The recent offer by Norwegian salmon-farming corporation Grieg to pay off B.C. shrimp fishermen— as part of an industry-wide intention to massively expand salmon aquaculture production in B.C. in the next five years— is only the latest imbroglio in the long and bitter controversy over net-pen salmon farming.
The debate has raged for over 25 years in British Columbia. Along the way it has embroiled conservationists, fishermen, scientists, federal and provincial governments and the aquaculture industry itself— sparking multiple lawsuits and protest marches in Vancouver, Victoria and coastal communities.
But there’s a new X factor at play in the long-running controversy.
The ’Namgis First Nation, with advice and support from a large number of groups, including Tides Canada, conservation groups, and funding agencies, has launched Kuterra, a land-based, “closed-containment” aquaculture project that keeps their Atlantic salmon out of contact with the larger marine ecosystem.
The company launched in the summer of 2014. Initially sold only in Safeway Sobey’s stores in BC and Alberta, their fish are now available as far east as Manitoba.
“Individual ‘Namgis members and the Nation as a whole have long been concerned about the effects of open net-pen aquaculture on the marine environment and the life in and around it, especially wild salmon,” says ‘Namgis Chief Debra Hanuse.
“Our primary motive for pursuing land-based closed containment aquaculture and founding Kuterra is environmental. We feel the most effective way to act on those concerns is to propose an alternative that we see as being more sustainable.”
“Aquaculture is not going to go away”
Net-pen salmon farms are ocean-based enclosures containing hundreds of thousands of fish (usually a type of Atlantic salmon). The floating pens can excrete as much waste as a town of 7500 people.
The farms appear like a massive buffet to seals and sea-lions, who have often ended up dead for their interest— by drowning in nets, or by “nuisance kills” in which overly curious marine mammals are shot with rifles by salmon farm staff.
But what most concerns conservation groups who have fought to regulate the net-pen salmon farm industry—including the David Suzuki Foundation, Watershed Watch, Living Oceans, and Fraser Riverkeeper— are farm-borne sea lice and diseases, which can infect wild salmon stocks.
Disease and lice impacts put the net-pen industry at the centre of the $26.4 million Cohen Commission inquiry into the decline of Fraser River sockeye that closed in 2012. One Commission researcher stated in his technical report that every year salmon farmers reported an average of 30 high-risk “fish health events” that could endanger wild salmon.
Justice Cohen noted at the close of the commission that the potential harm to Fraser sockeye by farm-borne diseases is “serious or irreversible,” and that net-pen farms along sockeye migration routes have the potential to “introduce exotic diseases and to exacerbate endemic diseases.”
Despite these impacts and risks, members of the BC Salmon Farmers Association (BCSFA) have plans to increase their primarily net-pen salmon farm production over 40 per cent by 2020.
But not all salmon farm operations are created equal, and the ‘Namgis have taken Justice Cohen’s conclusions to heart by putting their operations on land.
“All evidence is that aquaculture is not going to go away,” says Hanuse, “and in fact is growing very rapidly globally. The question then becomes how to practice aquaculture sustainably.
“We believe that land-based closed containment aquaculture is the next evolution and will become the method of choice for new operations in the future. We see the mission of Kuterra as catalyzing a change in the industry.”
A new economic and ecological model?
Eric Hobson has been involved with salmon conservation issues since 2006, and is formerly the president of SOS Marine Conservation Foundation, a group that sought to change the net-pen industry to protect wild salmon. Hobson and SOS had been working with the ‘Namgis on their concerns about net-pen salmon farms, and in 2009 he approached the ‘Namgis about piloting a land-based closed containment Atlantic salmon aquaculture system.
“At SOS, we had a three-pronged strategy for protecting wild salmon and affecting related salmon farming issues,” says Hobson. “One was short-term, investing in science and research to get the operating practices of the industry to evolve.”
The second “medium-term” goal, notes Hobson, was to work with provincial authorities and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (the DFO) on farm-siting criteria that would keep the farms away from migrating wild stocks, and on other regulations.
The third, long-term goal “was to try to build a pilot project to assess the technical, biological and economic viability of growing Atlantic salmon on land rather than in the oceans, removing all interaction between the farm and marine environment.”
Now that the project is in full swing, the SOS foundation has merged its operations with local conservation research organization Watershed Watch, and Hobson is now the Chair of the Kuterra board.
“We’ve had great support from Sustainable Development Technology Canada, Tides Canada and many others, but the ‘Namgis are the ones that have really stepped up, contributing land, capital and hard work to make this happen,” says Hobson.
“It’s not easy being on the leading edge of something innovative. They want to see it happen for obvious reasons – local economic development and to employ their people, but the fundamental reason is they want wild salmon to survive. That’s the basis of their culture.”
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Source AquaBounty Technologies