In 2017, I was researching the spread of the Atlantic salmon blood virus piscine orthoreovirus, or PRV. Since I was not allowed to test Atlantic salmon in the farms, I bought them from Superstore, Costco, and sushi restaurants.
The majority of Atlantic salmon sold in BC tested positive for PRV. This means millions of Atlantic salmon along the BC Coast were shedding a foreign, pathogenic, highly-contagious waterborne virus into the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to know which companies’ farms were infected.
Using marinetraffic.com, I saw a farm salmon harvest boat moving back and forth between Cermaq’s Raza Island salmon farm in the Discovery Islands and the Brown’s Bay farmed salmon packing plant. This meant salmon raised at Raza Island were being gutted in Brown’s Bay. I asked Tavish Campbell, local underwater filmmaker, if he would dive on the plant’s effluent pipe 90 feet below the surface. Tavish filmed the plume of blood billowing into Discovery Passage and then, placing a fine-mesh plankton net over the pipe, captured a sample, twisted it shut, carried it to the surface, and gave it to me. I sent it on ice to a lab – the blood was infected with PRV.
Containing the damage
A new disease began sweeping through salmon farms in Norway in the 1990s. It took ten years for virus sleuths to connect the disease, known as Heart and Skeletal Muscle Inflammation, to the virus PRV. By that time the salmon farming industry had imported 30 million Atlantic salmon eggs into BC. No screening for this blood virus occurred. No one knew it existed. While Atlantic farm salmon may recover from PRV infection by remaining motionless in the pens for a period of time, DFO scientists found PRV invades wild Pacific salmon red blood cells, causing the cells to rupture en masse, resulting in organ failure.
The disgusting footage of blood flowing into BC waters made international news. I notified the BC government that it was infected with an Atlantic salmon virus. DFO confirmed my results. BC Environment minister George Heyman responded; “the bottom line for us is we want to make sure anything dumped into our oceans is free of pathogens.”
Great sound bite.
On April 19, 2019, the Brown’s Bay Packing Company was granted permission to dump almost 20 times more blood than when the samples were taken. They were processing 32 million pounds of fish per year. That’s a lot of offal and blood to get rid of. Pouring it into the ocean was probably beneficial to their bottom line, and the BC government quietly made it happen for them.
In 2022, a report by DFO revealed young salmon exposed to the Brown’s Bay Packing Company effluent became infected with PRV.
Red flags raised
In 2023, Heyman attempted to assure me that DFO considered this a low risk to wild salmon. But this was not accurate. The DFO report said nothing about risk, only that further disinfection of the effluent would be required.
Nicole Holman inspecting an open net fish farm. Photos (c) Tavish Campbell
Then a Warning Letter written by Minister Heyman’s own staff in October 2023 reported Brown’s Bay Packing Company had breached its permit multiple times. For example, on August 3, 2022, during the peak of the Fraser sockeye migration past the Brown’s Bay packing plant, the discharge of suspended solids was nearly five times the amount allowed in its 2019 permit. The company was threatened with a fine of up to one million dollars and imprisonment.
Worse, the Warning Letter revealed Brown’s Bay Packing Company was never even asked to test its effluent for PRV.
Despite having no test results to rely on, Heyman wrote and feebly suggested it’s OK now because the effluent is “visibly clearer.” Does the minister know viruses are not visible? That the water was clear was meaningless.
Getting to the bottom
Six years after provincial Environment Minister George Heyman told Canadians his bottom line was to ensure effluent going into the ocean was free of pathogens, I felt it was time to move past corresponding. I filed a complaint with the Office of the British Columbia Ombudsperson. After several months of review, they initiated an investigation in June 2024. Ombudsperson investigations are confidential, with no legal power to compel action. I was told it would take about six months to complete, then they would provide their recommendations to the Legislative Assembly. If our MLAs don’t respond, the report becomes public.
The Heyman denial scenario has been on repeat since salmon farms arrived in the 1980s, as both provincial and federal governments continued allowing salmon farms to multiply despite evidence they were killing wild salmon. Finally, 30 years on, the federal and some First Nation governments reacted to the scope of evidence and closed nearly half the salmon farms on the BC coast.
Heyman, seemingly oblivious, offered up the ocean as a sacrifice zone – a dump for infected blood from the salmon farming industry. As a result, countless millions of wild salmon continue to absorb this foreign virus as they pass Campbell River.
I suspect the Ombudsperson’s report will be ignored as much as I was, but this cannot be an excuse to stop trying to make government accountable. Heyman’s “bottom line” was meant to protect the industry’s bottom line.
As I see it, whomever we elect cannot be allowed to further destroy the fish that feed the trees that make the oxygen we breathe. Our elected governments require minding. I will be awaiting the Ombudsperson’s report and go from there.
Dr. Alexandra Morton is science advisor for the ‘Namgis First Nation. Follow this story and her work at www.alexandramorton.typepad.com
