Wall-to-wall coverage of governmental hearings is usually – in the US for sure – okay for C-SPAN but seldom a menu item for daily TV and print news and popular tweetmeisters unless political peccadilloes with a sex angle are the topic. Ditto for Canada one presumes, but this week a body called the Cohen Commission – which the prime minister appointed – is in the media bullseye. It is sitting in Vancouver, BC. That is not so very far from the mighty Fraser River. Its sockeye salmon run has been in dreadful decline lately – with some exceptions (Last year a Seattle Times report by Hal Bernton called one of that year’s runs of these fish – of striking coloration when spawning – a surprising whopper that confounded the trend). The commission has been at work most of this year, and just resumed its hearings after a recess.
It’s just one river’s population of one species of fish, but it touches on vital issues in Canada: fish farming, aboriginal or First Nation rights, and environmental stewardship generally. The science issues are deep – why is the run so sporadic with a dismal trend? Is it the river itself, a virus picked up at sea, overfishing….? Are farmed fish making the wild ones sick? Activists have made themselves colorful fixtures at the hearings.
One big issue is whether, as one Canadian researcher suggested in a Science paper, a virus is the reason. Somehow or other, anti-aquaculture forces have seized on that possibility despite no strong reason to blame any such virus on the salmon pens that squat in the inland passage threading its way through the archipelago along Canada’s western shore from Puget Sound to Alaska. The scientist told the commision the virus is only hypothetical, so far. But the government put a gag on her anyway until she told the commission her ideas first. A gag! They can do that up there? The Bush administration down here, with notably scant impact other than to make gov’t researchers depressed, angry, or alternately back and forth, tried that with climate change.
Stories:
- Globe and Mail – Sunny Dhillon: Privy Council blocked scientist’s access to media, Cohen probe told ; What a monarchic term that is, privy council. Remember, Canada does have a queen. She lives in London.
- National Post – Brian Hutchison: Scientist’s fish-farm ties at issue ; should read this with the preceding It’s Miller Time at inquiry into disappearing fish. Very effective piece of analytic and opinion reporting. More column than news story. Takes a rather dim view of the riff raff (my interpretation of the reporter’s stance) who are there to demonstrate against fish farms.
- Vancouver Sun – Gordon Hoekstra: Fisheries biologist ends tesimony but still cannot speak freely in public ;
- The Province (Vancouver) – Sam Cooper: Sockeye deaths blamed on virus / Cohen inquiry told that salmon are entering river in weakened state ; Story stands in contrast to the report in the Nat’l Post. That one says the researcher concedes the evidence for the virus is still thin. This one implies she finds the evidence for a virus strong.
- Common Sense Canadian (also picked up at the Pacific Free Press, a progressive pub) Damien Gillis: Miller Takes Stand at Cohen: More Clues and Questions in Salmon Virus “Detective Story” ; Gillis takes a stab at weaving, into the political main thread, a parallel strand of some detail on the nature of the virus hypothesis and its history.
- Kitimat Northern Sentinel – Lauren Behn: A fishy little mystery ; An effort to put the contenious hearing into context. Its conclusion: the predicament for sockeye is very complicated, with no single cause to blame for its decline Would have had more heft if the writer had interviewed an authority or two and thus had somebody else to cite. As it ran, it is a personal sermon.
- Montreal Gazette – Gordon Hoekstra: Virus could be ‘smoking gun’ that caused decline in salmon fishery, scientist claims. Not really. The hed and lede mislead. The scientist did not forthrightly assert as much, but merely agreed, mildly, to that hedged proclamation and figure of speech when it was offered by an examining anti fish-farming lawyer.
- PostMedia News – Margaret Munro: Funding uncertain for lab of muzzle salmon biologist ; Munro digs up some detail of the muzzling effort, and further possible repercussions to the scientist and her lab in the Vancouver Island town of Nanaimo. Story ran a few days before the more recent hearing sessions.
Tip of the Hat to Brandon Keim for suggesting a roundup on these stories. He is not covering them but is following the hearings avidly. He also whispers that he has done some enterprising Canada salmon reporting before. Two years ago, all on his own, he set out at the blog site Hive Mind (E Pluribus Hmmm) to estima-guess the monetary value of one salmon run. Clever way to tackle it – calculate the biomass of the fish coming into the river, convert that into fertilizer and nutrient equivalent, and look up their market values. He got a little hyperbolic to make the point with this thumper of a closing line: “The Pacific northwest grew in part on a $30 trillion line of credit, and we’ve nearly cut it off.”
Grist for the Mill: Cohen Commission website.
– Charlie Petit
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