In the first week of September 2019 I visited three rivers along eastern Vancouver Island; the Puntledge, Campbell and Quatse Rivers.
I found many pink salmon that had died without spawning. Their skin was lightly tinted yellow – jaundice, an indication of liver problems. I did not find any fish that had successfully spawned.
Their gills were exceptionally pale, they should have been bright red.
Their livers were a strange yellow colour.
The normally small, crisp-edged spleens were huge and swollen. These are all signs of disease.
Fry rearing in the river were feeding on the dead jaundice adults
The jaundice pinks spiraled as they died…
These fish had survived their epic voyage out to sea and back only to die just before they could make the next generation. They were robust good-looking fish, except for the blush of yellow. However their organs told another story. Jaundice (yellow) and anemia (pale gills)… or jaundice/anemia is a disease recently reported in Chinook salmon that appears to be caused by the Atlantic Ocean piscine orthoreovirus, or PRV. The virus infects the red blood cells. It uses the cells to make copies of itself, filling the cell until it ruptures, en masse. The amount of blood released into the fish's body when the infected cells burst overwhelms the liver causing the jaundice or yellowing and the very pale gills.
I took samples, which I will have tested. If they are positive for PRV, it is my opinion that these fish are being killed by exposure to the heavily infected salmon farms they have to swim past on their way to the spawn. While I have found this virus in almost all the farm salmon I have tested from markets and in many wild salmon, it is relatively rare in pink salmon. To see so few fish in the river and the ones that were there were yellow and dying before spawning suggests this virus may be very dangerous to pink salmon.
Fishermen on the rivers helped me get these samples and they had pictures on their phones of other yellow salmon.
This picture was taken in the Roy River in 2018.
The lack of pink salmon in the marine waters of northeastern Vancouver Island is obvious and so to see them dying in the rivers just before spawning raises the question – is exposure to the infected salmon farms killing them.
DFO seems unaware and unconcerned.