What ISA Salmon Virus Did to Chile: Damien Gillis’ 2009 Photo Essay

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In the wake of the discovery of catastrophic Infectious Salmon Anemia in wild Pacific sockeye this week, The Common Sense Canadian revisits Damien Gillis’ 2009 photo essay documenting how the same deadly disease wiped out the Chilean salmon farming industry in a few short years. While Chile doesn’t have wild salmon like BC, the ISA outbreak wrought significant cultural and socio-economic devastation on the country. Now it threatens to destroy BC’s wild salmon stocks. Damien visited Chile’s Region 10 in September 2009, at the height of the crisis – here’s what he saw.

Click the image below to view the slide show.


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About Damien Gillis

Damien Gillis is a Vancouver-based documentary filmmaker with a focus on environmental and social justice issues - especially relating to water, energy, and saving Canada's wild salmon - working with many environmental organizations in BC and around the world. He is the co-founder, along with Rafe Mair, of The Common Sense Canadian, and a board member of both the BC Environmental Network and the Haig-Brown Institute.

3 thoughts on “What ISA Salmon Virus Did to Chile: Damien Gillis’ 2009 Photo Essay

  1. I can’t wait till the gov’t starts useing tax payers money to bail out the fishfarmers,after they have allowed this to happen…..I’ll move to another country if that happens

  2. Tom, whatever salmonids (including trout species and escaped Atlantics) Chile has are not native species so it’s an area that doesn’t get a lot of study. To my understanding, there have been trout introduced by European settlers years ago, so there are some wild trout populations, but they’re relatively minor. I’m not aware of what if any impact ISA from farmed Atlantic salmon has had on those trout populations.

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