It is impossible to make sense of either politics or biology until you are able recognize patterns and connections. Reading patterns is the difference between illiteracy and understanding.

Once you can read, signs appear simple and obvious. And, being literate, you would become impatient with a person who never learned to read a STOP sign and kept smashing into your car. This is exactly how I feel about federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea’s response to the Fraser River sockeye salmon collapse. In every statement, the Ministry of Fisheries has presented the Fraser River sockeye collapse as a mystery, offering plausible, but incorrect, theories such as over-fishing when the fishery was never opened.

From a biologist’s perspective, the collapse is the bull’s-eye pattern and an in situ natural experiment that effectively tests the impact of fish farms on wild salmon. Sockeye leave the Fraser River by two different migration routes to reach the same ocean. The Harrison sockeye turn south and migrate to the ocean via the Juan de Fuca Strait. They survived at twice the number forecast by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

The rest turn north. These fish failed by over 90 per cent.

One obvious difference between the two routes is that only the northern route has fish farms. I have published two scientific studies on this with the same result. As well, the Ford and Myers report from 2008 on the effect of farms shows that salmon populations tip into extreme decline wherever there are fish farms. Why doesn’t the DFO mention this striking pattern?

Perhaps because Fisheries and Oceans Canada has two conflicting mandates: the longstanding one – protect Canada’s wild fish – and the more recent one – promote aquaculture. Picking the latter, Shea wrote: “The coastwide scope of the decline that has occurred across all Pacific salmon species suggests that this decline is associated with much larger ecological events than localized salmon farming.” (Minister Gail Shea, in an August 26, 2009 letter)

As Shea signed this letter, Fisheries and Oceans Canada knew there had not been a coastwide decline of all salmon species, which would have been characteristic of a “larger ecological” cause. Eleven years ago, the late and legendary Dr. Ransom Myers was quoted in The Globe and Mail on the North Atlantic cod collapse, saying that those in government “seemed to have a notion that you could sit in Ottawa and make up reality.” Given Shea’s recent letter, I agree.

When Canada’s cod stock collapsed more than a decade ago, three scientists published a paper on the subject in one of Canada’s top scientific journals.

They reported that as the cod harvest dwindled, the fish became so small it was clear they had not spawned. Canada had been spending its capital raiding this phenomenal resource, ensuring there would be nothing left for future generations. Scientists told Ottawa to close the fishery immediately. Instead, the government misinformed the public, reprimanded their scientists who tried to speak freely, offered plausible but incorrect theories, and stood by as one of Earth’s biggest human food supplies failed. More than a decade later, Minister Shea appears to be taking us down the same disastrous road.

Our Fraser River sockeye go to sea small and return large, imbued with energy originally sourced from sunlight hitting open ocean waters. They carry this energy deep into the interior of B.C. In life, they feed everything around them. In death, their bodies feed forests that remove atmospheric carbon and help stabilize the climate. Most British Columbians have inhaled oxygen made by a salmon-fed tree.

If we consider life sacred, a fish as generous as the salmon should be revered, not trashed. We are talking about the biggest run of sockeye salmon in the world, which runs right through B.C.’s biggest city. Vancouver is the city of the salmon. These fish live with us and they contribute essential life services that we need to survive.

Why would Minister Shea brush aside her mandate to manage Canada’s wild fish with a highly questionable exoneration of the 92 per cent Norwegian-owned salmon farming industry? The pattern suggests we lift our eyes from the ocean to the 600 energy extraction applications made on B.C. rivers that our wild salmon, not the farmed salmon, require to run free.

Wild salmon are dying from politics. This is easily remedied, but only with massive public response. In the coming federal election, politicians will gamble on whether more votes lie with wild or farm salmon. We should help make the winning bet the right one. Already, 18,000 people have signed a letter to Minister Shea at adopt-a-fry.org telling her the Fisheries Act must be applied to the salmon farms.