The Salmon of Miramichi River
For thousands of years, Salmon have travelled from their feeding grounds in the Atlantic to the Miramichi where they laid their eggs in the many shallow streams that fed the river.
It was a beautiful location, filled with great coniferous forests of spruce and pine the perfect spawning grounds for wild Salmon.
But this idyllic existence was dramatically changed
In the summer of 1954, to combat the ever growing budworm insect problem, a huge spraying campaign was endorsed by the Canadian Government. The budworm was a pest that attacked several kinds of trees that were indigenous to the forests of the Miramichi.
Millions of acres of forests were sprayed with DDT to save the balsams which were the backbone of the pulp and paper industry.
Clouds of DDT spray covered the forests
Planes covered the skies and sprayed DDT over the forest of the Miramichi. Streams were covered as were other delicate areas of the local environment. Winds carried the mists of DDT far and wide touching everything for miles. Between 1952 to 1967 more than 12.5 million pounds of DDT was sprayed in the region of New Brunswick
Fortunately, the Fisheries Research Board of Canada was conducting a study of Salmon on the river the very same period the spraying begun.
The destruction they recorded was phenomenal
All life in the many streams leading to the river was stilled soon after the spraying begun.
‘Insecticides are not selective poisons; they do not single out one species. Each of them is used for the simple reason that it is a deadly poison.’ Rachel Carson Silent Spring
From insects to birds... to fish. A shadow of death gripped the Miramichi River. Insects and fish died from acute DDT exposure.
About a quarter (approximately 950,000) of the hatchery stock of Salmon died over a significant two week period during the early stages of the spraying. The devastation was immense. Whole ecosystems were permanently damaged.
However nature has a way of bouncing back
Small insects like midges and blackflies quickly re-established themselves. But the larger insects which the Salmon depended on took longer to recover (Salmon eat the larval stages of Caddis flies, Stone flies and mayflies).
Luckily, the storms of 1954 which was the result of Hurricane Edna, washed over New England and the Canadian coasts. This in turn resulted in unusually large numbers of Salmon coming to the river during this period. They laid eggs in record numbers and ensured that the Salmon population remained viable in the region.
Consequences of DDT poisoning
It is inevitable that water will transport pesticides from the forests and the farmed lands to the streams and rivers. Unfortunately, fish are especially sensitive to chlorinated hydrocarbons which made up the bulk of the pesticides that leached into the rivers.
Reports of dead fish were so common in parts of North America that the Public Health Service used it as an index of water pollution.
The Miramichi is thriving now and the Salmon stock in the region is healthy. In 2002 almost 50,000 Salmon returned to the Northwest and Southwest Miramichi River (though this is much less than the million or so runs of the 1930’s).