In a world of perfect storms, we in British Columbia spent a late summer in awe of a perfect miracle.

Thirty-four million wild sockeye salmon swept in from the Pacific Ocean and gave us a $500-million fishery. Somehow, out in the open waters off our shores, everything had gone just right.

Carrying millions of pounds of living energy through the rivers and streams of the Lower Mainland, the salmon are now distributing 50 million kilograms of nutrients deep throughout the interior of the province, from Alaska to the Alberta border.

Tens of thousands of people stood beside them as they entered the Adams River; the people of Takla Lake wind-dried them; the people of Stellaquo stood guard over them as they spawned, and the people of Lumby are working to help them past the Wilsey dam.

Produced free of charge to us, this natural phenomenon is igniting the economies of towns and villages province-wide.

How could the Fraser sockeye have made such a dramatic comeback after years of equally dramatic collapse?

Why has productivity that has been in decline for 18 years suddenly reversed?

Productivity is the ratio of adult fish that return to spawn compared to the number of adults in the previous generation and I believe the cause of these fluctuations can be directly linked to salmon feedlot diseases -- and this is why.

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The miracle run of 2010 is the largest run since Hell's Gate, a narrow canyon in the Fraser River, was blocked unintentionally by a Canadian Northern railway blast in 1914. While some rock was removed that winter, it was not until 1946 that salmon could make their way through when the water level was low.

No one knows for sure how large the salmon run was prior to European arrival, but it was more than 100 million fish in the heavy return years, when several large runs would arrive in the river in the same season.

The Hell's Gate fishway was completed in 1946 by a joint Canadian-American commission. At last, the Fraser salmon had reliable access to their river and they have tried to rebuild their numbers ever since.

But although the runs did gradually rebuild, the productivity of Fraser sockeye again began to decline in 1992.

In July of that year, a salmon farm in the narrowest marine corridor used by migrating Fraser sockeye was stocked with Atlantic salmon that were infected with the viral pathogen, infectious hematopoietic necrosis. IHN is lethal to sockeye.

Government was secretive about this and allowed the infected salmon to stay in the ocean. Over the next three years, the disease spread to 13 salmon feedlots -- nine million farm salmon -- in a 20 kilometre radius. This exposed six generations of wild salmon to unnatural and extremely high levels of the virus.

A second IHN epidemic raged for three years in the feedlots from Campbell River to Bella Bella, spread via the farms' smolt transport vessels. Again, the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans did nothing to protect our wild salmon, and the Fraser sockeye continued to decline.

This did not need to happen. Salmon epidemics are extremely rare in the wild, because predators keep pathogens low by removing sick fish.

Yet today, every wild salmon that swims between Vancouver Island and the mainland is condemned to pass feedlot effluent over its gills. If the fish do not die directly, they become carriers as they join other populations of salmon farther north, or enter the rivers.

Aquaculture corporations operating in this province are 92 per cent Norwegian-owned. The industry is highly secretive about disease; yet Norwegian scientists, who are tracking the spread of farmed salmon disease worldwide, have warned that British Columbia is "guaranteed" to get the Norwegian ISA virus (infectious salmon anemia), if the province continues to allow importation of eggs from the Atlantic.

Despite the warnings, Gail Shea, Canada's Minister of Fisheries, has been deaf to reason -- even though scientists report that ISA from Norway is raging in the salmon feedlots of Chile.

Furthermore, the DFO's own research, underway since 2003, reports Fraser sockeye appear to be dying of a new virus. An unreleased paper by Kristi Miller refers to "a potentially novel disease, possibly viral in origin" affecting a high proportion of juvenile and adult Fraser sockeye salmon that may weaken fish and, "directly or indirectly, enhance mortality."

A "novel" virus could not have come from wild salmon, it had to be introduced.

It was during this same time period that the decline of Fraser sockeye accelerated.

Today, we are running blind with this precious resource. Scientists cannot tell if any given year will produce a boom or a bust.

If there is an upside to all this, it is that, in the face of considerable odds, the Pacific Salmon Commission (PSC) is the agency that manages the Fraser sockeye. They are very good at what they do, and we owe them thanks for what they have achieved so far.

Unlike the DFO, which has no long-term plankton records for the Strait of Georgia -- even though their Pacific Biological Research Station is on its shores -- the PSC carefully monitors the Fraser sockeye returns.

PSC scientists quickly process the DNA samples collected by its test boats, in order to determine the strength of the lineages as they come in. This allows PSC to manage catches so that, in every year so far, they have made sure that a viable number of sockeye reached the spawning grounds.

Indeed, had the PSC not recognized the 2009 collapse while the fish were still in the ocean, the run would have been wiped out.

In 2001, a bureaucrat with the provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Lands signed an understanding with the B.C. Salmon Farmers' Association, agreeing that taxpayers would contribute $70,000 for the creation of a salmon feedlot-disease database. The information is kept so secret, however, that even provincial enforcement officers are not allowed to see it.

In March 2010, the Freedom of Information Commission ruled that data on salmon feedlot disease was public information.

How did the industry respond?

On April 1, 2010, a notice on the website of the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands reported that the fish farmers would no longer allow provincial veterinarians to test for disease out on the feedlot sites.

Meanwhile, on Nov. 5, 2009, the federal government had appointed the Hon. Bruce Cohen, a justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, to head up a Commission of Inquiry into the decline of sockeye salmon in the Fraser River.

After a series of public forums earlier this year and a subsequent one-month postponement, the commission's evidentiary hearings are due to get underway on Oct. 25.

As a participant in the Cohen Inquiry, I have requested the disease records of all salmon feedlots on the Fraser sockeye migration route, but the industry is stonewalling us.

So let's review the situation so far:

Worldwide, disease has spread everywhere marine-based salmon feedlots have been allowed.

The DFO has done nothing to remove diseased farm salmon from our largest wild salmon migration routes -- even as exposed wild stocks began to collapse.

Canada's Minister of Fisheries has left the B.C. border open, even though Norwegian scientists say we are guaranteed to import lethal salmon disease, and the DFO's own science says it looks as though a new virus is killing our wild salmon.

These are the reasons why I believe salmon feedlot disease is driving the boom and bust cycles of Fraser sockeye. I think the fish farmers cleaned up temporarily in 2008, and that this explains why we saw so many sockeye return this year.

The Fraser sockeye are like a rope of many strands. Today, that rope is almost severed, except for the single, amazing strand we have left -- this year's generation of the Adam's River, Quesnel and Shuswap salmon.

The 2010 sockeye are legendary. They have taken us back 100 years and we get to try again. They are a lifeline telling us something extremely important, and I hope we all will listen to their message.

The only way we are going to prove the facts, one way or another, is for thousands of people to support Justice Cohen in his inquiry. We need to persuade him it is essential that the salmon feedlot disease records are made available in their entirety.

On Oct. 19, First Nations people and their chiefs from as far as 900 kilometres away; federal members of Parliament, provincial MLAs, the mayor of Vancouver, fishers -- a cross-section of people from all walks of life began to paddle for six days down the Fraser River to demonstrate the importance of wild salmon to us, to our democracy and to our environment.

Without them and without you, the fish farmers will continue to operate in secrecy -- and to pour all their effluent into Pacific coastal waters and throughout our most valuable wild salmon migration routes.

This cannot, must not, be allowed to happen.

Please meet us when we land in Vanier Park at 10 a.m. on Monday. Walk with me to the opening of the Cohen Commission hearings, to deliver the message that we want the reign of corporate secrecy to end, and to tell Justice Cohen that people are watching and expect nothing less than the complete truth to be revealed.

For our itinerary please visit: www.salmonaresacred.org,

Should you care to learn more about British Columbia's wild salmon, I will one of the hosts of the Wild Salmon Party at North Vancouver's Centennial Theatre on Thursday, Oct. 28, at 7:30 p.m. Great music from Holly Arntzen, Kevin Wright and the Dream Band. Tickets: adults/seniors: $20; students: $10; children under 12 free.

Alexandra Morton has lived 26 years in a remote B.C. archipelago. She received an honourary Doctorate of Science from Simon Fraser University in June 2010 for her research into impact of salmon feedlots on wild salmon. She is the author of five books and has won numerous awards for her scientific activism.

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