One gray, chilly afternoon in late-October, I drove out to the Hickey Brothers’ place to see if they had any whitefish livers—a delicacy, found only in scattered fishing villages on the northern Great Lakes, whose fans are almost cult like in their devotion. A friend from Iowa who’d fallen under their spell was arriving to hunt grouse and woodcock and I knew he’d go weak in the knees if I told him that sauteéd whitefish livers were on the menu.

Sometimes all it takes is a single photograph to change someone’s mind or inspire them to take action. For Catherine Collins and her husband Douglas Frantz, that was a photo of a yardstick plunged 32 inches into filth below a salmon farm near Port Mouton, Nova Scotia.