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Sea changes: Alexandra Morton has become one of the lead activists in fighting to save B.C.’s dwindling wild salmon stocks
Mission: To preserve wild B.C. salmon Assets: Bachelor of science degree, decades living in B.C.’s wilderness and a penchant for activism Yield: A major court victory and renewed resolve to lobby Ottawa to protect wild B.C. salmon stocks
 Glen Korstrom Wild salmon crusader Alexandra Morton is enjoying the summer idyllically ensconced on Malcolm Island – far from the Fraser River where fishermen are perplexed by the collapse of the river’s once rich sockeye salmon run. They expected between 10.6 million and 13 million sockeye to return to the Fraser this summer. But, according to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), only 1.7 million have. Morton is savouring her recent victory in B.C. Supreme Court, which ruled that Ottawa, not Victoria, has the exclusive authority to regulate B.C.’s 70 to 80 fish farms. The decision, she believes, will stop bureaucrats from passing the buck. She can now focus her lobbying on the DFO to enact and enforce strict regulations on fish farms to help save the Fraser River sockeye run. “It’s really lovely here,” Morton said from her Malcolm Island home off the northeast tip of Vancouver Island. Then, curiously, “I miss the wilderness.” Malcolm Island, with its 886 residents, is now busier than Morton likes. “We’ve got electricity. There are ferries, cars and a store,” she said. “For 26 years, I’ve been living by my wits. It’s a bit easy here.” Morton’s less accessible second home is Echo Bay, a nearby community where a few families’ houses are perched on rocky bluffs. She rents her Echo Bay flat, at cost, to academics that study the impact of sea lice on area salmon. She vets the projects and has been helped financially by donors such as Trivial Pursuit co-inventor Sarah Haney. Morton did not set out to be an activist fighting for regulations to keep fish farms from breeding lice that she believes kill wild salmon. She wanted to be like anthropologist Jane Goodall, who is famous for her efforts to save chimpanzees and their habitats. Morton’s inspiration was killer whales. When Morton was studying for her bachelor of science degree at Washington, D.C.’s American University, she yearned to communicate with a non-human species. She worked in Los Angeles analyzing recordings of dolphin speech with John Lilly, a well-known counter-culture writer and dolphin scientist. Her search for whales in the wild led her to British Columbia’s Alert Bay. “My first sniff of B.C. was … this is it,” Morton said. “This is my habitat: wet, cool.” While making whale recordings using underwater microphones, she met filmmaker Robin Morton, who was shooting a movie about whales. Love struck when she glimpsed a killer whale tattoo on Morton’s shoulder. They married within the year. She was a pregnant 23-year-old, living with Morton on the couple’s 65-foot sailboat in 1981. Her husband would soon die doing what they both loved. He was scuba diving wearing a rebreather, which limits the amount of air emitted into the water. Because whales interpret emitting air bubbles as a threat, Robin figured it would help him get closer to them. A malfunction caused his death and, at 28, Morton was a widow. She worked as a deckhand on a fishing boat and intended to live a simple “selfish” life. “I found a beautiful little archipelago. I just wanted a school, post office, whales and protected waters,” she said. “When I found it, I moved in. I did not want to engage in any environmental battles. I avoided the logging issue, the whales-in-captivity issue.” However, Morton was drawn into the fight to save wild salmon when she realized that the area’s whale population was dwindling along with salmon stocks. Since 2001, she has co-written nine scientific papers showing that sea lice are a natural byproduct of fish farms, that it takes only one sea louse to kill young pink and chum salmon and that if society doesn’t change how salmon are farmed, Broughton Archipelago salmon stocks are doomed. But Clare Backman, a spokesman for Norwegian fish farm giant Marine Harvest, disputes the claims and said Morton has become more radical since she stopped being a full-time employee at the science-based Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council. Now working part time at the council, Morton earns about $2,000 per month. She separately launched the non-profit adopt-a-fry.org with First Nation chief Bob Chamberlin and commercial fisherman John Dawson. The three hatched a plan to “medivac” salmon fry past fish farms as the fry made their way out to sea. Morton applied unsuccessfully to the DFO for permission to pick up young salmon before they reached the farms, ferry them by boat past the lice and put them back in the water a few kilometres down their migration route. The DFO said the medivac plan would do more harm than good to the fish and threatened to fine Morton $100,000 if she was caught moving salmon. She would not say whether she flouted the department’s decree. But she earned plenty of media coverage after she added a PayPal link to her adopt-a-fry.com website. Donations poured in – small contributions that don’t qualify for tax receipts but helped finance court action against the provincial government. Morton not only won the declaration that Victoria has no regulatory power over fish farms, she also won approximately $100,000 in costs, which the province has already paid. Victoria did not appeal the judgment, although Marine Harvest is appealing the section of the decision that makes it unclear whether it owns its fish. “There is no law anywhere in Canada saying that you can own a school of fish in the ocean,” Morton said. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Hinkson ruled that water inside and outside fish farm pens is part of the ocean because it passes through the nets, and food drifts back and forth. Ocean fish are federally regulated, Hinkson ruled in the judgment, which officially goes into effect next February. Marine Harvest’s appeal is set to be heard in October. Morton followed her court victory by gathering 16,712 signatories on a letter that calls on federal Minister of Fisheries Gail Shea to apply Fisheries Act regulations on fish farm operators. If the DFO fails to adhere to the Fisheries Act, any private citizen can take the government to court. If that lawsuit results in a fine, Morton said the act entitles the plaintiff to half of it. “It’s not that we want to make money off this,” she said. “But it’s interesting that the government is actually encouraging people to take them to court.” Friends such as noted B.C. nature painter Robert Bateman call Morton a saint. “She’s protecting an absolutely key link in our human heritage,” he said. “I’m a tremendous advocate for what Alexandra’s been doing.” •
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This article from Business in Vancouver September 1-7, 2009; issue 1036 Photograph: Nik West |
