmon who belong on this coast and are now forced to swim through these same waters. I was there because I love wild salmon.
Growing up on a small remote island in the wilderness of British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest, I was introduced early to the creatures that swam past my home. The five main species of salmon that live on Canada’s west coast have been a source of endless intrigue for me; sockeye, chinook, coho, chum and pink.
Salmon and humans have co-evolved in the North Pacific for thousands of years, the fish’s nutrient-rich bodies providing the building blocks for life on a land left barren by receding ice sheets. If one looks at a map of the salmon-bearing watersheds of the Pacific rim, you see an ever branching network of arteries reaching hundreds of miles inland, delivering critical marine nutrients to ecosystems seemingly disconnected from the open ocean. First Nation cultures, both coastal and inland, are entwined with these fish in a relationship dating back through legend and archaeology for more than ten thousand years of spawning cycles.
Early in the spring, tiny juveniles called alevin emerge from their eggs in freshwater rivers and wriggle free of the gravel nests that have held them safely through winter. They are swept steadily downstream, sometimes holding in lakes before seeking saltwater and heading to sea. At night, I would lay in bed listening for the delicate flip of the juveniles, called smolts, as they continually dimpled the ocean surface, pouring past my house on their epic journey. Once at sea they spend two to seven years flashing through the north Pacific Ocean between British Columbia and Japan, feeding voraciously and building up energy for their long migration home. Some runs of chinook, the largest of the five species, can grow into 35kg of quicksilver muscle. In summertime as the mature fish returned to the coast in the endlessly revolving cycle of generations, my family would fish to preserve them in jars for the winter; their flesh and bones literally building mine.
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This fish truly feeds the coast. Scientists are able to detect marine- derived nitrogen high in the canopy of salmon- bearing watersheds, and larger growth rings in the trees can be correlated to years with larger returns of salmon.
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