The Tunnel of Poop

About this episode

The Salmon People podcast tells the story of a 40-year fight for wild salmon. It began with a fishing outfitter seeing smolts – young fish – covered in sea lice as he took tourists out to fish. He took his concerns to biologist Alex Morton. She was interested because the whales she was studying had stopped returning to the B.C. coast in the spring. She wondered if the sea lice were killing the smolts preventing them from going out to the ocean and returning as adult fish – fish the whales loved to eat? One person has a question, a second person decides to try and answer it. And the years rolled by as Alex Morton worked with other scientists, environmentalists, nature guardians and First Nations to convince government that an industry controlled by multi-national companies based in Norway was contributing to the decline of the wild salmon. Now with a 2029 deadline for all ocean-based fish farms to close, the industry is still lobbying to stay. They say they have a new design of farm that provides a better separation from the wild salmon and protect their fish from sea lice. Scientist Stan Proboszcz of Watershed Watch says one of the companies, Cermaq is testing the new configurat