Who Hears the Salmon When They Cry?
By: David Desjardins
Tags: Economics, Climate Change, Psychology, Environment, Science

“This creature known as man is of course highly intelligent, he is capable of manufacturing almost anything from rumors to test-tube babies and yet he destroys two or three species every day. This is the absurdity of man.” — Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

The largest salmon run in the world takes place in the rivers of Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska. Every year, an average of 36.9 million sockeye salmon enter Bristol Bay and race upriver to return to their birthplace. The watershed is also spawning ground for all Pacific salmon species – chinook, coho, chum and pink.

Salmon is a keystone species in the Pacific Northwest, having a disproportionately large effect on its natural environment. Many species depend on salmon for survival, including brown bears, bald eagles, orcas, or otters.

On days when salmons are migrating, a dominant brown bear in the Katmai National Park can catch more than 40 fish per day by simply standing at the edge of a cascade. A sockeye salmon contains approximately 4,500 calories, but the fatty parts like the eggs, brain, and skin are more energy-dense. When there is an abundance of fish, bears are practicing good energy economics by eating only the fattiest parts, a behaviour known as high-grading.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the 2018 sockeye salmon run of 62.3 million fish was the largest on record dating back to 1893 and was 69% above the 20-year average. With a run of 58.2 million salmon, 2020 was the sixth consecutive year that the sockeye salmon run exceeded 50 million fish.

With record salmon runs, it is tempting to believe that all is well in Bristol Bay’s rivers, but this could not be farther from the truth. The greatest fishery in the world is indeed facing significant threats.

Northern Dynasty Minerals owns 100% of the Pebble Project, the world’s largest undeveloped copper, gold, molybdenum, and silver deposit. The mining project is located at the Kvichak and Nushagak rivers’ headwaters, two of the most productive salmon rivers flowing into Bristol Bay.

Disputes over the Pebble project have been ongoing for more than a decade. The mining project was rejected under the Obama administration but found new life under the Trump administration. On November 25, The Army Corps of Engineers denied an essential permit required under the federal Clean Water Act, but the company confirmed that it would appeal the decision.

Northern Dynasty Minerals and its management continue to believe that the Pebble project’s construction is in the public’s interest. Obviously, their financial interests are clouding their judgement. The possibility of damaging the pristine wilderness and one of the most productive marine ecosystems in North America is not in the public’s interest.

The story of the Pebble project reveals the inability of a capitalist system to value natural ecosystems properly. In economic terms, the destruction of the rich wilderness surrounding Bristol Bay would be a mere externality. The risk of environmental damage would not be included in the production costs or in the final price of the ore sold on international markets. It would be another example of privatizing profits and socializing losses, the definition of a subsidy.

With a capitalist mindset, Bristol Bay’s value would be the present value of its free cash flows. In that framework, Bristol Bay’s value would depend on the number of wild salmon that could later be sold to supermarkets.

The fact that such a narrow framework blinds many corporate executives is distressing and is the root cause of many problems humanity is facing today. Why is it so difficult to understand that the value of Bristol Bay is its sole existence? Why do wild species of salmon, bears, orcas and eagles have to justify their presence in monetary terms? Why do we impose such a narrow operating framework on the natural world?

Our attitude toward the natural world reveals entrenched anthropocentrism, a belief that human beings are at the center of the universe. This single concept, which is now widespread, is an existential threat. It is self-evident that no species in the biosphere operate in a vacuum, and obviously, Homo Sapiens is also subject to those interdependences.

“The Europeans and European Americans surveyed the landscape of North America and saw commodities. Forest were timber that could be sold. The animals that lived there had thick and valuable fur that could be sold. Land could be used to grow food products to be sold. Fish could be salted or packed in cans and sold. The minerals in the earth could be dug up or washed out and sold.” — Mark Kurlansky, Salmon, A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate, Page 194

The direct environmental risks brought by the Pebble project are worrisome, but there are much more significant and indirect threats on the horizon. In this case, the environmental threats are not created by a single mining corporation operating in the vicinity of prolific spawning grounds but from an aggregation of billions of daily individual decisions made worldwide.

According to the Independent Scientific Group, the optimal water temperature for salmonid spawning is 10°C, and stressful conditions begin at temperatures greater than 15.6°C, with lethal effects at 21°C and above.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Arctic’s air temperatures have been warming at approximately twice the rate of the rest of the world. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2020 was the second warmest year on record in the Arctic and continued a 7-year long streak of the warmest temperatures recorded since 1900.

The summer of 2019 re-wrote the record books for Alaska, where air temperatures broke records. On July 4, record temperatures were recorded in Kenai, Palmer, King Salmon, and Anchorage International Airport, where it reached 32.2°C or 2.8°C higher than the previous record. In Anchorage, the temperature was higher than 21.1°C for 17 consecutive days and higher than 26.7°C for six straight days.

The heatwave was associated with the death of tens of thousands of pre-spawned salmons. Warm water holds less dissolved oxygen and increases salmon’s metabolism. It creates a double whammy effect as salmons need more oxygen at a moment when less of it is dissolved in the water. According to Chris Sergeant, a scientist at the University of Montana, warm water combined with a dense population of salmon can lead to mass suffocation, as seen in the video below. With continued warming in the Arctic, mass salmon die-off will become more frequent and more severe.

Warmer water temperature favours the growth and the survival of young smolts, and it might explain the record runs of the last few years. However, this is a non-linear system, and above a certain threshold, warmer water temperature ceases to be favourable and becomes lethal.

All is not well in Bristol Bay, and it is likely to get worst. The Shifting Baseline Syndrome stipulates that people’s accepted thresholds for environmental conditions are continually lowered due to ongoing environmental degradation. With no past experiences, we tend to forget how rich Earth was before the mass destruction that has been going on for centuries.

Unfortunately, the best way to convey Bristol Bay’s richness to future generations might be through books, not by going to the river banks. However, with the current rate of warming in the Arctic, the risk of losing Bristol Bay might become the least of our concerns. Warming in the Arctic is creating much bigger problems, and the impact on salmon is only one of the often forgotten consequences.

If you are also worried, please share it with your friends. Together, we might be able to make a difference. Inaction is part of the problem.