Expanding research into new waters
When Marie-France Roy joined dozens of people out at sea in the Tofino harbour to protest fish farms in Clayoquot Sound, she didn’t anticipate how it would transform her life four years later.
Among climate change, ocean acidification and the legacy impacts of historic logging practices, fish farms have been criticized for contributing to the collapse of wild salmon populations in British Columbia.
As much as Roy said she wants to see fish farms removed from the ocean to protect wild salmon, she recognizes that many remote coastal communities depend on them. To come up with a solution, Roy started researching seaweed farming.
“Kelp provides habitat,” she said. “It cleans our water, it can be used for food and soil fertilizer, and helps reduce our methane emission – there’s so many benefits.”
The realization prompted Roy to apply for a seaweed farm license in Barkley Sound, off the west coast of Vancouver Island. It’s been two years and Roy is still in the process of getting the farm approved by regulation.
The transition from fish to kelp farming won’t happen overnight, but Roy said it’s a step forward to offering a sustainable alternative to fish farming.
Roy partnered with Redd Fish Restoration Society to launch a kelp assessment project in Barkley Sound last summer to further her mission of harnessing the environmental benefits of seaweed.
Redd Fish is a non-profit organization based in Ucluelet that works to rebuild wild salmon populations through watershed restoration.
The project marks the first of its kind for Redd Fish, which has focused solely on river and lake environments up until now.
Jessica Hutchinson, Redd Fish Restoration executive director, said that it builds on the organization’s mandate to look at critical habitat in freshwater and the marine environment.
“In order for restoration and wild salmon rebuilding to be effective, we need to have a holistic approach that looks at all life history phases,” she said. “Kelp forests are critical to early marine survival. We need to improve the research and monitoring that exists around these habitat units, and we need to start looking at opportunities to restore them where they’ve been lost.”
Alongside Roy, Redd Fish Marine Coordinator Emily Fulton completed a preliminary assessment of several sites within the traditional territories of Toquat Nation and Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ using a drone last summer.
This year, they’re expanding their research by broadening the survey sites to encompass more kelp beds and incorporating water quality data collection. They hope to also conduct dive surveys or use underwater cameras to identify juvenile salmon.
“Juvenile salmon rely on these kinds of habitat for migrating in the nearshore marine environment, for foraging and for seeking shelter,” Fulton said. “It all comes back to what we can do to help our local salmon populations.”
Through this research, Fulton said they hope to get a better sense of the presence, size and density of kelp forests within the region, as well as identity any significant trends of change over time.
“We hope that we can continue building a database that can be shared and compared across regions,” she said.
This is particularly challenging because kelp hasn’t been widely studied in the area, Fulton said.
To help bridge the gap, they’re leaning on accounts from traditional knowledge holders from Toquat Nation, as well as a study led by Maycira Costa. The study used British admiralty charts from 1858 to 1956 to create the first historical digital map of B.C.’s coast kelp forests to investigate the loss of kelp. Fulton said it allows them to “guesstimate” where there would have been healthy kelp beds, which informs them of areas to focus their monitoring.
To set up interviews with any of our spokespeople, please contact:
Sarita Mielke | (250) 713-6755 | sarita@reddfish.org