(Content warning: The following article contains graphic images of wildlife killed and injured at B.C. open net-pen salmon farms)

Last December Watershed Watch and Clayoquot Action released details of an investigation into wild herring kills at B.C. salmon farms. 

We exposed the fact that over 817,000 herring were killed at salmon farms in 2022, primarily in the Clayoquot Sound region. The widespread public response to the story prompted Premier David Eby to declare the social licence for B.C. factory fish farms has “expired.”

But the mass deaths of herring is not an outlier. Salmon farms have a long history of killing many species of fish and wildlife in our province. We need to keep this in mind as the prime minister’s promise to transition open net-pen salmon farms from B.C. by 2025 appears to languish, even as aquaculture licences are set to expire at the end of June 2024. There is a prime opportunity in the months ahead for federal Fisheries officials to take a positive step toward keeping the prime minister’s promise by choosing not to renew those licences.

Open net-pen technology is antiquated, having changed little since the 1970s. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence of the harms, these factory fish farms remain open to our rich coastal waters. Wild fish and wildlife can enter the pens and the waste, pollutants, parasites, viruses and bacteria within flow freely out into our waterways.

When you go camping in a B.C. provincial park, you must store everything that may have a scent in your vehicle or food cache when you leave your site or go to bed. That includes all your food because you’re in the wilderness and animals will become habituated to it. Factory fish farms operate in some of the most isolated wildernesses in B.C., yet they violate these rules everyday. They deposit huge quantities of fish feed in the water. They hold hundreds of thousands of domesticated farm salmon in flow-through nets in the ocean. And they regularly have dead fish floating or at the bottom of the nets. 

All these attract fish and wildlife and as a result, many are killed by the industry.

Even one of B.C.’s largest animals is not immune to harm from salmon farms. There have been a number of incidents of humpbacks injured, trapped, found dead or killed in association with salmon farms and their equipment.

In March 2013 a humpback was found dead at a fish farm northwest of Tofino. Although the company suggested the dead whale drifted into their site, DFO staff said another possibility is it became entangled in fish farm equipment and drowned. 

In September 2016 a juvenile humpback was severely entangled in ropes from a salmon farm site near Klemtu. The whale thrashed around for at least 12 hours while ropes cut into its flesh and it struggled to breathe. After hours of rescue efforts, the whale was freed, but whether it ultimately survived is uncertain.  

A dead humpback was found entangled in an anchor support line in November 2016 at an empty salmon farm on B.C.’s Central Coast. 

Another humpback, this time a juvenile, died in November 2016 after it became trapped between the inner and outer nets of a fish farm in Nootka Sound. 

In December 2018, a humpback was trapped inside a factory farm near Tofino and had to be  freed when staff made the discovery.

They are one of the province’s most iconic species. Yet, in 1993 factory fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago installed high-amplitude acoustic harassment devices to try to deter predators such as harbour seals from entering the facility.  A scientific study later concluded that the devices were associated with displacing orcas from the area for a period of five years. The study concluded both mammal-eating and salmon-eating orca whales were negatively affected.

Of all B.C. mammals killed at salmon farms, seals and sea lions have taken the biggest hit. Between 1990 and 2022, mandatory reporting to DFO shows 6,116 harbour seals, 1,426 California sea lions and 379 Stellar sea lions were either shot or drowned at salmon farms. Until 2020, seals and sea lions that threatened fish farm stock could be shot if the farm obtained the appropriate predator control permit. Proposed regulatory amendments to these rules may allow exemptions that permit lethal removal of these pinnipeds.

Over the years, several grisly incidents stand out. In 2000, a pit of at least 14 dead sea lions was discovered near a fish farm in Clayoquot Sound. Although the killings were legal, a DFO officer suggested other options to reduce the number of mammal deaths should be considered. Around the same time, a sea lion carcass washed ashore in Clayoquot Sound with fish farm feed bags filled with rocks attached to it, likely meant to keep the body submerged. The bags matched feed bags from a nearby fish farm. 

In 2007, 51 sea lions drowned at a salmon farm in Tofino and in 2010, 65 sea lions and four seals drowned in nets at a fish farm near Gold River. DFO dropped charges against the company in the Gold River case after it agreed to invest money in three watershed community education projects.

In 2022, dozens of sea lions entered two fish farms in Clayoquot Sound to feast on farm salmon over the course of several weeks. According to DFO data, four drowned at these two sites that year and another death is under investigation.

In 2007, the late Twyla Roscovich investigated and documented a report of a drowned sea lion in the Whelis Bay salmon farm by diving at the site. After finding a young drowned sea lion in the fish farm nets, they asked the company whether they had any entanglements at the site. The company confidently responded that the rumour was false.

Little is known about the impact factory fish farms have on birds, though the industry is known to use nets in an attempt to keep avian predators out. Because people have documented bird deaths with photographs, we know death and injuries do occur but because the farms are not required under their conditions of licence to report avian deaths, the true toll is unclear.