SALMON SICKNESS

For years, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has minimized the risk of a virus some of its own scientists believe is threatening wild salmon

- MAX BINKS-COLLIER

BRIAN WADHAMS, a fisher from ‘Namgis First Nation, sometimes sits alone on his docked boat, a thirty-five-foot gillnetter christened Silver Fin II. As a boy, he accompanied his father and grandfather on fishing trips, and he started working as a deckhand at the age of eleven. “I’ll probably die with my boots on,” says Wadhams, now sixty-nine. He recalls spending days and nights at sea and catching salmon to share with fellow ‘Namgis in Alert Bay, a village on an island east of Vancouver Island. He bought Silver Fin II to teach his two sons how to make a living off the ocean, but they told him they could not afford it. There simply aren’t enough fish left.

Wild salmon in British Columbia are in trouble. According to one estimate, some populations have dropped by as much as 93 percent since the early 1990s. Lately, the situation has grown dire.

In 2018, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada assessed sixteen chinook populations in southern BC and warned that half were at risk of disappearing. Last year, the number of sockeye returning to spawn in the Fraser River crashed to a record low. It’s hard to say exactly why this is happening, though logging, climate change, and overfishing all seem to play a role. Among the most controversial potential factors, however, is the virus Piscine