Anti-salmon farming activists’ flush facts for clickbait and poop-fueled outrage, as their video “evidence” floats on fiction and flounders in fact.
Commentary
By Fabian Dawson
It’s Junk Science Week across Canada, and right on cue, we’ve been gifted a steaming pile of performative outrage, literally and figuratively, courtesy of the anti-salmon farming activists in British Columbia.
Welcome to the latest production of the activist fringe, where spliced footage, misunderstood science, and misinformed messaging combine to produce what can only be described as theatre of the absurd.
Branding themselves as eco-warriors while launching a video series called the “Sh*t Tapes,” groups like Clayoquot Action and Safe Salmon have unearthed what they breathlessly describe as damning footage from an experimental salmon farm near Tofino. Their claim? That a trench of fish feces and excess feed beneath a closed containment system (CCS) represents the collapse of aquaculture as we know it.
Of course, this being Junk Science Week, we should expect nothing less from the activists than a storyline rich in fecal fixation and poor in facts. Because, of course, nuance is boring, and poop sells.
Now let’s be clear: nobody wants fish waste spread across the seafloor like jam on toast. But framing an isolated overfeeding event involving smolts as the apocalypse of aquaculture is about as scientifically sound as blaming cow farts for hurricanes.
Here’s the real story. In November 2024, Clayoquot Action reported a smell and some oily surface residue near the Cermaq CCS.
The group filed a freedom of information request, cherry-picked some inspection footage, and voilà, the horror show began.
Headlines screamed “100% feces coverage,” “massive trench,” and “antibiotics in the ocean!”, without ever mentioning the context: the site was operating with smolts (juvenile fish), which consume less feed, produce far less waste, and are stocked at low densities.
In addition, the activists don’t say the video was captured following an isolated overfeeding event, and the farm has since been fallowed in accordance with standard protocol.
Cermaq, meanwhile, did what any responsible salmon farmer should. They reported the incident, investigated it, engaged Ahousaht First Nation leadership (as required under protocol), and committed to remediation. No restocking will occur until sediment tests meet federal benchmarks. That’s not spin, that’s regulation.
And here’s where the tragic comedy deepens. Despite the online outrage, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) didn’t issue a single compliance infraction. Why? Because no regulation was breached. The footage may have looked dramatic, but fish farms like any other food production system generate waste. It’s what you do about it that matters. In Cermaq’s case, the answer is: strict fallow periods, real-time monitoring, and full compliance with the Aquaculture Activities Regulation (AAR).
Let’s talk about that regulation for a moment.
From 2011 to 2023, an average of 84% of B.C. salmon farms operated below the benthic impact thresholds set by DFO. The remaining 16% were not non-compliant. They were simply required to pause operations until the seabed recovered, a normal part of the cycle. When discrepancies were found between industry-reported results and DFO audits (about 8% of the time), it was DFO’s data that prevailed. Science-based, enforced, and transparent.
Contrast that with the activists’ approach which is shout first, verify never, and hope the public doesn’t ask too many questions.
And questions should be asked, especially during Junk Science Week. Like why the groups pushing the “Sh*t Tapes” narrative never mention the Ahousaht guardians who co-manage and monitor the site. Or how a short-term smolt overfeeding event suddenly becomes the justification to ban all ocean-based salmon farms.
Or why, when footage emerges showing feed particles in a controlled trench, possibly still settling in a recently fallowed area, it’s treated with the same gravitas as an oil spill.
Let’s also touch on that scary-sounding antibiotic, Florfenicol. It’s approved for veterinary use, regulated, and commonly administered through feed. If any medicated pellets made it to the ocean floor (a big if), they would degrade quickly.
Yet the activists leap from “possible trace presence” to “crab apocalypse” with no science to back their speculation of crustacean calamity. If this is what passes for environmental science these days, we may as well let TikTok influencers run peer reviews.
But behind the laughs, there’s a serious concern. These activist campaigns aren’t just damaging reputations, they’re undermining Indigenous-led stewardship. The CCS in question operates under a formal protocol with the Ahousaht Nation. Its biologists and guardians have the authority and expertise to evaluate performance, and they weren’t even contacted before the “Sh*t Tapes” were unleashed online.
So yes, it’s Junk Science Week. But it’s also a reminder that real environmentalism isn’t about hashtags, fear reels, or selective outrage. It’s about facts, partnerships, and constantly improving how we feed the world.
Because if we’re going to judge ocean farming based on internet videos of fish poop, maybe it’s time to put GoPros in barnyards too. Let’s see how that goes over on Instagram.
Until then, it seems the anti-salmon farming activist groups in BC won’t be satisfied until they find a fish that doesn’t poop.
(Main image shows Cermaq’s Close Containment System near Tofino, BC)