As Go the Salmon, So Goes the Coast

You can't talk about the future of Echo Bay, or the coast, without talking about salmon.

"We're very much wild-salmon based," says Alexandra Morton. The fish are the traditional lifeblood of the coast and its economy. Even tourism depends on wildlife -- eagles, bears, whales -- that are themselves dependent on salmon.

Morton, well-known as an environmental activist, believes salmon stocks can rebound if allowed to escape sea-lice infestations associated with fish farming.

But Billy Proctor, 60 years a commercial fisherman, thinks it's too late. Blame overfishing, predation, habitat loss from logging. There simply aren't enough salmon for all those competing for them. You can see it in the way animal behaviour has changed, he says. Seals now chase fish far upstream. Eagles hunt seagulls, have even killed a couple of loons in front of Proctor's house. Bears -- a grizzly can eat 1,600 pinks a year -- have been reduced to digging through creek beds for salmon eggs.

"The ecosystem's going to hell," says Proctor, launching into an assessment that is simultaneously sobering, frightening and infuriating.

Stocks have dropped so low that Gilford Island's Scott Cove salmon hatchery, which Proctor has run since 1982, couldn't find brood stock this year. And it's not just salmon: Cod are scarce, and this is the first year local natives haven't been able to find enough oolichans to make the oil traditionally extracted from the smelt-like fish. Fishermen helped kill that golden goose by netting the oolichans before they had a chance to spawn.

The northern resident killer whales don't come around Echo Bay like they used to, as there are no salmon on which to feed. (Though last fall, a humpback whale chased herring right up to the mudflats in Billy's bay, leaping right out of the water eight times.)

Whales aren't the only predators, of course. West Coast seal and sea lions numbers have exploded. Pacific white-sided dolphins, once a rarity in B.C. waters, now number in the thousands, each swallowing 15 kilograms of fish daily.

Then there's the human activity. Forestry outfits might abide by the rules closer to populated areas, but up here it's a free-for-all, Proctor says. Nobody is watching.

Bridges and culverts disrupt streams, mudslides silt up the gravel where salmon lay their eggs, roe are killed by the shock of blasting for roadbuilding up to 200 metres away. Proctor speaks of a high-altitude river, its banks denuded of shade-giving trees, where the sun-heated rocks raise the water temperature to 18 degrees, killing salmon roe. "Anything over 14 degrees and eggs start dying."

"It's just devastating to see what the loggers have done," says Proctor, a former logger himself.

He has disdain for the efforts of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. "They've lost their mandate of protecting wild salmon," he says. Too many people behind desks, too few in the field. "It was a great industry but they just managed it to death."

Read the full article published June 15 in the Victoria Times Colonist.