Is mutant goldeye pulled from lake an ugly warning?

Lindsay O'Reilly, August 24, 2008, Calgary Sun -- It's a really ugly fish.

The lumpy, cancerous-looking body, the glazed-over eyes -- it's not even one of those "it's so ugly it's cute" faces.

And yeah, the second mouth doesn't help.

This is the goldeye fish some kids pulled from Lake Athabasca last week, before shouting, with the enthusiasm kids have: "Hey, this fish has two mouths!"

And so, the fish became a star. Its un-beautiful image has been gracing news websites and newspaper pages across the country, another smudge on the oilsands' already-tarnished reputation.

So why is the mutant fish a big deal?

Because it was caught in an area downstream from some of the oilsands' most prominent operations.

An area where residents have been talking for years about high cancer rates and strange growths on the wildlife they hunt and eat.

This is an area where a doctor once spoke out about the unusual cancer rates in patients at Fort Chipewyan and subsequently had his medical licence threatened by government bigwigs.

A place where, it came to light in May, millions of litres of toxic tailings pond water have leached into the soil along the Athabasca River.

George Poitras, of the Mikisew First Nation, froze the deformed fish and put it on display at the Keepers of the Water Conference in Fort Chipewyan last Sunday, to draw the world's attention to what his people have been saying all along.

"We suspect this fish is very much linked to tarsands development and contamination of the Athabasca River," Poitras told reporters.

He went on to say his community's elders warned what happened to fish and animals is "a sign of what will happen to human life."

The residents are calling for a moratorium on new oilsands development approvals until more research is done and safeguards are in place.

Janice Linehan, chairwoman for Alberta's Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP), said the program had been keeping an eye on fish downstream from the oilsands for about 12 years.

She said other deformities had been observed, but never an extra mouth.

The deformities, she said, were usually chalked up to "parasites and fin erosion," and that there has "never been a scientific link between fish deformities and oilsands activity."

But an extra mouth?

Clear link or not, you'd think the media frenzy surrounding this mutant fish would be bad for the oilsands' stock.

Especially given that, earlier this week, three environmental groups quit an oilsands advisory group that included government and industry reps, saying it had lost legitimacy.

And these might have been a blow, had Bill Gates and Warren Buffett -- No. 1 and No. 3, respectively, on Forbes' world's richest people list -- not chosen this very week to make a surprise oilsands visit.

While the reason for the visit hasn't been made public, the very fact these savvy tycoons stepped foot on our oily soil has sent oilsands stocks soaring.

Apparently, Gates trumps mutant fish.

People want to believe in this resource, they really do. There are so many reasons to want it to be harmless.

We keep hearing it's the lifeblood keeping Canada's economy out of recession. It's both our meal ticket and the skeleton in our closet.

But it's up to us to control it. To monitor it. To make sure this resource, which buys us so many nice things, isn't allowed to run along so recklessly that we pay for our success with the health of our citizens and environment.

It could be that this ugly fish is a big, ugly warning sign.