ON JUNE 20, 2018, the day the salmon farm tenures in the Broughton expired, the provincial minister of agriculture, Lana Popham, announced that in 2022 all salmon farms in British Columbia would require consent from First Nations to operate in their territories. Of course, the NDP government would have to be re-elected for her to deliver on this promise. Glaringly absent from Popham’s announcement was a decision about what would be done with the Broughton tenures.
Buried in the online version was a line to the effect that talks were ongoing with the Broughton nations still at the table. This meant two things to me. One, the First Nations were holding strong and had not caved to the pressure of the June deadline, and, two, the tenures were just paperwork. The industry’s “political expectations” were the dominant contract in play.
This was the moment when the emotional toll of the last nine months finally knocked me over. I did not want to be awake. I only wanted to sleep. I went to see my beloved grandson and my tiny new granddaughter and they buoyed me. But if someone called about salmon farms, I was instantly submerged in overwhelming exhaustion. I wanted to drop to the floor on the spot and go to sleep.
It was frightening. I thought I was sick, but when I googled my symptoms, up came the terms burnout and depression. Until this moment, I did not know what depression was. I thought myself immune to it by a stroke of lucky internal chemistry. I saw myself as being as sturdy as a Chincoteague pony from the books I’d read as a child—head to the wind, tough, unbreakable. I had seen depression and burnout take other activists down, who then vanished from the front lines forever. I always thought they would come back, but they never did. I googled “how to cure depression” and got the answers: rest, change, self-care. On the self-care front, I promised myself again that I would get running water at home this year, but that didn’t help me in the short term.
The Martin Sheen was scheduled to return to British Columbia in a few weeks for a third summer. When I told Eva Hidalgo, the new campaign leader, that I did not have the energy to get on board, that they could do just as well without me, she expressed such heartfelt disappointment, I felt I couldn’t let her down. I said, “Okay, I’ll give it a try.” But I was sure I wouldn’t last more than a couple of weeks.
This year when the boat entered Canada from the US, Canadian border officials confiscated the passports of the crew and interrogated each of them separately. This was alarming in itself, but then they were asked if Alexandra Morton would be on board this summer. Was I now on the radar of Canada’s border security? Eventually the vessel and her crew were allowed into Canadian waters under an exceptional restriction. The Canadian border authority ordered that Martin Sheen had to be outfitted with a device that would report its position at all times. This is common for commercial vessels but not private boats. Since Sea Shepherd wasn’t interested in hiding, they accepted the restrictions. My access request for DFO’s communications around our travels the previous year had produced two thousand pages of email to and from people trying to guess where we were going and what we were doing. It would be less time-consuming for the government if there was a vessel-tracking device on board.
It was with mixed feelings that I hugged Arrow goodbye and left her with my friend Sabra in Vancouver for a summer of long walks and trips to the dog park, loaded my gear onto the Martin Sheen and claimed my bunk in the wheelhouse. The crew loyally said otherwise, but I know I was grumpy for the first month. Exhaustion still dogged me. But eventually I fell into the peaceful pattern of life aboard, and soon I was exploring a new research method.
At every farm we visited, a member of the crew deployed the vessel’s tiny inflatable so we could circle the farm very slowly, staring down into the water. At some point along the perimeter of the farm, we would spot scales, bits of flesh and salmon feces drifting out of the farm. With a fine-mesh aquarium net on a long pole, I scooped up these bits and transferred them with tweezers into vials filled with a virus fixative. Since all the farms now had nine-foot-high electric fences, the farm workers appeared to be in a cage, just like the fish they tended.
When we entered the Broughton Archipelago in July, aluminum boats whose cabins had blacked-out windows started to follow us everywhere we went. There were generally two boats behind us at all times; the one called the Coastal Logger was the one we most often saw. The first day we encountered the boats, they swarmed us, pointing cameras at us with lenses so long they had to be getting very detailed shots of our faces and research equipment. We did the same back to them. Although I did not recognize any of the crew, some of them were clearly local. One seemed much more European in dress and style; we saw his suitcase, which had tiny wheels, sitting on the back deck when he arrived—definitely not a local style of luggage. We were friendly in our banter back and forth with the men on these boats, but there was nothing friend-like in their approach.
I called out to the man with the wheelie suitcase, “Are you with Black Cube?”
He called back, “No, I am in a boat.”
A non-response.
Why was I asking that? A month earlier I’d received a phone call from a fisherman who told me that his kid had answered an ad and got asked in for an interview. Afterwards, he told his dad that the company doing the hiring was called Black Cube. They were looking for divers, paramedics, drone operators, filmmakers and young women to act as what they called “diffusers.”
“Google them,” the fisherman said to me. “I don’t know if this has anything to do with you or fish farms, but I thought you should have a heads-up. Check out their website. Whatever they’re up to, I can’t believe this is happening in Campbell River.”
The website BlackCube.com struck me as so sinister I thought it was a hoax. Then I came across the MSNBC exposé on the company that had aired in May 2018. The victims of this company’s surveillance said Black Cube operatives aggressively tried to uncover details of their lives, looking for points of leverage for their client. I went back to the website, where the descriptive phrases sounded like something out of a thriller: A select group of veterans from the Israeli elite intelligence units…tailored solutions…litigation challenges…
The company listed “Cyber Intelligence” as one of their services. My email had been hacked two weeks prior to receiving the call from the fisherman. I noticed because emails stopped coming in. Through the recovery process, I learned that my password had been changed and that someone in Toronto had logged in to my account. Whoever hacked my account would have had the opportunity to download every email and attachment I’d sent and received for years. Since I don’t believe there is such a thing as online “security,” and I wasn’t planning anything illegal, I hadn’t been too concerned about the breach. Now I started to wonder whether Black Cube was behind the hack.
The salmon farming industry was in the fight of their lives. The future of one-quarter of their BC tenures was the subject of ongoing talks between the provincial and Indigenous governments and they did not have a seat at that table, a position they were not used to. They had just learned that, as far as the NDP government was concerned, in the near future they would need First Nations consent to renew any of their BC tenures. An increasing number of hereditary chiefs in full regalia had boarded their farms and filmed the shocking condition of many of the fish in their pens. Who knew how much longer the minister of fisheries would keep ignoring the federal law that would prevent restocking fish infected with PRV? I was suing them, the ‘Namgis were suing them and Mowi was suing me and a growing list of others for trespass. Mowi definitely had a public relations and litigation problem.
I posted pictures of the people who were following us on Facebook. That created quite a stir. Boats with blacked-out windows are not common on this coast. The day after I posted, our tails were a little more shy; they still followed us but at a distance that stretched to just over 1.2 kilometres, according to the radar sweeps. They also delivered a security crew to each farm outfitted with the same uniform pants, hi-vis vests and radios. It made sense that Mowi would put more security on the farms, but following us was a lot like stalking. It was definitely a show of force.
I started to dig a little deeper into who these people were. I found out that on June 5, 2018, Peter Thomas Corrado of Campbell River had incorporated Black Cube Strategies and Consulting Ltd. On June 18, a Peter Corrado had also applied for two business licences for Black Cube Strategies and Consulting Ltd. On July 3, Campbell River granted these licences. And on July 9, Black Cube Strategies and Consulting posted want ads for “Risk Management Personnel” in five local towns. On July 11, the boats with the blacked-out cabin windows began to follow us, each with a crew of approximately eight people. The boats had been hired from Progressive Diesel in Port McNeill.
When we came close to some Mowi farms, open Wi-Fi network icons appeared on our laptops; in one case the network was identified as “Martin Sheen.” What was that about? Apple laptops can be overly friendly. When I left mine on while collecting samples at one farm, it connected to the farm’s server and I lost the summer’s external hard drive of photos, which was plugged into the computer at the time. Members of the Martin Sheen’s crew also began having serious computer issues.
The boats with blacked-out windows watched us when we were tied to the dock in different towns. They watched us at anchor, floating at the edge of the bays. They followed me one day when I was out in my own boat taking a break, even though I was far from the farms, cruising instead among the sportfishing fleet. Fed up, I turned and headed straight towards them. When I got close enough to talk to them, they slammed their windows shut.
“Stop following me,” I called.
They sat there, engine idling. No one responded, though I could just make out the shadowy forms of several people inside. After a couple of minutes, I took off and again they followed me. I turned and circled around behind them. They circled behind me. We were now a merry-go-round. Finally, they took off at high speed and I followed them. My boat was much slower, but they seemed unsure where to go. They headed for the archipelago, then turned south, then north and then they just sat there, waiting for me.
I was wishing there were other boats around, but I did not want to back down now. When I caught up to them, they were floating with all the windows sealed shut.
“Hey guys, what’s the plan?” I called, circling to see if I could spot an open window.
They beeped their horn, but never came out of the cabin. I told them to have a good day and safe boating, and I left. They didn’t follow me. Later I posted a video I’d shot of the entire encounter.
Then a woman in a local market pulled aside the young woman who was volunteering on the Martin Sheen as our cook. “You should know those guys following you have a lot of surveillance gear and firearms,” she told her.
A local online news service, My Campbell River Now, saw my Facebook posts and did some investigative reporting on the boats. The article stated that Jeremy Dunn, media spokesperson for Mowi, confirmed that they had hired the company running the surveillance on us, but that they wanted to be very clear that they “would not hire an international intelligence agency.” So was the name Black Cube just a coincidence?
One evening some of the guys on board the Martin Sheen watched the nautical drama Master and Commander in the wheelhouse. The next day the two boats following us changed their VHF radio call signs to “Master” and “Commander.” When we heard them, we all looked at each other. They were listening to us.
A crew member who knew about cellphone hacking asked, “Anybody experiencing unusual data use on their phones?”
“Yes,” I replied. My cellphone provider had just cut off my data, because I had inexplicably burned through several hundred gigs. I was used to managing my data while using my phone for email, and this had never happened to me before. “Why?”
“Well, then they are listening to us right now,” he said.
The next time I was in town I made a report to the RCMP. I felt they needed to know what was going on in their jurisdiction. The officer seemed unsure what to do. I asked him to start a file. He told me not to go anywhere alone. That wasn’t particularly helpful.
I got a call from the people who had bought my old cabin in Echo Bay, saying that crew boats with black windows were floating in front of the house taking pictures of them. They figured whoever was in the boats thought I still lived there. They filed a report with the police, as did a tourism operator who almost came to blows at the gas dock with the crew after he asked them about the blacked-out windows.
Fishermen started messaging me with pictures of the same boats cruising up to my boat where I kept it tied in the local marina. One of them chased the boats away. I was very grateful for the heads-up. At this point, some colleagues in the BC environmental movement distanced themselves from me. I wasn’t sure if they didn’t believe me about the surveillance or they were scared.
I wrote to the contact address on Black Cube’s website saying I had some concerns about their activities. I got an email reply from a Toronto lawyer within hours, claiming I was not being targeted by them. Why would I believe that? I wrote back, “Deception is your tool.” I didn’t know what to think about the odd mix of surveillance and overt aggression we were facing from these people.
Despite the Black Cubers, I felt my energy begin to return. It was such a relief. On the Martin Sheen, I was surrounded by kindness and that healed me. Each year the volunteer crew changed, but a common thread runs through the people who do this work. I was awed by the risks they had taken to save and protect the creatures of the sea. Imagine chasing rogue fish boats literally halfway around the world! Or trying to stop Japanese whalers in Antarctica where there is no coast guard, no anyone, to help. To them, being followed by an entity like Black Cube was normal. It was a gift to be surrounded by this crew of extraordinary and generous people.
At each farm, our crew went up the mast with a camera to assess the size and condition of the fish. A research team from the University of Toronto took water samples at positions around the farm and at different depths, and then began the laborious process of gently pumping the samples through filters to catch viruses for pathogen analysis. I circled the farms in the little dinghy, dipping up scales, tissue and feces. That summer we were lucky to have Tavish Campbell as our diver. I asked him to focus on filming the waste coming out of the nets and the wild fish aggregations around the pens.
From a distance, the farm nets appeared to be covered in a miniature forest of delicate seaweed. Through Tav’s lens, I saw that it was actually a massive aggregation of curious little shrimp creatures called caprellid, or ghost shrimp, which look a bit like praying mantis. They were holding on to the nets with their lower body as they pawed the water with long arm-like claws. They had rounded little pot bellies and when they caught a piece of the flesh or fat that I was also hunting for, they did a face-plant into it, while others nearby reached out and tried to steal it. They were living on the waste. Occasionally I would see thousands of them let go of the nets all at the same time and drift away. I don’t know yet what they are up to when they do this: Are they dying or reproducing or just dispersing en masse? What I do know is that they were full of farm waste and ready to be snapped up by any fish big enough to get one into its mouth.
Again, we witnessed herring moving as one great living creature, all black one moment, then after a shift in direction, all silver. They turned, flashed and then darkened again and again, as they fed on the pellet dust coming out of the pens. For moments they milled around, then suddenly all at once they flowed towards the net like rain in a windstorm.
Several times, salmon smolts darted out of the shadows and grabbed and ate the piece of flesh or fat I was aiming for with my pole net. The surface of the water was greasy around the farms. I wore surgical gloves because it felt revolting on my skin.
As I focused on the waste, I became even more aware of the industrial stain seeping from these farms, spreading over the water. Gulls landed in it, then took off to land in other areas, their feathers transporting the grease. The millions of creatures at every farm eating the fish fat and other decomposing flesh became potential carriers for the born-and-bred farm pathogens.
As I worked around the farms, the Black Cubers yelled at me that I was violating my scientific licence and the injunctions, but this was not true. One evening, the owner of a local dock screamed at us to get the hell away even as his employees were guiding us in and taking our lines. Our crew did not scream back. Benoit, who was captain that summer, said, “Okay, I understand, no problem, we are leaving.” And we did, as the owner kept yelling at us. People holding drinks watched the spectacle from the decks of their yachts.
This man’s marina made hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from people who came to see orca, salmon, bears and eagles. While he couldn’t accept the connection with the farms, he did know the wild salmon were disappearing because there were no longer line-ups of fish boats wanting to fuel up at his dock before an opening. Some people, unsettled by our collapsing ecosystems, push back with anger at the people trying to protect this world. I think what he really wanted was for things to be the way they once were. Perhaps he thought that if people would just stop talking about it, the world would revert to that more bountiful time.
In general, the response to the Martin Sheen’s presence was fabulously supportive: much waving, cheers, and calls of We love you across the water. We took Hereditary Chiefs Ernest Alfred, Arthur Dick and Robert Mountain out to witness the Black Cube Strategy boats following us and to show them what we were doing at each farm. They approved and thanked the Sea Shepherd crew for their presence in their territories. That summer we sampled farms along the five hundred kilometres from Puget Sound in Washington State through the Broughton Archipelago. No one had ever done that before. Every time we came into port, I shipped the most recent collection of samples off to the lab. The results started coming back: positive, positive, positive. Almost every farm was releasing PRV.
On August 2, Mowi won a partial injunction preventing me from approaching its salmon farms in any boat larger than 2.6 metres. This was odd. What did it matter what size my boat was? Even more odd was the fact the little boat I had been using, the dinghy from the Martin Sheen, was 2.8 metres. How did the judge come to pick the number 2.6? I made a short video about shopping for a 2.6-metre boat in Port McNeill. The only one I could find was a toy meant for children to use in a swimming pool. The clerk who was serving me sympathized with the situation and paid for my boat, warning me to be careful. Everyone knew it was not safe to be in a boat that size on these waters.
At the next farm I went to sample, I used it, rowing with the tiny plastic oars; a crew member stayed close to me in the dinghy, taking care not to enter the injunction zone. It was ridiculous. The video footage of me in the toy boat trying to continue my research was shared so widely on Facebook, Greg McDade was able to negotiate the right for me to use my own vessel, Blackfish Sound, instead. Mowi insisted I would have to be alone on my boat. That was fine. I usually was alone.
In the summer of 2018, fishermen contacted me because the pink salmon of British Columbia seemed to disappear. Sportfishermen don’t like pinks; they are too small and usually so abundant they are viewed as a nuisance because they bite on bait rigged to catch the much larger coho or chinook salmon. After every pink salmon strike, fishermen have to bait their hooks again. But they found their disappearance unnerving.
In reality, pink salmon are a gift. They used to enter the rivers in such huge numbers that they hid the smaller populations of other species. Bears would gorge on pink salmon, leaving the chinook to spawn. In spring the newly hatched pink salmon left the river without feeding, bequeathing the sockeye, chinook and coho—species that stay a year or more upriver before heading for the ocean—all the rich nutrients from their dead parents to feed the insect life that young salmon eat.
A few years earlier, in October 2013, I had gotten a call from Sandy Bodrug and Brad Crowther, the two sportfishers I met on my first trip to the Fraser to test for the ISA virus. They said they’d found hundreds of dead pink salmon strewn on the riverbank. The fish hadn’t spawned and they were the weirdest shade of yellow. I drove seven hours to meet them and they took me out to Mountain Bar, a gravel island in the river. There they were, large males with their huge humps—yellow. The smaller females, full of eggs—yellow. When I did autopsies on some of them, I saw the fish were yellow all the way through. The cartilage of their heads was yellow; their spines were yellow; their heart and liver were yellow; and their spleens were swollen and misshapen, a sign they were fighting disease.
The First Nations fishermen who were fishing with beach seines for food did not like the look of the yellow pink salmon. Their best estimate was that 70 percent of the pink salmon were yellow that year. They had never seen this before. The eyes of one of the female pink salmon I found were bugged out, suggesting enormous pressure in her head. She died as I watched. When I autopsied her, she had a large black mass attached to her brain.
Dr. Miller and Dr. Di Cicco’s research on the effects of PRV on chinook salmon included liver damage causing jaundice. These fish turned yellow because their red blood cells, infected with PRV, have ruptured, overloading their bodies with hemoglobin, which damaged their livers. It was a chain reaction: virus invades cells, uses cell machinery to replicate itself; cell bursts and kills the fish. This is not a normal pathogen/host relationship. The virus needs the fish. If it kills 70 percent of a run, it extinguishes itself.
I cannot yet prove that PRV is killing off large numbers of wild salmon in British Columbia, but clearly the ruination of the 2013 pink salmon, gone yellow in the lower Fraser, should have triggered an intense investigative response from DFO. It didn’t. I am hoping PRV isn’t killing off all the salmon of this coast. However, hope feels like a stupid response to the plumes of Atlantic viruses pouring into the Pacific out of pens and pipes of Norwegian-run industrial feedlots. Investing in hope is a waste of energy. Better to do what you can to stop what’s going on.
On the way home from the Fraser in 2013, I stopped at the Campbell River. As I stood there trying to spot salmon, a twenty-pound chinook swam up to the sandy spot I was on, his eye moving wildly. He pushed himself partway up the bank and slowly died at my feet. He too was yellow. I stared into his eyes, horrified. He had left this river a fat and sassy little smolt. He’d travelled all his life, evading orca and sea lions, catching fish in the wide-open ocean, growing mature. Now he was dying before he could pass on his rich DNA to the next generation.
After he died, I sampled his gills, which tested positive for PRV. His liver was yellow, his spleen swollen. Everything felt wrong.