r/strongcoast

What’s the cause, you ask? Well, Clayoquot Sound isn’t exactly short on salmon farms. There are twenty open-net pen fish farms.

But what does that have to do with the wild Chinook population? The answer: A lot.

Young Chinook enter the ocean small, vulnerable, and heading into the hardest part of their lives. In Clayoquot Sound, that means going through waters shared with salmon farms. And open-net pens do not keep their problems to themselves.

Waste, parasites, bacteria, and viruses can move through the same coastal corridors wild salmon depend on, with many of these undesirables coming directly from the farmed salmon open-net pens. Wild fish do not get to swim past these farms in a hazmat suit.

A DFO risk assessment identified the West Coast of Vancouver Island as a pathogen hot spot for Chinook, with open-net salmon farms carrying some of the highest potential negative impacts to wild Chinook in BC.

Removing fish farms is a chance to rebuild the wild salmon economy — for people who fish, communities that depend on salmon, wildlife that depend on salmon, and forests fed by salmon.

The federal government says open-net pen salmon farms will be out of BC coastal waters by 2029. But policy can change. Industry pressure is real.

Credit: Filmed by jeremy_mathieu_photographie with contributions from walkinglessa

Collaboration with clayoquot.action

"Seals are generalist predators, so not super picky, but I didn't expect to see one catch an octopus in False Creek."

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This isn't just a map of Fulford Harbour. Painted by Briony Penn in 1994, it's a record of how much can thrive in one small stretch of water... how much life, how much history, how much memory.

Salmon holding in the creeks. Clams buried in the sand. Herons working the shallows. Harbour seals bathing on the rocks. Surf scoters and buffleheads riding the chop. Loons, kingfishers, river otters, porpoises, orca. Rockfish below. Orchards and homesteads above. Shell middens, old roads, old stories — all of it layered around the same water, all of it connected.

That's the point.

A harbour isn't empty space between the land. The closer you look, the harder it gets to call any of this just scenery.

It's a living coast. One harbour among hundreds.

And it's worth defending. Stand up for the Great Bear Sea MPA Network.

Artwork: Briony Penn / brionypenn.com

"This was the first of two leaps by T064B “Ember” early this morning as her family was pursuing a Dall’s porpoise along with T065A3 “Amir” in Blackfish Sound. The porpoise escaped, but only after a few minutes of pretty energetic pursuit!"

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This is the striped sun star, a many-armed sea star found in BC waters. Bright yellow body, blue-green stripes. Not exactly built for subtlety.

But it's more than a pretty face on the seafloor. Striped sun stars are predators, moving over the rocky ocean habitats on hundreds of tiny tube feet, hunting animals like sea cucumbers. Slow? Sure. Harmless? Not if you're a sea cucumber.

The striped sun star — one more reason to support the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network.

CLICK HERE right now to tell Ottawa to defend our coast.

Photo credit: Sara Ellison / web.uvic.ca/~sarae/snorkel.html

Happy crabs - one more reason to support the Great Bear Sea MPA Network.

However, there’s a silver lining: a major study confirmed that marine protected areas (MPAs) that fully ban industrial fishing have eight times less vessel traffic than nearby unprotected waters, with illegal fishing being rare.

Researchers can now track these hidden fleets thanks to Global Fishing Watch's satellite radar data. Research shows that many dark vessels avoided MPAs that banned industrial extraction, while MPAs that allow trawling or other harmful fishing methods saw just as much vessel traffic as unprotected areas.

In BC, we’ve already recognized that weak protections don’t work. Since 2019, all new MPAs in Canada must ban bottom trawling, oil and gas activity, and deep-sea mining. That standard is being built into the Great Bear Sea MPA Network, a First Nations–led initiative to safeguard the rich marine life, unique culture, and economy of the Central and North Coast.

Bottom trawling still takes place in parts of the Great Bear Sea because the network hasn’t been fully implemented yet. But once the protections are in place, the ban on bottom trawling in protected areas will go a long way in supporting recovery.

And the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

Take the Galápagos, for example: two decades of strong protection has created a haven where tuna populations have rebounded. Today, commercial tuna boats line up along the edge of the reserve, benefiting from what’s called the spillover effect. As fish flourish inside the protected zone, some inevitably swim beyond it, boosting catches for local fleets. The MPA literally seeds the surrounding fishing grounds.

As marine ecologist Dr. Boris Worm puts it, "It’s like you’re turning on the tap inside, and at some point it starts overflowing."

We don’t need more promises. We need MPAs with real protections, backed by modern tools to ensure they succeed.