For The Wild - ALEXANDRA MORTON on the Virulence of Farmed Salmon ⧸78

00:00:00.000 Hey, for the wild community, Ayanna here. And before we get into our conversation with

00:00:05.500 Alexandra Morton on the horrors of BC salmon farms, I wanted to let you know how you all

00:00:12.420 can take action and support this incredibly critical ecosystem. So one, Alexandra is asking

00:00:18.640 for support right now in writing to the premier of BC to respectfully request and really demand

00:00:25.000 that the premier of British Columbia do away with the salmon farms in the waters off the

00:00:29.360 west coast of BC. His email is premier at gov.bc.ca. You can also contact the Minister of Fisheries

00:00:39.380 Canada and tell them that it's not acceptable to be introducing an Atlantic virus into the Pacific.

00:00:45.640 Alexandra is also mounting litigations against these huge corporations and their corporate 0.99

00:00:50.340 lawyers, and she needs help with her legal fees. So head over to alexandramorton.ca

00:00:56.040 where you can see her research and make a contribution.

00:01:00.460 In other news, we are loving all of the music submissions

00:01:03.480 that we're getting from our incredibly talented community.

00:01:07.300 So if you are a musician and you'd like your music showcase on the podcast,

00:01:12.360 go over to forthewild.world and upload your tunes there.

00:01:17.900 And lastly, if you're interested in sponsoring the podcast,

00:01:21.860 email us at engage at forthewild.world.

00:01:25.020 We're looking forward to building new partnerships.

00:01:28.360 Thanks so much, and now on to the show.

00:01:37.440 British Columbia has this enormous decision to make on the 20th of June.

00:01:42.920 Premier John Horgan, the Premier of British Columbia, has to decide whether he's going

00:01:47.620 to renew the fish farm 10 years in a quarter of the industry.

00:01:51.520 All of these fish farms are in indigenous territories where they have been, some of them have been occupying the fish farm facilities, and then the science is just raining down on them.

00:02:03.020 The chefs in British Columbia are rejecting the farm salmon product.

00:02:07.440 There's all kinds of lawsuits, you know, I'm involved in several of them.

00:02:11.060 The silence is broken by somebody crying

00:02:23.120 Trying to be heard, never a word

00:02:26.600 Always the attitude, sort out your own

00:02:30.140 Always alone

00:02:31.920 Wishing for something the world is denying

00:02:35.800 Out in the wilderness somebody's crying

00:02:41.040 Somebody wishing for something to happen

00:02:54.260 Wishing to tell, wishing to help

00:02:57.720 Someone was listening, someone who cared

00:03:01.520 Never despaired

00:03:03.400 Someone to lean on and someone to trust

00:03:08.040 Who needs your assistance and finds your disguise?

00:03:22.240 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with

00:03:28.800 Alexandra Morton. Alexandra is an independent biologist who followed Wales into a remote

00:03:35.080 archipelago in 1984 and made it her home and study area. When the salmon farming industry

00:03:41.760 began displacing the whales and salmon, Morton began a 30-year effort to protect the BC coast

00:03:48.040 from this form of intense monoculture. Morton has published numerous scientific papers on the

00:03:54.260 impact of salmon farms, taken the industry to court, met with its CEOs in Norway, and became

00:04:00.460 a frontline activist with the First Nations in the territory where she is doing her research.

00:04:06.180 She tracks viruses today, not whales. Alex has been featured on 60 Minutes in the New York Times

00:04:12.980 and is the subject of several documentaries. She is a solutionist with practical solutions

00:04:18.560 to help humanity learn to live with the natural world, something she sees as critical to the lives

00:04:24.440 of the children growing into the world we make or break for them today thank you so much alexandra

00:04:31.180 for the dedication of your work and for joining us today to help us unpack some of the complexities

00:04:38.380 around salmon and the ecosystems that they stem from well thank you because um i mean truly if a

00:04:46.280 tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it it just falls and so it's incredibly important at

00:04:53.340 this point that people hear about these things and really understand and know that they actually

00:05:00.580 have the power to stop this. I mean, I can just bring it forward and you can broadcast it and

00:05:06.580 but it really is up to all the individuals. Because, you know, power of one is all we have,

00:05:13.020 but we all have it. There's a lot of us. So thank you. Well, I'm so appreciative of your

00:05:20.220 incredible research and your fierce truth-telling voice on behalf of the salmon and all they

00:05:26.140 interconnect. And you've spent your life immersed in an intimate relationship with the marine world

00:05:33.340 of British Columbia's sinuous coastline. And I'd love to ask you to begin by sharing why you now

00:05:40.460 study viruses infecting wild Pacific salmon populations instead of the matriarchal orca

00:05:47.000 cultures that led you to BC over 30 years ago? The short answer is that the whales can't do this

00:05:53.720 for themselves. And the long answer is I have become entwined in the biology of salmon and

00:06:01.980 this coast. And it's a common experience for really all biologists that go into the field

00:06:09.040 and do long-term research. Because what happens is we have the numbers on the situation. We know

00:06:16.280 what should be there and what is not there. And I personally spend, you know, virtually every

00:06:22.700 waking hour trying to figure out how to inform people that you don't want to lose this incredible

00:06:30.840 power cord. This is what salmon are. They go out in the open ocean as a tiny fish and they

00:06:37.640 basically collect the energy of the sun hitting the open ocean. It's when the sun hits the ocean,

00:06:43.700 plankton blooms and larger plankton eat it and then fish eat that and larger fish eat those fish

00:06:50.040 and then our salmon eat those little fish and package them into a delicious flesh and bring

00:06:58.380 it back to our coast so eagles whales bears seals sea lions everybody sets their clock to the salmon

00:07:06.200 And then they do this incredible thing. They defy gravity and they carry ocean nitrogen and phosphorus up into the forest. And you actually can measure the size of a salmon run by the growth rings on a tree.

00:07:21.640 and you can track nitrogen 15 it's only found in the ocean but it's all through british columbia's

00:07:28.540 forests on up into the alpine meadows because the fish go in there predators eat them they take that

00:07:36.680 they carry the fish inside them and when they relieve themselves they release this nitrogen and

00:07:42.060 it literally feeds the forest so salmon feed the trees that make the oxygen we breathe and you know

00:07:49.820 as a girl, I read every single book on biologists going into the wilderness, beginning with Jane

00:07:55.100 Goodall's work. But every single story was in three parts. First, part one was, oh, wow, you

00:08:03.060 know, wow, the animals are so amazing. The environment is so incredible. Living out in

00:08:08.100 the wilderness was always a rewarding and challenging experience for everybody. Part

00:08:14.040 two of everyone's life is always, uh-oh, everything I'm seeing now is unraveling due to some blind

00:08:23.500 human behavior. And then, you know, part three is trying to talk to politicians, bringing in

00:08:30.780 graduate students, trying to make local people aware that the animals are worth more to them

00:08:36.000 alive. And so I went into this armed and prepared, and I was not going to go into part two and three.

00:08:44.040 I just wanted, really, I really just wanted to figure out what the orca, killer whales, were saying.

00:08:50.540 You know, why were they, why was this huge brain communicating so beautifully and complexly?

00:08:57.900 I wanted to figure it out.

00:08:59.940 But when fish farms came in, I didn't see them for what they were.

00:09:06.000 I thought they were a good idea.

00:09:07.900 I thought we were living in a little community with a one-room school with only 200 people.

00:09:13.660 and the thought of more jobs in that remote location, doing a benign thing like growing

00:09:19.460 salmon in a pen, I thought, oh, wow, this is perfect. In fact, I applied for a job.

00:09:26.160 But then my neighbors came to me, particularly the fishermen, and the fishermen were teachers

00:09:31.740 to me because they were salmon predators that could speak, whereas the orca are salmon predators

00:09:38.220 whose language I didn't understand. And so I was constantly going to fishermen, asking them,

00:09:43.660 you know, why when the whales go up Kinkum Inlet in the spring, you know, is there six inches of

00:09:48.360 their dorsal fin showing the whole time? And they don't do that anywhere else. And the guys would

00:09:53.440 be like, oh, yeah, that's because the glacial meltwater is exactly six feet deep. And they've

00:09:58.880 got their eyes right below it. So they knew a lot. But it reversed when the salmon farms came in,

00:10:05.020 they came to me. I was the only person with a word processor is what we called them at the time. And

00:10:11.060 they said hey look they're putting these things in all the wrong places and I said well what do

00:10:16.720 you mean and they said well they're putting them on the hot spots where the salmon are the prawns

00:10:21.680 are the rock cod are in particular and I said oh okay guys yeah I got this I'll let DFO our

00:10:28.520 fisheries and oceans know I'm sure they've made a mistake and that was in 1987 and they were not

00:10:36.640 making a mistake. In fact, the salmon farming industry was methodically finding those places

00:10:44.940 where there was the most oxygen, the most fresh water, and all these things. Everything the

00:10:50.320 wild fish needed, their fish needed. And so they put their farms basically on the vital organs of

00:10:56.040 this archipelago, and she began to collapse. She's so strong, it took a long time, but

00:11:02.860 it's pretty bad right now and so the viruses i started with studying the escaped atlantics

00:11:10.860 because that's what they're raising here atlantic salmon in the pacific and then i began studying

00:11:15.320 sea lice epidemics which happen in every country this industry operates and sea lice just explode

00:11:22.580 in the feedlots that these farms are and then the larval lice come out and they just eat the

00:11:28.620 wild fish to death that wild fish just aren't built for it and then I got privy to information

00:11:35.420 on some of the diseases in these farms I thought oh gee somebody ought to be looking into these

00:11:40.500 viruses I didn't think I was going to be able to do that because I'm not a virologist but

00:11:45.780 I'm very good field scientist and I teamed up with a virologist and so I'm just a field end

00:11:51.160 and I do all the collections and help write the papers up and so yeah we're discovering these

00:11:58.660 Norwegian viruses spreading through the Pacific and the term go viral is frightening to me because

00:12:05.180 they really do go viral. Viruses are incredible things and which is why 95 percent of the farm

00:12:12.520 salmon in the supermarkets have the virus and it's alive. I personally would never eat farm

00:12:19.800 salmon sashimi that hasn't been cooked because I mean I don't know what the virus there's just no

00:12:24.920 work that's been done on what this virus is doing to humans but I'm afraid of it because it's so

00:12:29.820 durable it is a tough little virus like when I study other viruses you have to handle them so

00:12:35.360 carefully if the fish you have to sample the fish you know immediately after death that can't be any

00:12:40.900 warming of the sample the weather has to be perfect they're really fragile not this thing

00:12:46.600 It's like a rubber snake. It just doesn't break. And yeah, I have no idea what it's doing to people,

00:12:53.140 but it does scare me, I have to say. You know, definitely wash your hands after touching farm

00:12:57.040 salmon. And yeah, personally, I wouldn't eat farm salmon sashimi. I'm racing this virus right now

00:13:03.380 called piscine ryo virus, trying to get out ahead of it. But it's difficult. And at the moment,

00:13:08.560 I'm not winning. I want to delve a bit more into some specifics on PRV, this Piscine Rio virus

00:13:17.860 that's devastating Pacific salmon. So could you tell us how this Norwegian virus found itself in

00:13:24.680 Pacific waters? And then how does PRV manifest in salmon? You know, what are their physical

00:13:30.240 symptoms? Does it affect all species of Pacific salmon, whether that's Chinook, Pink, Sockeye,

00:13:36.520 coho does it affect them all the same way when salmon farming started in british columbia they

00:13:42.360 started with chinook and coho which are pacific salmon but those fish just didn't do very well

00:13:48.380 in the pens they couldn't take the crowding and it was norwegian operators that looked at this coast

00:13:54.980 and decided they wanted to farm here and so they started to buy up these little failing farms and

00:14:01.820 they brought with them Atlantic salmon. And the reason they brought Atlantic salmon is because

00:14:07.000 they had bred them for captivity. And they were like bringing your prize Black Angus cows or your

00:14:13.800 Holsteins or, you know, your prize sheep from wherever. It's something that farmers do. And so

00:14:20.360 they simply brought Atlantic salmon. But the trouble with the fish farms, of course, is that

00:14:25.860 they're in pens and net pens. And so everything that's in the farm gets out, except, you know,

00:14:31.740 hopefully the fish, but all the bacteria and the viruses and the sea lice and the waste and the

00:14:37.020 mucus and the feces. And so they brought all these fish beginning in 19, about 84, they started to

00:14:45.400 come into British Columbia. And in 2010, piscine rio virus was discovered. By then it had swept

00:14:54.660 through the Norwegian industry for 10 years. Nobody knew what it was, but the farm salmon

00:15:01.260 were getting skinny and weak. They could barely move. Sometimes they would recover and sometimes

00:15:08.380 they would die, but nobody knew why until 2010. And by then, over 30 million Atlantic salmon had

00:15:17.680 come into British Columbia and not directly from Norway. They came from Scotland, Ireland,

00:15:23.500 Washington State, Iceland. But the predominant strain of Atlantic salmon is a Norwegian one

00:15:31.280 called the Movi strain. So we know that we got salmon from Norway. And as this disease was

00:15:39.160 ripping through their industry, these eggs were coming to British Columbia, and none of them were

00:15:44.300 screened for piscinrio virus. It's a very durable virus. It's very tough. It'll even come in on

00:15:50.940 equipment. When it gets released into the Pacific Ocean, nobody really knew what it did. Until

00:16:00.220 recently, a research paper was just published a few weeks ago. So the only fish that we're sure of

00:16:06.380 what it does to is the Chinook salmon. Now in the farm salmon, in the Atlantic salmon,

00:16:13.480 when the virus gets into the red blood cells and it uses the cells to replicate itself,

00:16:19.180 the cell has like a relief valve and the virus leaks out and it causes inflammation in the

00:16:26.420 fish's skeletal muscle and in their heart and the fish are highly damaged but they can recover from

00:16:32.440 it if there's no predators but in the chinook salmon where it did not co-evolve with the fish

00:16:38.300 there's no relief and so the cell just gets bigger and bigger and it just pops like a balloon

00:16:44.300 and the virus is released, the fish now loses its red blood cells. So it loses the ability to

00:16:50.640 transport oxygen. The hemoglobin released from the cells damages the kidney and the liver,

00:16:57.500 and so they suffer organ damage. And so for a wild fish, this just means it's game over because

00:17:03.160 the predators are going to destroy you. We don't know yet what it's doing to the other species of

00:17:07.980 Pacific salmon, but we do know that wild salmon around the farms are going extinct.

00:17:12.960 And that's how we got it. And that's what it's doing. And yet government is trying to pretend

00:17:20.280 that it's benign. And they're trying to pretend that it's not from Norway. But the Norwegians

00:17:25.760 are very clear. They're like, oh, yeah, no, that's our virus. And when you do the phylogenetic 1.00

00:17:31.460 analysis, which is like doing a family tree for the virus. Yeah, it's Norwegian. 0.77

00:17:36.020 And I think most people comprehend by now that this feedlot style animal farming is unhealthy and cruel on every level. It's unhealthy for the animal. It's unhealthy for the human. And whether it be cows, chicken or fish, I just want to make sure the audience has a clear understanding of what salmon farming operations look like before we move on.

00:18:01.520 so you mentioned the netting but would you paint a more detailed picture for us

00:18:07.720 sure so they are about the size of a football field and they're broken down into 10 pens

00:18:15.420 and the pens are about 40 feet deep and they have a big feed shed and in it they have these huge

00:18:23.360 hoppers where they pour giant sacks of feed like big barges come and so they pour about five tons

00:18:30.380 of feed into the water every day the feed rolls down these long tubes and go to each pen and then

00:18:37.820 there's like a little spinner in the middle of the pen that throws the pellets out into the water

00:18:42.500 and so look at a farm like at sunset when the sun is low you can see the greasy stain of the

00:18:49.100 feed which is super oily you can just see that stain moving out of the farm and then when you

00:18:54.800 go down underwater what you see is this cube of net with up to like 1.6 million farm salmon going

00:19:03.180 around in circles and the feces are just pouring out it's like snow and then they have a second net

00:19:10.220 where seals and sea lions and birds get trapped because everything is trying to eat these fish

00:19:15.860 there's so many animals that are just built to eat predators and so they get trapped in these nets

00:19:22.000 but they're big some of them are in round pens as well yeah they're basically these huge

00:19:28.980 take like a chicken farm one of those huge sheds that the poor things are in and you just put that

00:19:34.280 underwater and all of that waste is coming out there there is no other farmer in North America

00:19:41.180 that is now not shoveling his manure these guys are not shoveling their manure it's just going

00:19:47.700 straight into the ocean so underneath the farms when you put cameras down there it's a big gray

00:19:53.520 wasteland there's any disturbance it's like this powdery green gray stuff that almost nothing lives

00:20:02.060 in there's just this one worm called capitella that is laced through it but everything else is

00:20:08.660 gone because first of all it's coating the bottom but second of all the process of rotting takes

00:20:14.740 oxygen and so there's like no oxygen down there on that seafloor underneath and in many farms you

00:20:21.120 can see bubbles coming up where there's it's gassing off it's really disgusting it wouldn't

00:20:27.180 occur on land because you can see it on land if you if you had a feedlot with these giant smears

00:20:32.320 of waste to the you know direction of the prevailing winds and you had parasites that you

00:20:38.260 could see just billowing out of the farms it wouldn't happen i mean feedlots are bad enough

00:20:44.540 on land but in the water you don't see it and the whole thing looks pretty benign from the surface

00:20:49.940 because it's just a few little nets and little nicely painted little green buildings and a couple

00:20:54.720 of guys on it and you know they look they look great but when you look underwater it's just a

00:21:01.280 blizzard of waste coming out of those things i've seen the fish farms in bc and you're right it's

00:21:08.140 just this small little green building that looks pretty tidy and these dock-like structures and

00:21:17.900 yeah you would never know the filth and devastation and the havoc being wrecked underwater it's they're

00:21:25.180 really deceptive in that way you know i'm wondering and i almost feel like i know the answer to this

00:21:30.980 question but how have you seen scientific research being withheld or manipulated to further the

00:21:38.120 agendas of the fish farming industry. Maybe a second part to that was, how has the BC government

00:21:44.160 responded to your scientific findings or the active resistance and long-enduring occupation

00:21:50.420 of fish farms by local First Nations? Well, any scientist who has the nerve to report

00:21:57.340 a virulent virus, particularly an exotic virus in a fish farm, can expect to have his career

00:22:03.740 destroyed. This has happened in Norway when they found the infectious salmon anemia virus had

00:22:09.320 spread from Norway to Chile. They were under investigation for misconduct. And in my case,

00:22:16.520 the lab that I used, we also found the infectious salmon anemia virus and now

00:22:20.800 piscine rio virus in British Columbia. We were the first to report both of those.

00:22:26.220 He had his international certification removed. He was accused of all kinds of things.

00:22:31.640 they took away all his government contracts and they never showed that his lab was wrong

00:22:39.120 they never showed that any of his test results were different when they were tested in a different

00:22:44.820 lab in fact there was an enormous amount of agreement between the labs with me they call me

00:22:52.720 an activist they humiliate me they you know they say I don't have a I'm not a doctor of science

00:22:59.300 that's correct, but I've published over 20 scientific papers which have passed peer review.

00:23:05.780 They say my data does not support my conclusions, but of course it does, or you wouldn't get

00:23:11.760 published because the journals are very tough on people like me that are not from a big

00:23:16.480 institution. They review you severely, and so they should. And so if somebody thinks

00:23:22.600 my research is suspect, they should contact the journal and they should provide exactly

00:23:27.980 why they think it's suspect, but they don't. I mean, even when it comes to sea lice, which are

00:23:33.680 an easy thing to study because they're all over the outside of the fish. And it's a problem that

00:23:39.720 is haunting this industry everywhere, Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Eastern Canada,

00:23:45.960 here in British Columbia, they'll say, oh yeah, no, we don't really think that's a problem.

00:23:50.900 Oh, sea lice are natural. Like, oh my gosh, 18 years we've been publishing on this. We have shown

00:23:56.940 how many lice it takes to kill these fish you know it's one louse per gram of the body weight

00:24:01.680 of the fish take the farms out the wild salmon don't have lice and they return if you can suppress

00:24:08.040 the lice in the farms the wild salmon respond you know parts of the coast where there are no farms

00:24:14.120 there are no lice the science is just totally done and they just deny it they just deny deny

00:24:21.700 deny, deny. And that's why First Nations had to stand up and start occupying these farms because 0.82

00:24:27.340 this was not going to be resolved in science and it was not going to be resolved in the courts

00:24:32.080 because I'm winning all my lawsuits and nothing changes. They have bright lights on the farms at

00:24:37.340 night, which is attracting tons of herring into these farms. They are the biggest herring fishery

00:24:43.580 on this coast. And the only reason we know that is because First Nations were very brave over the

00:24:50.220 last year and they've just been boarding the farms and putting gopros down which are an underwater

00:24:55.280 camera on a pole oh there's the herring there's the rock cod oh there's some like really sick

00:25:02.920 looking farm salmon so and that's the lawsuit we're fighting today

00:25:20.220 I'm a crowning train, a commandment of the world.

00:25:32.220 I'm a crowning train, a commandment of the world.

00:25:41.220 I'm a black man, baby, she's holding me alone 0.94

00:25:51.180 I'm a black man, I'm a rambler, but I can't stay home 0.94

00:26:01.340 I'm a black man, I'm a rambler, but I can't stay home 0.93

00:26:11.220 Oh 0.81

00:26:41.220 She said, hey, I'm leaving, and I can't come back no more, and if you don't come back, I'll tell you no more.

00:27:11.220 how heartbreaking and frightening to be chasing and racing with this virus

00:27:24.500 i've read that viruses have been described as quote the organisms at the edge of life

00:27:30.940 and they're resilient and adaptable replicators who know how to ride evolutionary waves so i'm

00:27:39.160 curious, how do you think the vaccination of farmed salmon has influenced the evolution of

00:27:46.360 PRV? And do you think that PRV is growing more virulent in response? Well, so they are vaccinating

00:27:54.020 for some viruses, or they're trying. They haven't figured out this one yet. But the scary thing

00:27:59.300 about vaccinating is in some cases, they're using live virus, which is frightening, because I don't

00:28:06.360 think these guys are in control of anything they do at this point. There's no evidence they're in

00:28:11.180 control of anything. But the problem with viruses, and you're right, they ride the edge of life,

00:28:16.260 they're not actually alive. And so they need to get into an organism and basically use its

00:28:21.040 machinery. Pycemyovirus invades red blood cells in salmon and uses the red blood cells to replicate

00:28:28.400 itself. And in Pacific salmon, who have no natural defenses, it's just causing their cells to

00:28:34.760 explode. So in the wild, a virus really can't be all that virulent because it kills its host and

00:28:42.820 well, ship goes down, that's the end of that virus. But in a farm, oh, there's another 1.2

00:28:51.020 million fish you can infect. And because there's so many pathogens in there and weakened fish

00:28:56.740 survive, there's no predators, there's no cleanup crew. I mean, the predators are amazing cleanup

00:29:02.300 crew. They do not let this happen. They don't allow fish to flounder around so sick they can

00:29:08.680 barely move. But this does happen in the fish farms. And so viruses grow fangs and claws. They

00:29:17.200 become more virulent because they're competing with other viruses and bacteria and parasites.

00:29:23.660 And so the strategy for them changes from live lightly on the land to get in there,

00:29:29.900 replicate as fast as you can because there's no consequences to your host going down because

00:29:35.580 there's going to be somebody else there for you and so they change their actual genetic structure

00:29:41.700 and become more virulent and the poor wild fish outside you know they're trying to deal with this

00:29:48.820 by dying the predators do kill them and in the natural system that would work but uh with the

00:29:56.140 farms, kind of like a fire hose, a virus coming out, there is no way that nature can get a hold

00:30:04.020 of it and turn it off. So she just keeps killing the wild fish and they just go down. I mean,

00:30:10.020 right now, the juvenile salmon migrating out of the area where I've been doing research since 1984

00:30:15.520 is almost non-existent. Kingfishers aren't there. The morganzers aren't there. I'm very good at

00:30:22.740 finding these fish. And when you get into a bay where there's lots of juvenile salmon,

00:30:26.800 it looks like rain falling and there's just empty water there now. They don't have control

00:30:32.240 of this piscine reovirus. They're still pretending it's not happening because the industry is

00:30:37.800 virtually entirely infected. And the laws of Canada say you can't put a diseased fish in the

00:30:43.560 water, but that's what they're doing. And so in addition to the research, I've been in court for

00:30:49.160 five years with the Minister of Fisheries to say you cannot be putting these fish into the water.

00:30:55.000 It's against the law in Canada. I won. And he still refuses to acknowledge this lawsuit. And

00:31:03.000 so I have sued him again. And now, fortunately, so has a First Nation. The Namgis have sued 1.00

00:31:09.200 the Minister of Fisheries to stop putting this virus in their waters. 1.00

00:31:13.280 So we'll see where that goes. That case will be heard in September.

00:31:16.820 I guess my question is, I mean, I have a lot of questions around this court case that I want to get into. What would they have to change to not, like you said, put this virus in the water? Would the whole system have to be shifted? You know, what are the solutions that you're wanting from the courts?

00:31:37.320 All I'm trying to do is protect wild fish.

00:31:39.720 The core case is just don't put it in the water.

00:31:42.400 The answer to the industry is a technological one.

00:31:45.420 It's easy.

00:31:45.940 Put them in tanks, for goodness sakes.

00:31:48.120 Close the door.

00:31:49.080 Separate the two environments.

00:31:51.660 And if you, I mean, aquaculture might have a role in our society,

00:31:55.400 but you need to create a synthetic ecosystem.

00:31:59.060 In other words, stop right now for these farm salmon.

00:32:02.480 They go fishing, and they go fishing hard.

00:32:04.480 They go fishing in South America and all over the world and grind those fish into pellets and add all kinds of grain products, which humans also could be eating.

00:32:15.660 And then they take out less fish in the water.

00:32:18.200 So if you want to make food, which really isn't their goal, but let's just pretend that they decide that they want to make food and they want to make money doing it.

00:32:27.080 Well, start with growing your algae and then grow something that eats the algae and make your own food chain.

00:32:34.480 But isolate it from the natural world because what people forget, or maybe they never knew, is these natural systems are incredibly powerful and productive and resilient.

00:32:47.880 They will track climate change to as much as is possible.

00:32:51.940 They're way more successful and have far more potential in feeding us than these perverted systems where I say, you know, they go fishing, they use all these petroleum products, and in the end they not only take out less fish, but they've killed everything around them.

00:33:11.520 It is a symptom of some kind of madness. And I don't know how the government of Canada has decided to risk everything on this industry. But it's not about fish. It must be a deal between Canada and Norway, because really all these farms here, there's no Canadians farming in the ocean in British Columbia, it's all Norwegian and Japanese.

00:33:32.860 And there must be some kind of deal somewhere in the stratosphere that we can't even see that is allowing this to persist.

00:33:40.660 Because, you know, I've tried to work with this government, and I don't mean to be rude, but they are behaving like addicts.

00:33:47.240 They're defiling themselves.

00:33:49.360 Their credibility is shot.

00:33:51.400 Their trade partners are going to be furious at the viruses that are passing over the border in this fish.

00:33:56.480 uh the the good news is okay i gotta give you some good news because i'm just dragging you

00:34:02.320 down into the vortex where i live but the good news is that the first nations have really taken

00:34:08.980 hold of this monster and they have rights that i don't have and i'm not going to be one to say

00:34:16.060 all first nations are perfect or they're a perfect society but here's the difference

00:34:20.220 they evolved amongst the creatures here and the mountains here and the trees and the weather

00:34:26.620 and they have no intention of leaving and so you will often hear people say you know if it gets

00:34:33.980 any worse i'm out of here but first nations the indigenous people they don't say that they don't

00:34:39.480 think that and so they are one of the strongest forces for life that for them it means more than

00:34:48.640 money to most of them it's their culture you know it's in their veins it's their future

00:34:54.820 and there's some remarkable science that is evolving in government which is so interesting

00:35:02.520 where they can actually read the immune system of fish and what this does is it allows the fish to

00:35:09.280 talk to us and so if you sample the fish you just need a tiny little piece of fin you don't even

00:35:15.760 need to kill the fish you sample these fish all through their migration route when they run into

00:35:21.000 a problem with us their immune system registers that and it's a digital signal it's just these

00:35:28.040 switches that are on off on off and you need people that know how to read them but the fish

00:35:32.700 will tell you oh water's too warm oh i've got a virus sea less i've got copper poisoning my liver

00:35:38.100 is damaged whatever the problem is and then we can take that information and we can go back to that

00:35:44.540 spot and go okay how did that happen to the fish where is that coming from and we can change our

00:35:49.700 behavior and then the really cool thing is the next year we can ask them as they're passing by again

00:35:56.900 did we make it better for you or not and they can tell us and so it is like the legends of the

00:36:05.540 indigenous people of this coast where the fish could talk they can talk to us again and we can 0.94

00:36:11.820 change our behavior and we can strategically get out of their way and we can turn these things back 1.00

00:36:17.940 on we can turn back on the herring the salmon then the orca come back and you know the forests 1.00

00:36:24.160 grow and people are happy and fed and tourism blooms and you know the non-indigenous governments

00:36:31.440 start showing real consideration and reconciliation towards the indigenous governments

00:36:37.120 it's a win-win-win and the government could support the businessmen who want to do

00:36:41.760 land-based aquaculture so if we can just get back past the addiction stage and allow for an

00:36:49.820 intervention to happen if they would just look up for a minute it's there's so much good and

00:36:56.440 positive and such a good pathway to that that involves local people and DFO and and federal

00:37:03.040 government and the science for that is right in the federal government. So that's what I'm trying

00:37:08.000 to do is move us along to that point where we just look up and start working in that direction

00:37:14.420 and working with these fish. I know there's been a lot of buzz around moving salmon farming to land

00:37:20.900 like you've been discussing and these closed containment systems are already in operation

00:37:27.140 in Norway and Florida and even Vancouver Island and they're being championed as the righteous

00:37:32.960 way forward because they don't impact wild fish and because they're recirculating tank systems.

00:37:39.520 They don't bring the diseases typical of ocean feedlots. But this question arises in me of

00:37:45.920 what about the spirit of the salmon and the mindset behind putting these

00:37:52.760 incredible creatures in these tank systems? Well, I agree with you. And a lot of people

00:37:59.520 feel that way and also about horrific conditions that our pigs are living in and cows and chickens

00:38:07.200 we should be we are ashamed most of us and horrified but here's the thing and and i'm not

00:38:14.720 saying it's right or wrong but the ecosystem i'm living in is so on the edge i'm not even going to

00:38:21.100 make that argument i'm i'm like a mother who is trying to keep her child alive and it's just going

00:38:27.980 to let a lot of things slide because it's so close to death. When you see a river die that had,

00:38:35.920 you know, tens of thousands of salmon, I just didn't imagine that this could happen. Although

00:38:40.860 I had heard that it's happened elsewhere, but I have failed and that river is dying. And if I can

00:38:47.860 save some of the ones around, the salmon will find their way back. And so I'm just going to say,

00:38:55.440 you know if people can't see our role in the suffering that we're causing that is something

00:39:02.480 that definitely needs to be dealt with and it is being dealt with you see all these eggs now that

00:39:08.640 are free range or happy chickens or you know i don't know whether to believe any of it but people

00:39:13.620 are moving in that direction and that is fabulous it shows a real maturity because in a lot of ways

00:39:21.440 we are like you know a three-year-old we just run around and break stuff because we can and we

00:39:26.760 really don't want to know that somebody else's feelings have been hurt or that we've hurt them

00:39:30.900 when we you know hit them with a block but as you mature you realize oh actually that person has the

00:39:37.600 same kind of feelings I have and I need to respect that and so hopefully as a species we get there

00:39:43.020 But, you know, our life support system is coming close to complete failure.

00:39:49.420 And so I have prioritized my focus and I'm just trying to keep these wild fish alive.

00:39:57.020 I hear you.

00:39:58.680 And down where I am in Northern California, where there were once salmon so thick you could walk across on their backs,

00:40:07.420 like there are some places in Alaska and even BC, I hope that that's still true. It's not true here

00:40:14.960 anymore. It's a victory if there are one salmon a year you see on some of these tributaries.

00:40:23.160 So I hear your loving desperation to protect the remnants of healthy ecosystems. And I just think

00:40:34.020 to myself the marketing behind salmon and what has created this greed with salmon all over the

00:40:44.400 world that you can find salmon in almost every Costco or big marketplace from, you know, anywhere

00:40:53.920 from the West Coast to the East Coast and everywhere in between places that salmon aren't even close to

00:40:59.480 pacific salmon specifically and how it's touted as this major health food and salmon oils and

00:41:08.780 pills and vitamins and and it's just marketed salmon is really marketed for to be this healthy

00:41:14.960 protein with a lot of benefits for our bodies and of course that is true but i wonder at what point

00:41:21.320 does it not become true at what point do we raise these fish in a way that is so unhealthy

00:41:29.760 that it becomes counterintuitive for us actually to take in these poisoned and enslaved spirit

00:41:40.440 animals so I have a lot of feelings around the farming of salmon and the marketing behind salmon

00:41:47.060 But also, I absolutely understand where you're coming from.

00:41:49.820 And I'm not coming in with a solution, but just a lot of questions and a lot of heartbreak

00:41:55.480 over the complexity of these incredible kin.

00:42:00.900 Yeah, well, they're not salmon.

00:42:03.820 You know, their flesh color is picked from basically paint chips.

00:42:09.400 There's what's called a Salmo fan.

00:42:11.200 And the people that are raising these salmon, they pick what color they want these fish

00:42:15.480 to be because they're not eating a diet that is making their flesh pink. And so they pick a light

00:42:21.420 pink or a medium pink or dark pink. And then when you look at farm salmon and you see the stripes

00:42:27.700 of white, well, that's fat. And that fat is dangerous in many cases. And fat on earth is

00:42:34.820 becoming dangerous. All fat. You really need to look at where you're getting it from because

00:42:39.060 PCBs and dioxins bind to fat and then we eat them and they accumulate in our body 0.62

00:42:45.960 and the only way we get rid of them is by having a baby and women give over 90 percent of their 0.90

00:42:53.000 toxic load to the first child so I mean that's not very comforting um so they're not a healthy 1.00

00:43:00.980 thing to eat and that's in some ways that's one of the more hopeful things is because if people

00:43:07.160 would realize that when your hand is hovering in the supermarket, whether to grab the wild salmon

00:43:14.820 or the farm salmon, grab the wild salmon. And here's why. It is counterintuitive. You think,

00:43:21.920 okay, I'm going to save the wild salmon, so I'm going to eat the farm salmon. And that was the

00:43:26.040 line we were given. But that's not what's happening. If you grab the wild salmon, first of

00:43:32.400 all, you're getting a cleaner product. But second of all, you're feeding a whole system that wants

00:43:37.740 that wild salmon to stay alive. Salmon are so incredibly successful that they can produce

00:43:43.960 and still do in Alaska, produce enormous runs that support fisheries and still spawn in

00:43:52.420 spectacular numbers. Also in Russia, in the other side of the Pacific Ocean. In other words,

00:43:59.300 wherever there's no salmon farms, there's a lot of wild salmon. But when you pick the farm salmon,

00:44:05.240 oh yeah, you're eating a farm salmon and not a wild salmon. So you might think that's good.

00:44:09.480 That farm salmon has killed a lot of wild salmon. And it also has killed a lot of wild fish

00:44:15.320 somewhere in the ocean to get its food. And then it has these colorants added to the pellets that 0.94

00:44:23.700 it's fed as well. It's been fed probably sea life drugs. It's been vaccinated. In many cases,

00:44:30.640 they receive antibiotic treatments. So it's not quite as healthy as it appears. And the omega oil

00:44:36.380 ratios are different. So they're duping people because you see that pink and you go, oh, healthy

00:44:43.560 salmon. I'll take that. It's not really salmon that you're eating. You're eating a product that's

00:44:49.640 been made to look like salmon. So in a sense, these on-land fish farms would be created to

00:44:57.180 fill a market need, but that isn't actually the real salmon. It's kind of just to continue this

00:45:07.460 capitalist game and create jobs based off of this false product.

00:45:13.880 Well, it's not even to create jobs because that's another one of their big jokes.

00:45:18.140 you know they're always saying well we're good for small coastal communities uh-huh yeah I was 0.99

00:45:24.200 from a community of 200 people and you guys moved in and now there's like 23 of these big Norwegian 1.00

00:45:30.580 feedlots and there's eight people left in my town the school is gone they don't make jobs they're 1.00

00:45:35.980 highly mechanized and they don't like local people watching them that is for sure but when you talk

00:45:41.800 about aquaculture it doesn't have to be salmon and I really think that aquaculture in terms of

00:45:48.000 growing algae, if somebody really wants to get rich making food, I would look at that. And don't

00:45:54.760 pillage the sea for it. Recreate circumstances in which it will grow because it is the basis of the

00:46:01.360 food chain. You can feed many things, including humans and other animals. There are other people

00:46:07.320 that are exploring insects as a protein source for food. And you take restaurant and refuse from

00:46:13.880 your kitchen compostables and grow massive amounts of insects and you get a protein product out of

00:46:19.980 that and you can grow fish there's other people who grow fish and the waste from the fish is

00:46:26.080 growing plants and the plants are recirculating the water and reconditioning it for the fish

00:46:32.540 and you get these closed loop systems which really is what an ecosystem is there are ways to do it

00:46:38.720 i don't know that it can be done on a massive scale that might be one of the problems because

00:46:43.240 these corporations, part of the big problem with them is they're only based on growth.

00:46:50.140 They are a cancer model. They can never be satisfied with one farm or 2,000 farms. They

00:46:58.340 have to always have more farms. And I didn't understand this. I'm a biologist. And there's

00:47:04.320 things that I could have really known earlier in this whole fight that might have helped me out.

00:47:08.880 But I went to Norway to the annual general meeting for Marine Harvest and for CIRMAC, the two of the biggest companies in the area where I'm working and living.

00:47:20.060 And the evening after the meeting, the CEO of Marine Harvest invited me into her office and she said, what do you want?

00:47:28.880 And I said, you just have to get your farms off our wild salmon migration routes.

00:47:33.700 And she was very polite and very gracious.

00:47:36.020 And she just said to me, look, I can't do that.

00:47:38.880 I have to make the share price of this company go up four times a year.

00:47:43.840 I can't lose a single farm.

00:47:45.940 Well, when I realized that, I was like, okay, well, then you guys just need to get out because

00:47:50.640 you're killing us off.

00:47:52.700 That's the problem.

00:47:54.080 It's not only that they're agriculture, but that they're corporations based on share price.

00:48:00.440 And so they always have to be bigger.

00:48:02.120 And we're living in a finite planet.

00:48:05.040 And so in my view, this is what's killing us off.

00:48:08.220 is we've created an animal that lives in two dimensions, is growing rapaciously,

00:48:15.600 eating everything around it, but nature cannot get at it because nature exists in three dimensions.

00:48:23.700 But this two-dimensional monster is protected by the firmest laws in the land. I mean,

00:48:31.420 the laws around corporations are more ironclad than any laws and so these animals are protected

00:48:38.740 if you if you want to see them and you know as in a biological point of view these weird

00:48:44.240 two-dimensional creatures they're just going around they're just eating things up they're

00:48:48.400 just puncturing ecosystems until they're a slurry they're shorting the batteries of life and selling

00:48:55.260 the spark and leaving us with you know dead batteries and then they just move on and they're

00:49:00.320 not, they're not affected because they're not alive. Everything else around them is. The more

00:49:06.240 you pull back on this, the bigger the problem is. And then of course, the question is that I've

00:49:10.220 started to ask is, are we actually in a democracy? Does what anybody want count? Because I don't see

00:49:17.860 that. And right now, with First Nations standing up, who have these rights on paper, they're saying,

00:49:26.900 look, there is going to be no reconciliation with us if there's salmon farms in our territories.

00:49:32.100 And government is just, you can see the gears are grinding and smoke is coming out and chunks

00:49:36.860 are falling to the ground and they can't stop. It's an interesting time, that is for sure.

00:49:44.400 What has your research unveiled about how PRV is impacting not only salmon, but

00:49:50.320 the entire marine community? Perhaps we could hear about sea mammals in particular.

00:49:55.300 So the orca are based on salmon, and they're based particularly on Chinook salmon. And so

00:50:01.800 a paper that I published last December showed that where wild salmon are exposed to salmon farms,

00:50:08.000 they are far more infected with the virus than distant from salmon farms. And then we found also

00:50:15.920 that there's more infected fish in the lower parts of the rivers than the upper part. And what that

00:50:21.980 suggests in a biological world is that infected fish are having trouble getting up the rivers

00:50:27.500 and so you're starting to see these collapses in wild salmon populations and for example

00:50:33.440 the southern resident orca or killer whale um in the salish sea so between like seattle and

00:50:40.920 vancouver 69 percent of the pregnancies in those whales are ending in miscarriages because these

00:50:50.180 fish are starving for chinook salmon and piscine rio virus is causing chinook salmon cells to

00:50:58.780 explode and these fish come out of their rivers they swim by the farms and the way fish breathe

00:51:05.220 is they take water in their mouth and it passes over their gill and billions of viral particles

00:51:10.620 are flowing out of the farms and so they go into the fish's mouth over the gills and then bing

00:51:15.500 they're in contact with the red blood cells oh and the virus goes in the cell and it replicates

00:51:22.180 and and then the cells explode and the fish is dying and the virus is released in the order of

00:51:30.040 I don't know millions of copies of itself and when fish bring it into the low-lying lakes so

00:51:38.420 lakes that are easy for salmon to get into they infect the trout and the trout are they don't

00:51:43.780 seem to be affected by it, but they carry it. And so every run of juvenile salmon that comes out and

00:51:50.420 tries to rear in those lakes, they can get infected. And so the southern resident whales are

00:51:58.300 on a trajectory for extinction if something doesn't help them out. And northern resident

00:52:04.280 whales are abandoning the area where these farms are. And so it's called Johnson Straits. And it's

00:52:12.000 a beautiful place where all the salmons in the Pacific Ocean that are headed down these

00:52:16.580 big rivers along Vancouver Island and the Fraser River, it forms like a funnel. They come pouring

00:52:23.200 in. I mean, there used to be so many that they were just jumping everywhere. The air smelled

00:52:29.120 like salmon because there were so many of them in the air at one time. And the orca would come

00:52:33.380 down there and just basically party. They'd socialize and babies would all get together.

00:52:39.940 the young males would go off and have fun and the young moms are all clustered together you know

00:52:45.760 co-babysitting and you know that's how they develop their culture because there's so much

00:52:50.840 food they could concentrate on each other but that's not happening anymore there's not that

00:52:56.380 many fish and so they are dispersing and we don't know what effect that's having on their culture

00:53:01.340 but we do know that they this was a big part of their lives and so we've obviously changed them

00:53:07.960 in doing that but i don't want people to think that it's over i i really want you to know that

00:53:15.100 the ocean is still resilient we still have you know humpback whales have made a comeback on this

00:53:21.340 coast they don't eat salmon they eat herring and pacific white-sided dolphins have um they've also

00:53:29.080 i think they've finished their cycle but they peaked and there was thousands of around and now

00:53:33.920 they've moved off again, and they seem to come in waves. So it's not over yet. But I feel like

00:53:41.280 there needs to be just this one little shift in us. And if when we looked out over a landscape,

00:53:47.320 whatever it is, if we could look at that and go, okay, here's the power lines here,

00:53:52.960 this works with this, this is part of this, this is, okay, how do we fit in? How do we dovetail

00:53:58.140 into that rather than what we're doing now we look at a landscape and go oh that's empty oh that

00:54:05.280 mountain's in the way oh let's put a dam there oh that ocean is just doing nothing you know when

00:54:11.120 actually it's making most of the oxygen on our planet instead of trying to rearrange everything

00:54:18.080 we need to just figure out how to flow into it and then i've lived off grid for like 40 years

00:54:25.520 it's not hard to do it's incredibly easy and it's getting easier and easier you start

00:54:30.540 looking at this massive amount of energy that's all around us and just figure out you know

00:54:37.080 everything else works with it i'm sure we can figure it out too and and we are from the bottom

00:54:43.880 up so yeah i just think there's that one shift that needs to happen in us to create a really

00:54:49.080 fabulous future

00:54:50.420 guitar solo

00:55:20.400 dream following the scene caught up in a land of in between taught it to the band it knows no

00:55:31.680 when i've been the kite line the machine plays it on a screen never say precisely what i mean

00:55:46.240 Always hanging slightly off the edge

00:55:51.100 Slide into the night time

00:55:54.260 On the way down

00:55:56.980 It was a cool white blurring light

00:56:09.280 Flash right by my side

00:56:13.100 On the way down

00:56:16.240 Thank you.

00:56:46.240 i too live off the grid and i remember when i first started living this way i moved through

00:56:57.380 a lot of fears and this pulling feeling in me to feed my addiction to consumption or

00:57:07.020 basically fossil fuels and i thought that's what i wanted i thought that's what i needed because

00:57:13.360 that's how I was conditioned to live my entire childhood and adolescence and young adulthood

00:57:19.220 but when I started living this way and stripping away all of this conditioning I realized that not

00:57:26.540 only was of course there are its challenges and in no way is it easy but it was actually so much

00:57:33.540 more fulfilling to live closer to the earth it was so much more fulfilling to actually be

00:57:39.260 a part of a system that i was working with rather than just taking taking taking taking from

00:57:46.760 just pulling myself away from that which i loved more so i i really hear you that there are a lot

00:57:53.920 of solutions how we put those into motions how we actually psychologically move through this

00:58:01.920 addiction that you've spoken about a few times on the show is really um perhaps the way forward

00:58:08.200 But of course, doing it on scale is, and when I say scale, whether that's nationally, globally, even countywide, is challenging. It's really hard to figure out how to get enough people to work outside of the system. But I do feel that there's a lot of hope in that regard.

00:58:26.580 When I think about what we're up against with the Anthropocene, with climate change, I think about the ancient evolutionary history of salmon, and how they've persisted at least 15 million years through glaciations, volcanic events, and the rearranging of mountains.

00:58:47.980 yet perhaps there has never been a time where they face so many compounding threats

00:58:55.460 with such a weakened genetic pool for evolution to draw from and although it seems that thus far

00:59:03.140 viral diseases have only devastated populations in close proximity to farming operations and not

00:59:09.180 yet severely impacted populations in northern BC or Alaska. I wonder now that the virus is present

00:59:18.620 in Pacific waters, how quickly it will continue spreading, regardless of if the salmon farming

00:59:25.660 industry continues to operate in the open ocean or not. So I guess this question is, will salmon

00:59:31.220 have enough resiliency to overcome the death throes of the Anthropocene?

00:59:35.360 yeah that's the 64 million dollar question for sure um and we don't know the answer to it what

00:59:42.600 i do know is the sooner we turn this around the better because salmon have the ability to rapid

00:59:48.780 evolve and if you've for everybody who's ever seen salmon in a river or has seen a picture of them

00:59:54.740 you'll notice that when they're in the ocean they're all silvery and very very streamlined

01:00:01.540 but then they get into the rivers and they turn red or they get stripes and they have these humps

01:00:08.300 or they grow these big teeth and it's a very strange thing for them to do because they're not

01:00:13.840 feeding they're growing eggs and sperm they're swimming against very strong rivers in some cases

01:00:20.920 warm water fresh water shallow water all these things that are just incredibly stressful and

01:00:27.400 different but they use the last bit of energy to grow these humps and stripes and and put on this

01:00:36.360 regalia and the reason they do that and it's the males that are doing it basically they're saying

01:00:43.280 hey baby i went all the way around the pacific gyre and i came back with all of this to spare

01:00:51.000 I had so much energy. I was so successful. I am this wealthy that I could build this enormous hump

01:00:59.260 on my back just to impress you. And the female looks at each of these guys and she's like, 0.89

01:01:05.640 no, no, no. Oh, you. Now that choice is why we have such diversity in the genetics of salmon.

01:01:15.220 And, say, a sockeye salmon in the Fraser River can be a big, deep-bodied Adams River sockeye or a really sleek Chilco River sockeye. 0.83

01:01:26.860 And it's because the females are picking them.

01:01:28.960 So don't build a hatchery. 1.00

01:01:32.060 As soon as people start picking which fish mates with which fish, you might as well be cutting their tails off. 1.00

01:01:38.440 Because you're taking away this incredible power that the female has. 1.00

01:01:44.220 has she can read these mails and figure out which one is exactly the best one for her babies 1.00

01:01:51.120 it's amazing so this is part of this this whole figuring out how to live with things and

01:01:57.280 see the power of this natural system and assist rather than think we can possibly do anything

01:02:05.500 better so you know your question haunts me for sure but giving up it just isn't an option

01:02:13.160 and they have survived a lot and some percentage of them will survive and if we really get it

01:02:21.220 together and work with them we can help them come back simply by getting out of their way

01:02:26.740 they don't need us to do anything for them just get out of the way where the water's too warm we

01:02:33.080 need to release more water where the fish farms are diseasing them we need to get them out of there

01:02:38.940 where chemicals are being introduced into their migration routes.

01:02:42.520 We need to clean that up.

01:02:44.240 We just need to change our behavior.

01:02:47.040 From what I gather, you're really excited about some emergent scientific techniques

01:02:52.480 that are opening doorways in how you understand salmon,

01:02:55.520 and that this science may be able to help us renew their ecosystems and support their health.

01:03:01.860 So would you tell us what you've been working on and what all you've been learning?

01:03:07.240 Sadly, this science is not mine, and I'm just in the trenches trying to push back this wave of disease,

01:03:14.360 the biggest chemical spill in British Columbia, which is these fish farms.

01:03:19.300 So the science is called genomic profiling, and it has a lot of potential.

01:03:24.020 One of the lead people involved in it is Dr. Christy Miller at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, British Columbia.

01:03:31.580 She works for the federal government of Canada.

01:03:33.520 she's getting to the point where she can take a cup of water from a river or from a piece of the

01:03:40.720 ocean and she can tell you not only what fish are in it but also what viruses or bacteria and

01:03:47.240 parasites are in it she can look at a salmon and tell is it fighting disease never mind you know

01:03:54.680 what is the disease or what is the pathogen but simply is this fish healthy or not and when you

01:04:02.960 do things like that, then you can get the pulse of what is going on around you. You understand

01:04:09.500 why is this river going down? Oh, it's because it's loaded with this bacteria or this parasite

01:04:16.860 or this predator. And then read the immune system of fish and you can find out, okay, this fish is

01:04:23.520 doing really, really well. Let's take a look at its environment. How did we figure out how to live

01:04:30.460 around that fish? What are we doing right? Because it's so important not only to know what we're

01:04:36.320 doing wrong, but to know what we're doing right so that we can do more of that. And I have this

01:04:42.960 concept called the Department of Wild Salmon. And what it would entail is everybody who is already

01:04:48.540 living on the rivers of these fish, and this is largely First Nation communities, First Nation

01:04:54.900 fishery teams, but also streamkeepers, universities, hatchery workers. Get everybody to sample the fish

01:05:03.660 and the environment exactly the same way, like measure your water temperature, your pH values,

01:05:09.240 your forest coverage. Take these little tiny samples from the fish, send them in, get the

01:05:15.240 immune system read, and then all those numbers should go to these genius mathematical modelers

01:05:21.680 that live amongst us. I mean, really, I didn't think you could take numbers and model life,

01:05:26.700 but they actually can. The more numbers they get, the better they can model it. And so

01:05:31.800 then you find out, okay, as soon as it got warm, this happened, or as soon as it got more water,

01:05:39.240 this happened. You get the manual basically on what is going on. You can figure out how changes

01:05:46.180 are affecting the fish, how changes are affecting us. And then what I would do is I take the people

01:05:51.520 in the field and I'd make sure they went and spent some time in the lab and I'd take the people in

01:05:56.260 the lab and I'd drag them way out into the wet wild messy world of up river and so that everybody

01:06:03.960 sees what everybody else is dealing with and then once a year I would have a conference to bring

01:06:10.700 everybody together a gathering to discuss the results and then I would have a dance and feasting

01:06:18.600 And so that all of these people from all over the rivers of all over the coast, the municipal leaders who are making decisions, the scientists, everybody get together and get to know each other.

01:06:32.420 Because one of the really fascinating things is how much salmon inspire people.

01:06:37.860 People will go to lengths if they think they're benefiting salmon.

01:06:41.720 and if we could just get everybody working together with this phenomenal science stop

01:06:47.400 pretending that this information is secret or confidential because and the world of studying

01:06:52.360 viruses is nasty oh my gosh just open it up pry it open and federal fisheries well they just become

01:07:01.760 the permitting agency so don't ask people in ottawa and you know way in the interior of this

01:07:07.820 continent to figure out what needs to be done to bring our fish back that has to be dealt with

01:07:14.040 the people who are out on the coast but using top-notch science not you know don't let people

01:07:21.940 make it up you know there's all kinds of theories out there and you know people get pretty dug in

01:07:26.940 and entrenched in their theories it's got to be based in fact and so this would work this would

01:07:33.920 absolutely work. Because if you went to a small town on a river and you said, you know what,

01:07:39.320 you're killing 24% of this run of salmon because you have this pipe going into the water right

01:07:45.520 here. I'd be quite certain that that municipal community would go, oh, okay, well, let's figure

01:07:51.740 this out. Let's filter it or move it or put it into a settling pond or whatever it takes to make

01:07:57.280 a change. And then instead of just guessing whether you made it better or not, you get to ask the

01:08:03.360 fish and the fish will be like nope you made it worse or yeah that is fabulous I'm doing great

01:08:08.760 through here you didn't impact me at all yeah that's what I'm trying to work towards and we're

01:08:14.480 just starting the process you know rather he can't wait for government because like government is in

01:08:19.460 some kind of log jam they are they're in gridlock up there in the stratosphere we can't even begin

01:08:26.800 to know what they're doing and they can't they don't know how to get out of it but if we just

01:08:31.040 start boots on the ground and just start doing this ourselves, then it starts happening. And we

01:08:37.300 start offering the fish relief as soon as possible. So Washington state actually has outlawed Atlantic

01:08:45.160 salmon farming in this state. And it hasn't happened yet. The companies are allowed to grow

01:08:51.400 the fish out till they're out, but it's the end. British Columbia has this enormous decision to

01:08:57.660 make on the 20th of June, Premier John Horgan, the Premier of British Columbia, has to decide

01:09:04.140 whether he's going to renew the fish farm 10 years in a quarter of the industry, because they're all

01:09:09.560 expiring on the 20th of June. And all of these fish farms are in indigenous territories where

01:09:15.660 they have been, some of them have been occupying the fish farm facilities for 260 days since last

01:09:24.260 August. They couldn't make more clear that they want this industry out. And then the science is

01:09:30.380 just raining down on them. The chefs in British Columbia are rejecting the farm salmon product.

01:09:36.500 There's all kinds of lawsuits. I'm involved in several of them. So British Columbia might turn

01:09:43.080 that around and start progressing towards a better system here. And then I think we would

01:09:50.380 just get this incredible, Washington state is leading the way, but we'll get this incredible

01:09:54.400 lesson as to how you can work with these natural systems. And I really hope that everybody else

01:10:01.420 who's in the trenches will take heart and see, you know, there is a lot of hope here and these

01:10:07.760 systems are resilient. And if we just could please get it together as soon as possible,

01:10:13.460 we could still have our spaceship earth you know rather than dismantling it and having it

01:10:20.580 fall apart out here in a really really hostile universe you know we could still have our

01:10:25.900 functioning planet so this huge decision is being made just in a few weeks really about

01:10:33.840 the salmon farms 10 years in bc and i'm wondering for those of us whether we live in bc or the

01:10:42.040 United States or really anywhere in the world. Is there anything that the public can do to support

01:10:49.040 this? Whether that's citizen scientists, activists, ocean lovers, you know, what can the audience,

01:10:58.420 the people that are listening today, how can they get involved? Or what would the best way they

01:11:03.640 could support? That's a great question. So everybody lives near a supermarket. If your

01:11:10.020 market has farm salmon in it, let your manager know that whatever you want to say, I don't want

01:11:15.080 to shop here anymore, or I really think you should get rid of this product, or I'm going to do a

01:11:20.020 demonstration in front of your store. Let them know that this is not acceptable. If you are selling 0.79

01:11:26.180 BC, British Columbia farm salmon, you are harming the orca communities, this whole coast. The other

01:11:35.720 thing you can do is email Premier John Horgan and his email address is premier at gov.bc.ca

01:11:46.440 premier at gov.bc.ca and tell him if you ever are tourists up in British Columbia

01:11:54.940 that you won't be coming here again or you are disgusted with the fact that they're allowing

01:12:01.860 the fish farms because he is the landlord of the industry and he has to make this decision. So just

01:12:08.260 let him know that you would support him getting rid of these farms in the water. And, you know,

01:12:16.660 go on Facebook and the First Nation, the indigenous occupation of the farms in the

01:12:23.020 Broughton Archipelago, it's called. The Facebook page is Swanson Occupation, or you can go to my

01:12:30.420 facebook page alexandra morton and you can see what all of the things we're working on in some

01:12:36.960 cases it's it's like donate for this legal fund here right now please or write to this person

01:12:43.260 or simply you know just get interactive there liking the pages because government is watching

01:12:50.040 those pages um i'm constantly facing my facebook page in court because of the things people say

01:12:57.580 there so i know the industry is watching and i know government is watching and i just really

01:13:02.820 like i said at the beginning of this conversation is uh you count you count you count you're actually

01:13:11.640 the only thing that counts it doesn't matter what i do it doesn't matter what the indigenous people 0.90

01:13:17.020 do they will be ignored i will be ignored these animals will go down our planet will be destroyed 0.98

01:13:22.860 it's really everybody that has to get involved there's certain number of us if we all do one

01:13:29.860 thing we can change this and we don't know how small or how large that number is so that just

01:13:37.600 means everyone one of the things i i really just makes me cringe when people say to me they'll say

01:13:44.200 oh i'm i'm with you in spirit uh-huh i'm sorry it's too late for that you have to either donate

01:13:51.280 or give your friend some money to come or send something.

01:13:56.380 If you really do care, don't make yourself feel better

01:14:00.860 by just saying I'm with you in spirit

01:14:02.980 because it really does nothing.

01:14:05.480 You have to do something.

01:14:08.020 I know that we can't do, you know,

01:14:10.200 we can't engage on everything.

01:14:12.240 It's just too much.

01:14:13.880 And that's why I'm very focused myself.

01:14:17.180 But if you can do that, you know, in your own life,

01:14:20.000 pick the one or two or three things, donate $20. $20 is huge. You know, if enough people donate

01:14:27.700 $20, it's enormous. You can hire a lawyer, you can pack a bus full of people, you can gas up

01:14:35.020 your boat, you can run a virus test. You've really, I mean, you got to be careful that you're

01:14:40.700 funding people, obviously, that appear to be doing something, but just take the risk. Because,

01:14:47.040 you know I have a two-year-old grandson and it's very painful to look in his eyes thinking about

01:14:53.360 the future he is going to inherit and whether we like it or not the people alive on this planet

01:14:59.740 today right now we are going to decide the future of this planet for everyone everyone forever

01:15:09.400 so um we need to be superheroes you know and i don't mean to make you feel exhausted by saying

01:15:18.580 that but what are superheroes always doing they're saving the planet uh-huh that's that's exactly what

01:15:25.060 needs to happen right now and you can do it with 20 bucks you can do it with how you shop you can

01:15:30.780 do it in so many ways and it really feels good it feels good not to be a victim it feels good

01:15:38.980 to push back so there's so many things that people can do and please the first one is do not

01:15:45.660 feel like you don't count because that's a lie that is something that you know we are told so

01:15:52.800 we will behave uh in ways that are destroying our future and our children's future you count

01:15:59.500 you're in you're essential you are the most important thing on the planet today wow thank

01:16:06.580 you so much alexandra i'm feeling riled up and in love and heartbroken and ready to commit to

01:16:17.140 doing something and i'm so happy you said that that being here in spirit or sending good thoughts

01:16:24.500 is really just not enough right now we actually have to show up yeah and really make a contribution

01:16:32.260 whatever that contribution is, we have to actually commit to those ways of being

01:16:39.060 engaged and active in these struggles. So I so appreciate those words. So thank you.

01:16:46.820 Thank you so much. And yeah, what a great show. I've loved so much listening to you. So thank you.

01:16:53.180 thank you for listening to for the wild podcast i'm ayanna young the music you heard today was

01:17:04.520 from eola and ben chase i'd like to thank our incredible team our producer editor andrew stores

01:17:11.760 research director madison mogulski and media director molly libov and research assistant

01:17:18.400 Francesca Glassbell. Also, remember that Alexandra is asking for support right now in writing the

01:17:24.460 premier of BC to respectfully demand that the premier of British Columbia do away with salmon

01:17:29.980 farms. You can email him at premier at gov.bc.ca. Also, Alexandra is needing financial support

01:17:37.300 right now, so please go to her website at alexandramorton.ca and you can donate there

01:17:43.960 and read more about her research. Thank you so much, and until next time.

01:17:48.400 Thank you.

For The Wild - May 24, 2018

ALEXANDRA MORTON on the Virulence of Farmed Salmon ⧸78

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