A disease detective hopes to discover why British Columbia’s wild salmon continue to decline.
By Ann Thomas MD
Against the backdrop of the Discovery Islands, tucked in the Inside Passage between Vancouver Island and British Columbia’s mainland, the biologists spotted a school of salmon. They maneuvered their boat to encircle the fish with a net and pulled them aboard. But something was wrong. Some fish swam strangely at the surface and rolled over. As the researchers performed quick gill biopsies before releasing the fish, some died while still in the net. Their catch was a mixture of healthy-appearing pink and coho salmon—but the juvenile sockeye salmon were long and skinny, a sign of malnourishment, some with cloudy eyes, others with their eyes popping out of their heads.