“I’m gonna go, I’m gonna move and I’m gonna be a salmon farmer.”

Samantha Hartley, a member of the Young Salmon Farmers of B.C. (YSFBC), reflects on her journey across the country to live, work and build a stronger food future for Canada.

By Samantha Bacchus McLeod
SeaWestNews

For Samantha Hartley, salmon farming begins at the source of life itself, long before a fillet reaches a pan or a salmon burger is served at a barbecue.

When a family places a healthy Canadian fish at the centre of the table, it reflects the work of people like Hartley, who has devoted her adult life to raising salmon and helping shape the future of aquaculture in this country.

Based on Vancouver Island as a Broodstock Technician for Mowi Canada West, Hartley speaks about fish with the tenderness and authority that comes from years of hands-on experience across both coasts of Canada and seeing the industry from egg to harvest.

Long before she knew salmon farming could become a profession, Hartley had built a life around the waters she loved.

“I grew up in a little bit of a smaller town in New Brunswick,” she says. “I really wasn’t too close to the ocean, like an hour and a half away. But my dad always took us canoeing and kayaking, and always nature activities in the woods. But we did go on little family vacations to the ocean. And I don’t know what it was, but I was just always interested in the ocean, ocean animals, ocean movies, nature documentaries.”

As a child, she was enchanted by the movie Free Willy and the natural world, and that fascination stayed with her. At 12, knowing almost nothing about Vancouver Island, she told herself she would move there one day. Years later, she did.

Before heading west, Hartley enrolled in an aquaculture technician course in New Brunswick. At the time, she did not even know what salmon farming was. She only knew she loved fish and the ocean. Then she visited a salmon farm on the East Coast, and something clicked.

“I just fell in love with the idea, the environmental aspect, the fact that we get to feed people, just everything,” she says. “They asked if anyone wanted to apply for a job on Vancouver Island. And it’s like, well, yeah, I always wanted to go there. And I was 18 years old at the time, never lived away from home, and just was like, yeah, I’m gonna go and I’m gonna move and I’m gonna be a salmon farmer.”

Hartley has worked in both East Coast and West Coast salmon farming operations, and that experience has shaped her in practical and personal ways. The weather alone tells part of the story. On the East Coast, she recalls farming on the ocean in minus-40 temperatures, “beating ice off of our cages so that they don’t sink into the ocean.” On the West Coast, winters are gentler, but the work is no less serious.

In the past 11 years, across both coasts, she says, the people in the industry have become her support system, her safe haven.

“Absolutely phenomenal people, so supportive,” she says. “These people have become my second family, especially being here in B.C. and being so far away from my family.”

That sense of belonging matters because, in Hartley’s telling, aquaculture is not simply a job. It is a life built on long days, technical skill, emotional resilience and a deep commitment to animal care, food production and the environments in which all of it takes place.

Today, Hartley works in broodstock, an area of salmon farming many people outside the industry may never have heard of, yet it is the centre, the heart of the whole system.

These fish form the foundation of future breeding lines and commercial harvests. Caring for them demands precision, patience and close attention.

“We take the salmon, we take the eggs, and we take the milk from the male and female fish, and we mix them together and we make babies, baby salmon for the rest of the company or for future broodstock.”

It is, in essence, the beginning of a farmed salmon life cycle.

Her passion is contagious when she talks about the technical side of the work. In broodstock, she says, there is more training, more sampling and more responsibility. There is DNA sampling, weighing, family tracking and even ultrasound.

“We get to ultrasound the fish, which I think is the coolest thing that I’ve ever done,” she says.

Her knowledge is not confined to one department. Over the years, she has seen nearly every stage of production. She has fertilised the eggs, put the eggs into incubators, raised the eggs to fry, and then smolts and then set them out to farm and raise them from there to harvest and in the processing plant.

That breadth gives her a full understanding of what it means to care for an animal from its earliest beginning to the point where it feeds people.

“It feels so meaningful to me because we’re making the fish for the company,” she says.

“I love being in production and sending the fish off to market to be able to feed people, that is really satisfying.”

Hartley believes the future of food will depend on people willing to do this work with genuine love, intelligence and respect.

“When I came out here, and just the beauty and the environment of some of the sites that we work at, and the people, and just like every time I learned something, I was like, wow. I couldn’t picture myself doing anything else,” she says. “It’s got all of the elements that I love, and I know that we’re doing good for the environment and the people of the world as the food supply gets lesser.”

Hartley belongs to a generation of young professionals in aquaculture who are not standing at a distance from the natural world or theorising about it. They are in it. They are building careers inside it. They are raising food within it while trying to care for the communities around them.

“We do a lot of really good work for the community together,” she says. “We do a lot of beach cleanups. We do community barbecues. But it’s also super good for networking. I’ve met a lot of people in the industry I would not have met unless I was in the group.”

“People ask us questions that maybe normally they wouldn’t get to ask unless we were doing these events, and it’s really nice to get to talk to the community about what we do and answer their questions for them.”

There is no mistaking the pride Hartley feels in her profession, even if that pride can sometimes be difficult to carry in public. She knows there are misconceptions about salmon farming. She knows what it feels like to tell someone what she does and not receive the response she had hoped for.

“I’m extremely proud of what I do,” she says. “I know all of the people that I work with are as well. It’s just hard sometimes to show that pride with such misconception of what we do. It’s a little heartbreaking when people try to dismantle what you do, especially to your face.”

“I wish they knew how most people in the industry actually care for the environment,” she says. “Everybody that I work with is so passionate about the environment and making sure that we’re taking care of the environment that we’re working in. I feel like that’s a big misconception about us. In fact what we do, it’s quite the opposite.”

When work is done, Hartley still spends her time where she feels most at peace. She scuba dives, snorkels, and she spends her summers in lakes, rivers and ocean water near Campbell River. She works in nature and returns to it again in her own time, drawn to the same life and beauty that captivated her as a child. Being underwater is therapy, she said.

For Hartley, salmon farming is never merely about production. Before that comes stewardship at the beginning of a life cycle, skill in the service of nourishment, and a whole generation of young farmers of the sea choosing, day after day, to invest their energy in healthy fish, strong communities and the future of food.

“The farms are some of the most beautiful places that I’ve seen,” Hartley says. “So, I can’t complain.”

Main image: Samantha Hartley in the Broodstock Facility