Brian Whadams is a First Nations fisherman in BC, Canada. He works with the Moosekemuh Tribal Council to assess the impacts of salmon farms in his area.


What is your concern about salmon aquaculture and First Nations fishermen?

The concern, since this industry has moved into the traditional territories of First Nations along this coast, is that filling the global market with farmed salmon has devastated the commercial fishing industry. We don't have the capacity to compete with this industry and with the prices that they're charging for their fish. It's dropping our prices down. I'll give you a good example, in the 1970's we were getting approximately anywhere from $3.25 to $4.00 per pound for our sockeye, and today we're getting $1.25 to $1.50 per pound. I don't know where inflation fits into this, but it doesn't.

Our river just across the way here, it's called the Nimpkish River and, it's been totally mismanaged by the Department of Fisheries. The openings that have happened on the top end of Vancouver Island destroyed our salmon in our rivers. I've been a fisherman for over 35 years of my life, and I bought this boat approximately 7 years ago when the Mifflin Plan first came into place. I saw a window of opportunity where the Department of Fisheries and the Federal government stated that if they'd cut back half the fleet, that we'd get more fishing opportunities. Then ever since I've had this boat, I've probably fished 20 days in the past 7 years.

For me to operate this boat, it costs me approximately $8000 every year, just to get this boat ready to go out in a commercial opening. To go out there and fish the 3 days I did this year, I was real fortunate. I made $10,000 in the 3 days. I basically got myself a little ways out of the hole. Last year, I ended up making $4000 on a 2-day opening last year. The year before, we had a 1-day opening where I made $1200. I didn't even pay for a license from the KTFC, the Kawagoe Territory Fishery Commission. I've been working for a tribal council for a year, coming in December. My job is to bring together all First Nations who are opposed to the farms in our territory.

I started getting concerned when I was out clam digging approximately 5 years ago and was seeing the beaches turn to mud. The stench that is there smells like a sewer. The clams were going black. I didn't really think anything of it. Then I got a phone call from one of the employees here asking if I was interested in taking a position fighting the fish farming industry. I said, 'I don't know anything about it.' That's where I decided it's time to find out what's going on out here. Since then, I've dedicated myself to the struggle of removing all these farms out of our territories. We have documented evidence about the migratory routes, the passing stocks of the wild finfish, and the impacts that are occurring with the shellfish in our territories.

Local knowledge is so important for this government to hear. First Nations people's interests are never looked after. The government has a fiduciary obligation to First Nations people to protect and preserve a way of life that we've been so fortunate to enjoy. I got a grandson he's been my deckhand since he was 7 years old. To see the joy in his face every time a fish comes on board my boat, and to see the excitement on his face is what frightens me the most. It's not going to be here for them, his children and his children's children and so on. The struggles we are fighting for today is for future generations to come. We don't have a right to decide for them. Our job, as First Nations people, has an obligation to protect it for the future generations to come.

Salmon farming people think that salmon farming is the way of the future. They feel that salmon farming is going to provide enough jobs for First Nations and others, and what's the problem with that?

My vision in that is that our way of life isn't for sale at any cost. When you talk about creating jobs for First Nations people, I'll give you a good example. We have approximately 3000 members on our tribal council. We have about 10 people working on 28 farms within our territory. To me, that's not really creating jobs for First Nations people. Thousands of First Nation fishermen got pushed out of the commercial fishing industry, all for the sake of aquaculture. The only people making the dollars are foreign corporate businesses. None of the dollars stay in our communities. They don't come and shop in our communities.

There are about 1600 members in Alert Bay today, and we probably have full time employment out at the farms, 6 people out of 28 farms. They talk about the qualifications that are needed to be able to work on these farms. They've just started to give some funding to do some training, because they know they need First Nations people out there in order for them to come into our territories. We've had a zero-tolerance on fish farms since before they moved in and maintain it right until this day. With all the documentation that we ship out to the Federal Provincial government, along with the Department of Fisheries on the impacts that we've found, we never get any answers back. It takes us anywhere from 6 to 8 months to get a response from the Federal Provincial government.

Industry writes one letter to the Department of Fisheries, and the next day they're over here discussing their concerns that they're having with us. It gives you a good indication, which side the Federal Provincial government and Department of Fisheries are on. They turn their backs on the impacts and the evidence we have that shows what is occurring out here in our ocean. It's a deleterious substance that is being dumped into the water. We've got documented proof of that. We've got documented proof of herring and capling going into these net-cage pens. We were out there in February, and we documented approximately anywhere from 3% to 5% of the fish that were coming out of these open net-cage pens. They were capling and herring. They took approximately 235 tons of fish out of the nets. That's giving us a real good indication.

One of the things that you've got to understand is that there used to be a commercial fishery of herring in the mainland. Approximately 20 years ago they had it shut down because of the low abundance of herring coming back. They still haven't come back. You know this has given us a pretty good indication of why. All along this coast the herring are coming back in big numbers, and in our territory here. Two years ago the rivers in the Broughton Archipelago had big abundances of pinks coming back and they had real good numbers at that. This year was supposed to be a real big cycle for the pinks to come back. They had a commercial opening for us in the mainland, I think it was the second week in July, and a few boats went in there and they couldn't catch a fish. DFO has no idea what the problem is. We've got a real good reason to believe it's the lice problem for the juveniles that are coming and that came out of there 2 years ago.

That's basically what it is, but scientists, they baffle me. I don't understand the logic in science; I'm not a scientist. I just know about the local knowledge that I have that has been passed down from generation to generation. Everything I've learned in my life was something my father had to learn from his father and so on. You don't need to be educated to live off the land. It's just local knowledge. We're fighting for survival as First Nations people. Our way of life is being destroyed right before our eyes. The Federal Provincial government is ignoring it. That's a real concern to us. We're going to stand up and we're not going to tolerate it any longer. We're going to fight back. Whatever means necessary. We are not going to allow this industry to come in here and destroy our way of life.

Have you other concerns about what might be being dumped into the water from these fish farms?

Since February, we found out about the IHN breakouts that are occurring out in our oceans. We have probably 8 farms out there that are sitting out there fallow, under quarantine, and in the open ocean. I want you to understand something about ocean tidal waters. Every 6 hours you've got ebb that goes out and every 6 hours it turns and floods back in. It's beyond me how the Department of Fisheries can allow these quarantined open net-cage pens to sit out in the open oceans like that. Especially when the migratory routes are coming in, and when I talk about the migratory routes, I talk about the sockeye, I talk about the pinks, and I talk about the Coho, which is in jeopardy according to the Department of Fisheries. We've got our chums coming in and we're concerned about that.

What's happening right now is that this big IHN breakout that's occurring, well, the wild salmon are susceptible to that. It's a real major concern to us. Their comments to us are that the wild stock carries this disease. But, that's not the point. The point is that they cannot exist together out in the ocean. The wild salmon were here first. To introduce an alien species into British Colombian waters is a Federal offense and why isn't the Department of Fisheries acting on it? These fish are escaping into the open oceans out here. We've got evidence of them going into approximately 75 streams in British Columbia here today. What is DFO doing about that? Turning their backs. You've got a lot of good DFO people out there that are forced not to do their jobs. That's what concerns me.

Every time we try to get some information from one of them, there are a few of them out there that give us some information. As soon as that happens, they're reprimanded, shipped off somewhere, or lose their jobs. That's really scary to me when their job is to serve and protect the wild stocks. Pens that are getting towed right into Johnson Straits. Those pens probably came from Larsen Island. Where they had just removed 1 to 1.9 million fish out of those pens. Now they're towing it out in the open ocean. Minimal impact. So, what they do is they hire private businesses to come in here and do their dirty work for them. If the DFO were going to come and lay a charge, it wouldn't be the industry that would be charged. It would be this tugboat owner that would be getting charged for it. That's what concerns me. They're sloughing off the blame. That's what bothers me the most.

We're not after the businesses that are trying to make a living. If there were a way that this industry could come in here to First Nations and prove it isn't going to have an impact, maybe we'd discuss it. But we've found too much evidence that it does. We aren't going to tolerate it. We're going to stand up and fight it with, like I said, any means necessary to get these farms removed. They're in there illegally. They have never consulted with First Nations people within their territories. So, they're breaking the law. If I went out here and decided I'm going to go fishing today. The first thing that's going to happen is that the DFO is going to come and arrest me and say, 'hey, you're breaking the law.' We're going to arrest you and charge you. Why hasn't that happened to the fish farming industry? They break all sorts of laws out there. Yet, the government turns their backs. It's totally disgusting.

Now, you've talked about how this used to be a very busy dock, it's much less so now, there was a buyout and so on. We have been living off the ocean for so many generations, and now here we are in the year 2002, and the younger generation isn't in the position to learn these skills. They did a study on the gill netting industry and all the skippers out that are running boats today. One of the things that we were discussing on a commercial opening was all out there. There was a conversation that was going on amongst the skippers on the boats. There was a comment made that there was a study done that the average age of a commercial gill-netter today is 55 years old. It seems to me that this government has a plan: to push the commercial fishing industry out of business. They're doing a really good job of it; by not allocating us any time whatsoever out in the ocean to make a moderate living.

What frightens me the most is that I've got 2 boys. That's one of the reasons why I bought this boat, for my boys. I'm concerned they no longer want to come with me because there's not enough dollars up there for them to survive on. They see an industry dying. I've been in this industry for 35 years, and I used to fish five days a week, and never had an impact on those fish. Now for this government to blatantly say that the commercial fishing industry is the one that is destroying the wild stock is ludicrous. We've cut the fleet down to basically to a quarter from what it was in 1972. This year, I have never seen as much sockeye in my life in the 35 years I've been out there. We sat out on this dock here, this dock used to be full of boats, commercial fishing boats. You wouldn't be able to find a spot here in the 70's. It would be packed.

Some boats used to anchor out in the ocean, out in the middle of the bay here, because there were no places to tie. All these docks here, we've got 5 docks here. They used to be full of boats. That's when they used to have it open, wide open, for the commercial fishing industry. Where I can use this one license that I have and fish up North until the fish hit this area. Then you could move down south to the Frieze River and fish there. Now I'm limited to where I can fish. I can only fish the Johnson Straits area, with this one license; it's called an Area D license. That's what concerns me the most. They cut the fleet in half, and still we're limited to where we can fish. If they opened it, wide open for us, we could make a little living on it. But we're limited to what we can do. For some reason, the Department of Fisheries has decided to turn most of this area, what's called Area 12 and 13 into ecological reserves and things like this. The bottom line is they're doing their jobs. They're doing their plan, which is to destroy the commercial fishing industry and they're doing a really good job of it.

I wish my sons would come with me. I really want them to learn what I've learned. Who do I pass it on to? We are the salmon people. I learned from my father, like I said, he learned from his father, and it goes on and on and on. We've been here for tens of thousands of years. I always thought about that, we've been here for tens of thousands of years. You narrow it down to one year, that tens of thousands of years. One day, the government's in place, out of that 10,000 years, you narrow it down, and in that one day, they've managed to destroy British Columbia, our territory, as a First Nations people. That's our concern.

What would you say to the average consumers who buy an Atlantic salmon, or maybe a farmed Pacific salmon that costs 6 bucks / lb, and thinks it's great? Why do we need to worry about there being wild salmon anymore?

I can't remember the doctor's name, but he came up with a study that eating at least one meal a week of farmed salmon is hazardous to your health. There are a lot of studies out there that people have to start paying attention to. There's no reason for this fish farming industry to be in British Columbia. What bothers me the most is that 8% of this farmed salmon stays in British Columbia. The rest is shipped out for other countries. So, what price are we paying as British Colombians to feed other countries?

Long after this farm fishing industry is gone, us First Nations will still be here, fishing. What about the impacts that they're leaving behind and the devastation that's going to occur? Who's going to clean that up? They think the ocean is a dumping ground for the wastes that they've handled there. It's a real concern to me. The consumer just has to be aware. It's always good to ask what it is, whether it's wild or farmed. The consumer's the only one who can get rid of this fish farming industry in British Columbia. They can by not buying it.

Any other comments?

One of the greatest things that happened within the Moosekemuh is that we got some funding through Tides Canada to do this job that I'm doing. I really appreciate the funding that they've given us for that. Without it, this industry would still be doing the damage that they're doing out there. All the documented evidence that we've found has basically got them pretty frightened of who we are today. We've been characterized as radicals, but I just want to set the fish farming industry straight. We're not radicals. We're just concerned about our way of life that they're destroying. We aren't going to allow that. The sport fishing industry along with eco-tourism and the public in general in British Columbia, with all the information that we're getting now, is really encouraging. The people are coming together with their concerns, those that make their living off the wild stock. When I talk about the whales, the mammals, and all mammals in general, including the shellfish, the ground fishery, and the commercial fishery in salmon, well, we have to come together. The only way we can win against this government is by coming together and fighting it collectively.