fish farm siting criteria & politics

Thanks for that link Gimp.

The problem remains that the FFFF industry expects us to accept negative assurance with regards to their operations and the real and potential impacts that fish farming has on our wild salmon. This negative assurance is in the form of "there's no scientific proof...bla.bla..bla." Positive proof will be in the form of "oh my god, what have we done? The Pacific Salmon have been devastated forever."

What do we do, wait until a decade goes by for every one of those potential disasters listed by Agent to be scientifically studied and a risk measure attached, or worse, that they come true as they are now with the Sea Lice? Sorry Filthy FF Farmer's,... not interested! The risks are too great and the reward to our salmon and our citizens and the many other stakeholders in this great resource too small.

Thank you to AgentAqua, Gimp, and others for keeping the truth and providing us with real knowledge around the significant threats posed by the fish farm industry. It's disgusting and it has to go.
 
Thanks for that link Gimp.

The problem remains that the FFFF industry expects us to accept negative assurance with regards to their operations and the real and potential impacts that fish farming has on our wild salmon. This negative assurance is in the form of "there's no scientific proof...bla.bla..bla." Positive proof will be in the form of "oh my god, what have we done? The Pacific Salmon have been devastated forever."

What do we do, wait until a decade goes by for every one of those potential disasters listed by Agent to be scientifically studied and a risk measure attached, or worse, that they come true as they are now with the Sea Lice? Sorry Filthy FF Farmer's,... not interested! The risks are too great and the reward to our salmon and our citizens and the many other stakeholders in this great resource too small.

Thank you to AgentAqua, Gimp, and others for keeping the truth and providing us with real knowledge around the significant threats posed by the fish farm industry. It's disgusting and it has to go.
 
Time to provoke some thought with non-biasedl perspective...:)


Time to veto the 'virtuous' choice</u>

Cameron MacDonald
Wild salmon is good and fish farming is bad, right? At least that's what environmentalist Cameron MacDonald always thought, and taught - until a random classroom comment inspired him to go out and do his own research

From a distance, the salmon farm floats like a mirage at the mouth of Grice Bay near Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Surrounded by jade mountains and dark water, the farm looks tranquil, seemingly immune to the controversy that swirls elsewhere around the aquaculture industry in British Columbia.

As we approach, bouncing across the light chop in an open boat, I see the farm is smaller than I'd expected: eight pens, each 15 metres square, surrounded by a metal walkway. The whole complex has a surface area comparable to the ice surface at your local hockey rink.

At the dock, I am greeted by Spencer Evans, general manager of Creative Salmon. Together, we look into the murky depths of the first pen, which seems to be empty. Then, Mr. Evans tosses a scoop of feed pellets into the water and suddenly hundreds of little silver bullets shoot to the surface.

As a biology instructor at Langara College in Vancouver, I have twice annually given an anti-salmon-farming lecture to my environmental-studies class. This past semester, I was again reciting the litany of abuse, but my heart wasn't into the diatribe - my lecture sounded too much like propaganda pulled from a website, which is exactly what most of it was.

Then, the lecture faltered completely. I was describing the dyes some producers use to colour the meat pink, when a student raised a hand. "The Vancouver Aquarium recommends eating wild salmon instead of farmed salmon," she said. "What do you think is worse for the environment?" I knew the answer I was supposed to provide. Every environmental organization, from the David Suzuki Foundation on down, clearly states that consuming farmed salmon is a mortal environmental sin.

Consuming wild salmon is presented as virtuous by comparison.

Commercial devastation But I have worked in the commercial fishery. I have been on deck when trawlers emptied their nets of 10,000 pounds of fish randomly scraped from the bottom of the ocean. Even though wild salmon are not harvested this way, the image of that devastation is still relevant.

Then, in Nova Scotia, in the late nineties, I watched the last handful of wild Atlantic salmon work their way up the Gaspereau and Lehave rivers. Commercial fishing, as we are painfully well aware of in Canada, has exhausted almost every harvestable species and permanently altered the fragile ecosystems those fisheries sustained.

"I don't know," I finally responded to my student. "I've never seen a salmon farm first-hand. But commercial fishing is ecologically disastrous. You are not saving the world when you eat wild salmon." "For me it's just a theoretical question," the student replied.

"I'm a vegetarian." "Then you are truly walking the high road," I said as the hallway buzzer ended the discussion.

The tour of Creative Salmon's farm site helped to confirm a thesis I had had percolating since working as an at-sea observer for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on the bottom trawlers of the West Coast. My suspicion: Both salmon farming and commercial salmon fishing have an impact on ecosystems, but that of salmon farming pales in comparison. In my view, British Columbia could largely abandon the commercial fishery, and with only a modest expansion of salmon farming, bring more fish to market, increase rural employment and contribute more revenue to the provincial economy. And, most important, runs of wild salmon, unmolested by gill-netter and seiner, would recover, bears would gorge, rotting fish carcasses would fertilize trees.

But the issue is complicated, and clouded by abundant propaganda from both sides. Check out any anti-fish-farming website and you will find the following allegations: escapees, pollution, health risks and parasite transmission.

Are these allegations insurmountable, easily mitigated, or simply false?

1. Escapees

It's true that nets can tear and farmed salmon can escape into the wild, raising fears that partly domesticated lineages of Atlantic or Pacific salmon (respectively 95 per cent and 5 per cent of the B.C. industry) will compete with or hybridize with local stock, compromising the genetic integrity of wild populations.

In fact, Atlantic salmon are only distant genetic cousins of Pacific salmon and therefore are unable to produce hybrids. Additionally, Atlantic salmon do not readily establish themselves outside their home range - in the 1930s and 40s, various governments throughout the Pacific Northwest attempted, in vain, to introduce Atlantic salmon for the sport fishery.

Farmed Pacific salmon, if they escape, could potentially hybridize with wild populations because they are recently derived from wild stocks. But the issue here is moot: Billions of hatchery-reared Pacific salmon are released into the Pacific annually to subsidize the commercial and sport fisheries. These swarms compete with and genetically contaminate populations of wild salmon, making the potential impact of farm escapees insignificant.

2. Pollution

The surface footprint of a salmon farm is relatively small, but the ecological footprint on the ocean floor extends much farther.

Salmon feces and any uneaten feed accumulates on the sea floor directly under and downstream of the pens, potentially affecting bottom-dwelling organisms by creating an anoxic environment, lacking in precious oxygen. Currents can also carry organic pollution into nearby bays, where, if confined, it can have an impact on shellfish.

While there are few documented cases of this kind of offsite contamination, fish farmers can avoid the problem by situating fish farms in areas flushed by strong tidal currents, reducing pen densities and regularly fallowing farm sites.

As for environmental organizations concerned about seabed conservation, a better target by far would be the trawl fishery, which drags large, weighted nets across thousands of square kilometres of ocean floor.

Not only does this fishery result in tons of unwanted fish being caught and discarded, it also gouges and planes habitat features, such as sponges and corals, from the ocean floor. In comparison, Canada's entire West Coast salmon-farming industry has a direct impact on a paltry 12 square kilometres of seabed, a figure that includes a 100-metre buffer around most farm sites.

3. Health risks

Thanks in part to smart environmentalism, there have been significant improvements in the industry since the 1980s. Farming now uses lower levels of antibiotics than are typical for most livestock production - Creative Salmon, for instance, has not treated any production fish with antibiotics since 2001.

Health Canada also encourages the consumption of farmed salmon, for its heart-healthy fatty acids, whereas many wild fish, such as canned albacore tuna, fall into the "eat-only-one-serving-a-week" category because of mercury contamination. Additionally, concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls in Canadian farmed salmon are about a 50th of the levels allowed by Health Canada .

4. Parasite transmission

Parasites are the real issue. Atlantic salmon (though not chinooks) are susceptible to sea lice, which can proliferate in densely populated fish farms. When salmon farms are located near the mouths of rivers that support runs of pink salmon, juvenile pinks migrating to the ocean can acquire higher than normal parasite loads and suffer higher mortality rates as a consequence.

Much of the concern regarding lice transmission originated with the 2002 collapse of the pink salmon fishery in the Broughton Archipelago, an area east of Port Hardy that supports the largest concentration of salmon farms in B.C. In 2000, the run of Broughton pinks was the largest recorded since monitoring began in the 1950s, but the 2002 run was near historically low levels.

Commercial fishermen implicated salmon farming as the culprit.

However, the runs had also been commercially fished in all previous years; it would be statistically difficult to separate the relative effect of these two industries on the number of pinks. As well, most wild fisheries are subject to substantial natural fluctuation, a reality that makes harvest management a logistical nightmare.

I would argue that - notwithstanding a few specific runs of pinks whose migration routes skirt salmon farms - lice transmission has far less impact than commercial fishing on coastal salmon populations.

And compared with the commercial harvest, which has devastated thousands of runs of salmon around the globe, the potential impact of lice transmission seems modest.

Consider also that Broughton supports a quarter-billion dollars' worth of farming activity annually, compared with a commercial harvest worth at best a few million dollars. The downside The pro-salmon farming argument is certainly not without its flaws.

Salmon, both farmed and wild, are carnivores. Their diet in captivity is fishmeal, basically small forage fish and fish scrap converted into bite-sized pellets. It takes about three kilograms of fishmeal to produce one kilo of salmon (about 10 kilos of forage fish are required to produce one kilo of wild salmon).

In B.C., increasing our reliance on salmon farming could take the pressure off wild salmon, but put more pressure on fish populations used in fishmeal and the ecosystems they come from - Peruvian anchovies, for example, are one of the primary forage fish used in fishmeal.

Additionally, the protein used to make the fishmeal could be used directly to feed the hungry in Peru or elsewhere. In this sense, a salmon farm is different from a prairie wheat field or cattle ranch - instead of feeding the world, the salmon constitute a high-end product for consumption by the wealthy.

Given my charge that most commercial fisheries are ecological nightmares, it's only fair to point out that the farming industry is sustained by the same kind of commercial harvesting. I have real trouble

with the image of high-sea trawlers gorging on wild fisheries, particularly the fisheries of developing nations, in order to export half their product to aquaculture industry (the other half goes into poultry and pig feed).

Some farms are experimenting with fishmeal containing vegetable protein. Advocating for Canadian farmed salmon would certainly be more defensible if their diet contained a significant amount of Canadian grain. It would be even better if the industry used fishmeal produced via aquaculture rather than commercial harvest, although this opportunity has yet to be explored.

Seals and sea lions are another problem. As occasional salmon eaters, they look at salmon farms the way coyotes look at chicken coops. These giant predators (a male Steller sea lion can weigh more than 900 kilos) can cause significant damage to farm infrastructure and deplete salmon stocks. Several farms have received federal permits to shoot them, but such aggressive measures are ultimately ineffective and philosophically questionable. Better technology, primarily in the form of robust cages to effectively isolate the pens, would drastically reduce the threat.

Future considerations

Environmentalists have recommended moving salmon farms into land-based closed containment loops - giant concrete pools continually flushed with fresh seawater that could then be treated before being pumped back into the ocean.

Closed containment has obvious appeal, but it also has significant environmental costs: millions of tonnes of cement for construction and the burning of large amounts of fossil fuels to pump seawater.

A better route might be to pursue the development of partial containment: growing salmon in membranous nets, for example, that would allow water through but capture most of the organic pollution.

Many British Columbians dream of salmon runs returning to historic levels, when the fish carried energy and nutrients into terrestrial ecosystems like red blood carrying oxygen to anoxic cells. The dream could come true with the shutdown of the commercial salmon fishery and the expansion of aquaculture and the sport fishery.

The sport fishery is a windfall, contributing significantly to the provincial economy. Licences, guides, lodges - on a per fish basis, the returns are huge. And without a commercial harvest the sport fishery would be phenomenal. Sport fisheries, because they generally harvest a smaller proportion of available fish, are also politically and ecologically easier to manage.

Fish farms, meanwhile, could provide more employment than the commercial fisheries - and to many areas that desperately need it.

Creative Salmon, for example, operates within the traditional territory of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, and members of that community make up 35 per cent of its work force of 45 full-time employees - a significant contribution to the Tofino economy. After decades of subsidizing the commercial fishery, governments, in particular, are excited by the prospect of a coastal industry that can stand on its own.

Certainly, I am not advocating a rapid expansion of salmon farming.

The industry should grow slowly, and in conjunction with careful environmental assessment and government regulation. Neither should the industry expand to fill every suitable inlet and channel.

Even areas that have been abused in the past by every industry - forestry, commercial fishing, and salmon farming - could slowly be reclaimed as wild space.

Several weeks after my first visit to Creative Salmon, I kayaked past the same fish pens on Grice Bay. The farm still looked picturesque under a sombre winter sky.

A handful of employees were feeding the salmon, distributing just the right amount of food for optimum growth. Even from kayak height, I could see fish boiling at the surface in a feeding frenzy. In the distance, beyond the farm, there were a few small sport boats out working the channel for late-season coho.

In this one panorama, I think I gazed upon the future of the West Coast salmon fishery.

Cameron MacDonald is a teacher and writer. He lives in Vancouver.
 
Time to provoke some thought with non-biasedl perspective...:)


Time to veto the 'virtuous' choice</u>

Cameron MacDonald
Wild salmon is good and fish farming is bad, right? At least that's what environmentalist Cameron MacDonald always thought, and taught - until a random classroom comment inspired him to go out and do his own research

From a distance, the salmon farm floats like a mirage at the mouth of Grice Bay near Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Surrounded by jade mountains and dark water, the farm looks tranquil, seemingly immune to the controversy that swirls elsewhere around the aquaculture industry in British Columbia.

As we approach, bouncing across the light chop in an open boat, I see the farm is smaller than I'd expected: eight pens, each 15 metres square, surrounded by a metal walkway. The whole complex has a surface area comparable to the ice surface at your local hockey rink.

At the dock, I am greeted by Spencer Evans, general manager of Creative Salmon. Together, we look into the murky depths of the first pen, which seems to be empty. Then, Mr. Evans tosses a scoop of feed pellets into the water and suddenly hundreds of little silver bullets shoot to the surface.

As a biology instructor at Langara College in Vancouver, I have twice annually given an anti-salmon-farming lecture to my environmental-studies class. This past semester, I was again reciting the litany of abuse, but my heart wasn't into the diatribe - my lecture sounded too much like propaganda pulled from a website, which is exactly what most of it was.

Then, the lecture faltered completely. I was describing the dyes some producers use to colour the meat pink, when a student raised a hand. "The Vancouver Aquarium recommends eating wild salmon instead of farmed salmon," she said. "What do you think is worse for the environment?" I knew the answer I was supposed to provide. Every environmental organization, from the David Suzuki Foundation on down, clearly states that consuming farmed salmon is a mortal environmental sin.

Consuming wild salmon is presented as virtuous by comparison.

Commercial devastation But I have worked in the commercial fishery. I have been on deck when trawlers emptied their nets of 10,000 pounds of fish randomly scraped from the bottom of the ocean. Even though wild salmon are not harvested this way, the image of that devastation is still relevant.

Then, in Nova Scotia, in the late nineties, I watched the last handful of wild Atlantic salmon work their way up the Gaspereau and Lehave rivers. Commercial fishing, as we are painfully well aware of in Canada, has exhausted almost every harvestable species and permanently altered the fragile ecosystems those fisheries sustained.

"I don't know," I finally responded to my student. "I've never seen a salmon farm first-hand. But commercial fishing is ecologically disastrous. You are not saving the world when you eat wild salmon." "For me it's just a theoretical question," the student replied.

"I'm a vegetarian." "Then you are truly walking the high road," I said as the hallway buzzer ended the discussion.

The tour of Creative Salmon's farm site helped to confirm a thesis I had had percolating since working as an at-sea observer for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on the bottom trawlers of the West Coast. My suspicion: Both salmon farming and commercial salmon fishing have an impact on ecosystems, but that of salmon farming pales in comparison. In my view, British Columbia could largely abandon the commercial fishery, and with only a modest expansion of salmon farming, bring more fish to market, increase rural employment and contribute more revenue to the provincial economy. And, most important, runs of wild salmon, unmolested by gill-netter and seiner, would recover, bears would gorge, rotting fish carcasses would fertilize trees.

But the issue is complicated, and clouded by abundant propaganda from both sides. Check out any anti-fish-farming website and you will find the following allegations: escapees, pollution, health risks and parasite transmission.

Are these allegations insurmountable, easily mitigated, or simply false?

1. Escapees

It's true that nets can tear and farmed salmon can escape into the wild, raising fears that partly domesticated lineages of Atlantic or Pacific salmon (respectively 95 per cent and 5 per cent of the B.C. industry) will compete with or hybridize with local stock, compromising the genetic integrity of wild populations.

In fact, Atlantic salmon are only distant genetic cousins of Pacific salmon and therefore are unable to produce hybrids. Additionally, Atlantic salmon do not readily establish themselves outside their home range - in the 1930s and 40s, various governments throughout the Pacific Northwest attempted, in vain, to introduce Atlantic salmon for the sport fishery.

Farmed Pacific salmon, if they escape, could potentially hybridize with wild populations because they are recently derived from wild stocks. But the issue here is moot: Billions of hatchery-reared Pacific salmon are released into the Pacific annually to subsidize the commercial and sport fisheries. These swarms compete with and genetically contaminate populations of wild salmon, making the potential impact of farm escapees insignificant.

2. Pollution

The surface footprint of a salmon farm is relatively small, but the ecological footprint on the ocean floor extends much farther.

Salmon feces and any uneaten feed accumulates on the sea floor directly under and downstream of the pens, potentially affecting bottom-dwelling organisms by creating an anoxic environment, lacking in precious oxygen. Currents can also carry organic pollution into nearby bays, where, if confined, it can have an impact on shellfish.

While there are few documented cases of this kind of offsite contamination, fish farmers can avoid the problem by situating fish farms in areas flushed by strong tidal currents, reducing pen densities and regularly fallowing farm sites.

As for environmental organizations concerned about seabed conservation, a better target by far would be the trawl fishery, which drags large, weighted nets across thousands of square kilometres of ocean floor.

Not only does this fishery result in tons of unwanted fish being caught and discarded, it also gouges and planes habitat features, such as sponges and corals, from the ocean floor. In comparison, Canada's entire West Coast salmon-farming industry has a direct impact on a paltry 12 square kilometres of seabed, a figure that includes a 100-metre buffer around most farm sites.

3. Health risks

Thanks in part to smart environmentalism, there have been significant improvements in the industry since the 1980s. Farming now uses lower levels of antibiotics than are typical for most livestock production - Creative Salmon, for instance, has not treated any production fish with antibiotics since 2001.

Health Canada also encourages the consumption of farmed salmon, for its heart-healthy fatty acids, whereas many wild fish, such as canned albacore tuna, fall into the "eat-only-one-serving-a-week" category because of mercury contamination. Additionally, concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls in Canadian farmed salmon are about a 50th of the levels allowed by Health Canada .

4. Parasite transmission

Parasites are the real issue. Atlantic salmon (though not chinooks) are susceptible to sea lice, which can proliferate in densely populated fish farms. When salmon farms are located near the mouths of rivers that support runs of pink salmon, juvenile pinks migrating to the ocean can acquire higher than normal parasite loads and suffer higher mortality rates as a consequence.

Much of the concern regarding lice transmission originated with the 2002 collapse of the pink salmon fishery in the Broughton Archipelago, an area east of Port Hardy that supports the largest concentration of salmon farms in B.C. In 2000, the run of Broughton pinks was the largest recorded since monitoring began in the 1950s, but the 2002 run was near historically low levels.

Commercial fishermen implicated salmon farming as the culprit.

However, the runs had also been commercially fished in all previous years; it would be statistically difficult to separate the relative effect of these two industries on the number of pinks. As well, most wild fisheries are subject to substantial natural fluctuation, a reality that makes harvest management a logistical nightmare.

I would argue that - notwithstanding a few specific runs of pinks whose migration routes skirt salmon farms - lice transmission has far less impact than commercial fishing on coastal salmon populations.

And compared with the commercial harvest, which has devastated thousands of runs of salmon around the globe, the potential impact of lice transmission seems modest.

Consider also that Broughton supports a quarter-billion dollars' worth of farming activity annually, compared with a commercial harvest worth at best a few million dollars. The downside The pro-salmon farming argument is certainly not without its flaws.

Salmon, both farmed and wild, are carnivores. Their diet in captivity is fishmeal, basically small forage fish and fish scrap converted into bite-sized pellets. It takes about three kilograms of fishmeal to produce one kilo of salmon (about 10 kilos of forage fish are required to produce one kilo of wild salmon).

In B.C., increasing our reliance on salmon farming could take the pressure off wild salmon, but put more pressure on fish populations used in fishmeal and the ecosystems they come from - Peruvian anchovies, for example, are one of the primary forage fish used in fishmeal.

Additionally, the protein used to make the fishmeal could be used directly to feed the hungry in Peru or elsewhere. In this sense, a salmon farm is different from a prairie wheat field or cattle ranch - instead of feeding the world, the salmon constitute a high-end product for consumption by the wealthy.

Given my charge that most commercial fisheries are ecological nightmares, it's only fair to point out that the farming industry is sustained by the same kind of commercial harvesting. I have real trouble

with the image of high-sea trawlers gorging on wild fisheries, particularly the fisheries of developing nations, in order to export half their product to aquaculture industry (the other half goes into poultry and pig feed).

Some farms are experimenting with fishmeal containing vegetable protein. Advocating for Canadian farmed salmon would certainly be more defensible if their diet contained a significant amount of Canadian grain. It would be even better if the industry used fishmeal produced via aquaculture rather than commercial harvest, although this opportunity has yet to be explored.

Seals and sea lions are another problem. As occasional salmon eaters, they look at salmon farms the way coyotes look at chicken coops. These giant predators (a male Steller sea lion can weigh more than 900 kilos) can cause significant damage to farm infrastructure and deplete salmon stocks. Several farms have received federal permits to shoot them, but such aggressive measures are ultimately ineffective and philosophically questionable. Better technology, primarily in the form of robust cages to effectively isolate the pens, would drastically reduce the threat.

Future considerations

Environmentalists have recommended moving salmon farms into land-based closed containment loops - giant concrete pools continually flushed with fresh seawater that could then be treated before being pumped back into the ocean.

Closed containment has obvious appeal, but it also has significant environmental costs: millions of tonnes of cement for construction and the burning of large amounts of fossil fuels to pump seawater.

A better route might be to pursue the development of partial containment: growing salmon in membranous nets, for example, that would allow water through but capture most of the organic pollution.

Many British Columbians dream of salmon runs returning to historic levels, when the fish carried energy and nutrients into terrestrial ecosystems like red blood carrying oxygen to anoxic cells. The dream could come true with the shutdown of the commercial salmon fishery and the expansion of aquaculture and the sport fishery.

The sport fishery is a windfall, contributing significantly to the provincial economy. Licences, guides, lodges - on a per fish basis, the returns are huge. And without a commercial harvest the sport fishery would be phenomenal. Sport fisheries, because they generally harvest a smaller proportion of available fish, are also politically and ecologically easier to manage.

Fish farms, meanwhile, could provide more employment than the commercial fisheries - and to many areas that desperately need it.

Creative Salmon, for example, operates within the traditional territory of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, and members of that community make up 35 per cent of its work force of 45 full-time employees - a significant contribution to the Tofino economy. After decades of subsidizing the commercial fishery, governments, in particular, are excited by the prospect of a coastal industry that can stand on its own.

Certainly, I am not advocating a rapid expansion of salmon farming.

The industry should grow slowly, and in conjunction with careful environmental assessment and government regulation. Neither should the industry expand to fill every suitable inlet and channel.

Even areas that have been abused in the past by every industry - forestry, commercial fishing, and salmon farming - could slowly be reclaimed as wild space.

Several weeks after my first visit to Creative Salmon, I kayaked past the same fish pens on Grice Bay. The farm still looked picturesque under a sombre winter sky.

A handful of employees were feeding the salmon, distributing just the right amount of food for optimum growth. Even from kayak height, I could see fish boiling at the surface in a feeding frenzy. In the distance, beyond the farm, there were a few small sport boats out working the channel for late-season coho.

In this one panorama, I think I gazed upon the future of the West Coast salmon fishery.

Cameron MacDonald is a teacher and writer. He lives in Vancouver.
 
Again, some much needed perspective and context on this issue...

"Unless human population is curbed, we turn to vegetarian diets or ocean fish stocks make a full recovery -- all highly unlikely -- there is a need to farm fish."

Fish farming's bottom line</u>

Whether farmed salmon is a plus or minus in B.C. depends on who's providing the details.

Hans Tammemagi, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, March 29, 2008

Salmon farming in B.C is a deliciously controversial issue full of polarized views and media sensationalism.

I was first introduced to the issue in a sold-out hall where David Suzuki, Canada's environmental guru, spoke. He was scathing in his condemnation of salmon farming, arguing that farmed fish eat almost double their own weight in wild fish, helping to deplete the ocean's fisheries, which are already in crisis.

He went on to describe how farmed salmon are fed pigment to give them their pink colour. The crowded conditions are incubators for disease. The farms help spread lice to wild salmon. The waste and fecal matter fall to the ocean floor, damaging the habitat. Seals and sea lions get trapped in the pens and die or are shot. Escaped non-native Atlantic salmon mingle with Pacific salmon and weaken their genetic pool.

Whew, that's quite a litany of sins. And those horrors were described in even greater detail on the websites of the Georgia Strait Alliance and David Suzuki Foundation.
In contrast, when I visited the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association's website, it offered a completely different picture. It talks of protecting the environment and sustainable farming. It even offers public tours of a farm.

The website of the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, which licenses fish farms, shares the same outlook, and hardly mentions controversy or uncertainty. Instead, it comes across as a cheerleader for the industry.

I called a ministry official. He stated that everything is under control and by using adaptive management they deal with problems as they arise. He believes the reports about sea lice problems are overstated, and countered with several reports showing there is no danger to wild salmon.

How could anything be more polarized? Who was I to believe?

I dug deeper. I was surprised at the size of B.C. salmon farming and how quickly it has developed. In only two decades, the industry has sprouted to about 130 licensed sites, mostly located around Vancouver Island. Only about 80 sites are actively farmed. Each farm averages about 600,000 salmon in about 12 open-cage pens.

What motivated the rush to approve so many fish farms so quickly? One reason is the enormous demand for farmed fish as ocean fish catches decrease. Furthermore, fish farming boosts the economy -- not that that would ever influence the ministry. The industry employs 1,800 people and earns about $450 million per year. And with 85 per cent of sales in the U.S., the industry brings in valuable foreign exchange.

Confused, I sought out an expert. John Reynolds, a marine biologist at Simon Fraser University, explained the importance of salmon and their keystone role in B.C.'s coastal ecosystems. About 25 per cent of B.C. salmon stocks have disappeared or become severely threatened, leading to the loss of half of B.C.'s commercial salmon fleet in the past decade. The main cause is overfishing. Of course, coastal development, marine pollution and global warming (salmon are cold-water fish), aren't doing wild salmon any favours either.But Reynolds was adamant that fish farming is also contributing to the problems. "Peer-reviewed scientific studies," he said, "clearly show that wild salmon stocks are damaged by nearby farms."

He stressed that better farm management is needed and recommended that open net cages should not be allowed near salmon rivers or locations close to migratory routes. And to prevent transfer of disease or lice to wild salmon, pens should be kept empty when young wild salmon return to sea.

Next I visited a fish farm. The boat chugged through the gorgeous archipelago north of Campbell River to a farm run by Grieg Seafood, which consists of 12 pens.

The staff was proud of their industry and pointed out how much it has improved in recent years. Feeding is computer controlled and monitored with underwater TV cameras so excess feed doesn't reach the seabed. Stronger nets and perimeter nets have been introduced to keep out seals, and shooting is no longer allowed. The site is managed so few fish are in the pens when wild juveniles leave spawning streams in the spring. Divers inspect the pens monthly, and each company has a veterinarian, who is responsible for the health of the fish and minimizing disease.

"We must farm sustainably and care for the environment. We won't be in business for long if we don't," says Ian Roberts of Marine Harvest Aquaculture, one of the three Norwegian-owned companies that operate 90 per cent of B.C.'s salmon farms.

So what's the bottom line? Factory farms -- whether chickens, pigs or fish -- are unnatural, inhumane and I'm personally opposed to them. But what Suzuki conveniently ignores is that we've painted ourselves into a corner. Unless human population is curbed, we turn to vegetarian diets or ocean fish stocks make a full recovery -- all highly unlikely -- there is a need to farm fish.

Raising non-native species in crowded conditions is difficult, however, and the industry was allowed to grow too quickly initially and consequently made mistakes.

To their credit, the ministry and industry have made changes, and environmental groups have played a valuable role in hurrying this process along.

For example, since 2000, new farms have had to be located outside a one-kilometre exclusion zone around significant salmon stream mouths. The regulation should be extended to pre-2000 farms and the exclusion zone should be increased. And further improvements are still needed.

Most importantly, though, is a change of philosophy. Instead of rushing forward, the industry should proceed slowly and cautiously, heeding the precautionary principle and protecting wild salmon to the maximum extent.

Hans Tammemagi writes monthly for Going Green.
 
Again, some much needed perspective and context on this issue...

"Unless human population is curbed, we turn to vegetarian diets or ocean fish stocks make a full recovery -- all highly unlikely -- there is a need to farm fish."

Fish farming's bottom line</u>

Whether farmed salmon is a plus or minus in B.C. depends on who's providing the details.

Hans Tammemagi, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, March 29, 2008

Salmon farming in B.C is a deliciously controversial issue full of polarized views and media sensationalism.

I was first introduced to the issue in a sold-out hall where David Suzuki, Canada's environmental guru, spoke. He was scathing in his condemnation of salmon farming, arguing that farmed fish eat almost double their own weight in wild fish, helping to deplete the ocean's fisheries, which are already in crisis.

He went on to describe how farmed salmon are fed pigment to give them their pink colour. The crowded conditions are incubators for disease. The farms help spread lice to wild salmon. The waste and fecal matter fall to the ocean floor, damaging the habitat. Seals and sea lions get trapped in the pens and die or are shot. Escaped non-native Atlantic salmon mingle with Pacific salmon and weaken their genetic pool.

Whew, that's quite a litany of sins. And those horrors were described in even greater detail on the websites of the Georgia Strait Alliance and David Suzuki Foundation.
In contrast, when I visited the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association's website, it offered a completely different picture. It talks of protecting the environment and sustainable farming. It even offers public tours of a farm.

The website of the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, which licenses fish farms, shares the same outlook, and hardly mentions controversy or uncertainty. Instead, it comes across as a cheerleader for the industry.

I called a ministry official. He stated that everything is under control and by using adaptive management they deal with problems as they arise. He believes the reports about sea lice problems are overstated, and countered with several reports showing there is no danger to wild salmon.

How could anything be more polarized? Who was I to believe?

I dug deeper. I was surprised at the size of B.C. salmon farming and how quickly it has developed. In only two decades, the industry has sprouted to about 130 licensed sites, mostly located around Vancouver Island. Only about 80 sites are actively farmed. Each farm averages about 600,000 salmon in about 12 open-cage pens.

What motivated the rush to approve so many fish farms so quickly? One reason is the enormous demand for farmed fish as ocean fish catches decrease. Furthermore, fish farming boosts the economy -- not that that would ever influence the ministry. The industry employs 1,800 people and earns about $450 million per year. And with 85 per cent of sales in the U.S., the industry brings in valuable foreign exchange.

Confused, I sought out an expert. John Reynolds, a marine biologist at Simon Fraser University, explained the importance of salmon and their keystone role in B.C.'s coastal ecosystems. About 25 per cent of B.C. salmon stocks have disappeared or become severely threatened, leading to the loss of half of B.C.'s commercial salmon fleet in the past decade. The main cause is overfishing. Of course, coastal development, marine pollution and global warming (salmon are cold-water fish), aren't doing wild salmon any favours either.But Reynolds was adamant that fish farming is also contributing to the problems. "Peer-reviewed scientific studies," he said, "clearly show that wild salmon stocks are damaged by nearby farms."

He stressed that better farm management is needed and recommended that open net cages should not be allowed near salmon rivers or locations close to migratory routes. And to prevent transfer of disease or lice to wild salmon, pens should be kept empty when young wild salmon return to sea.

Next I visited a fish farm. The boat chugged through the gorgeous archipelago north of Campbell River to a farm run by Grieg Seafood, which consists of 12 pens.

The staff was proud of their industry and pointed out how much it has improved in recent years. Feeding is computer controlled and monitored with underwater TV cameras so excess feed doesn't reach the seabed. Stronger nets and perimeter nets have been introduced to keep out seals, and shooting is no longer allowed. The site is managed so few fish are in the pens when wild juveniles leave spawning streams in the spring. Divers inspect the pens monthly, and each company has a veterinarian, who is responsible for the health of the fish and minimizing disease.

"We must farm sustainably and care for the environment. We won't be in business for long if we don't," says Ian Roberts of Marine Harvest Aquaculture, one of the three Norwegian-owned companies that operate 90 per cent of B.C.'s salmon farms.

So what's the bottom line? Factory farms -- whether chickens, pigs or fish -- are unnatural, inhumane and I'm personally opposed to them. But what Suzuki conveniently ignores is that we've painted ourselves into a corner. Unless human population is curbed, we turn to vegetarian diets or ocean fish stocks make a full recovery -- all highly unlikely -- there is a need to farm fish.

Raising non-native species in crowded conditions is difficult, however, and the industry was allowed to grow too quickly initially and consequently made mistakes.

To their credit, the ministry and industry have made changes, and environmental groups have played a valuable role in hurrying this process along.

For example, since 2000, new farms have had to be located outside a one-kilometre exclusion zone around significant salmon stream mouths. The regulation should be extended to pre-2000 farms and the exclusion zone should be increased. And further improvements are still needed.

Most importantly, though, is a change of philosophy. Instead of rushing forward, the industry should proceed slowly and cautiously, heeding the precautionary principle and protecting wild salmon to the maximum extent.

Hans Tammemagi writes monthly for Going Green.
 
sockeyefry, you state:
quote:did you state any connetion between farm salmon and the diseases, except the finding of vibrios at an old farm site.
Click to expand...
I'm assuming you already know this - but there is absolutely no requirement for fish farms to investigate and understand the potential risk for wild/cultured disease and parasite interactions before fish farms are approved, or even during operation.

There is no legislated early detection program for disease and parasite transfer; no risk assessment - even though DFO routinely does risk analysis for "species at risk", as well as "virtual population analysis". DFO has abdicated it's responsibility here - ex-fish farmers and pro-industry types in DFO make the decisions as to what is ignored when it comes to fish farms.

How is it that you think that I (or anyone else) could actually acquire the data to understand all these potential disease and parasite transfers and risk? Like I said earlier – out of sight, out of mind. If you close you eyes and minds, and ignore all caution and science - everything is fine.

sockeyefry:
quote: You do of course realise that all the listed diseases occur in nature, and were not created by fish farms?.
Click to expand...
Of course I do. Do you realize that these diseases and parasite can go both both ways through the open net-cage with unintended and unknown consequences?

sockeyefry:
quote: You don't really understand how the disease transmission works do you?
Click to expand...
The problem is – nobody does (that’s my point). You, me, fish farmers, DFO, the province – NOBODY. Nobody can predict or mitigate any disease and parasite transfer using open net-cage technology. It is inadequate and unacceptable to use this technology because there are unknown impacts to our wild stocks.

Canada supports the statement in Principle 15 of the “1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development” which states:

“In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capability. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

This “precautionary approach” should encourage, or perhaps even oblige, decision-makers to consider the potential for harmful effects of activities on the environment before (and not after) they approve those activities (http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/cppa/PDF/discussion doc-e-allfonts.pdf).

DFO frequently uses the justification of the “precautionary approach” to shut-down commercial fisheries. Never once to my knowledge have they shut-down a fish farm, citing use of the “precautionary approach”. Why not?

The ocean is a dynamic, complicated environment – with too many unknowns that can interact with the open net-cage technology; such as: what diseases and parasites are in the area, numbers of hosts, and types of species, critical habitat, and oceanography, etc. We know almost nothing about these risks.

I constantly hear denial and belittling of legitimate concerns of disease and parasite transfer from the fish farming industry. The arrogance, immodesty, and conceit in the supporting statements for the open net-cage technology are overwhelming.

I point you to the discussion about the dissocial personality disorder and CORPORATE PSYCHOPATHY on page 5 in this forum which lists these traits:

1. Callous unconcern for the feelings of others and lack of the capacity for empathy (i.e. reckless disregard for safety of self or others).
2. Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations (i.e. failure to conform to lawful social norms with a lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent about having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another)
5. Incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience, particularly punishment.
6. Marked proneness to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior bringing the subject into conflict. (i.e. deceitfulness).

If the flipper fits - wear it.

I think the industry needs to show much more modesty, humility, and above all diffidence to the fact that their industrial activities happen in the ocean – and they have no idea what their impacts will be on our wild stocks – unless a tragedy happens. By then, it’s too late.

Oops - sorry, doesn't cut it.
 
sockeyefry, you state:
quote:did you state any connetion between farm salmon and the diseases, except the finding of vibrios at an old farm site.
Click to expand...
I'm assuming you already know this - but there is absolutely no requirement for fish farms to investigate and understand the potential risk for wild/cultured disease and parasite interactions before fish farms are approved, or even during operation.

There is no legislated early detection program for disease and parasite transfer; no risk assessment - even though DFO routinely does risk analysis for "species at risk", as well as "virtual population analysis". DFO has abdicated it's responsibility here - ex-fish farmers and pro-industry types in DFO make the decisions as to what is ignored when it comes to fish farms.

How is it that you think that I (or anyone else) could actually acquire the data to understand all these potential disease and parasite transfers and risk? Like I said earlier – out of sight, out of mind. If you close you eyes and minds, and ignore all caution and science - everything is fine.

sockeyefry:
quote: You do of course realise that all the listed diseases occur in nature, and were not created by fish farms?.
Click to expand...
Of course I do. Do you realize that these diseases and parasite can go both both ways through the open net-cage with unintended and unknown consequences?

sockeyefry:
quote: You don't really understand how the disease transmission works do you?
Click to expand...
The problem is – nobody does (that’s my point). You, me, fish farmers, DFO, the province – NOBODY. Nobody can predict or mitigate any disease and parasite transfer using open net-cage technology. It is inadequate and unacceptable to use this technology because there are unknown impacts to our wild stocks.

Canada supports the statement in Principle 15 of the “1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development” which states:

“In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capability. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

This “precautionary approach” should encourage, or perhaps even oblige, decision-makers to consider the potential for harmful effects of activities on the environment before (and not after) they approve those activities (http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/cppa/PDF/discussion doc-e-allfonts.pdf).

DFO frequently uses the justification of the “precautionary approach” to shut-down commercial fisheries. Never once to my knowledge have they shut-down a fish farm, citing use of the “precautionary approach”. Why not?

The ocean is a dynamic, complicated environment – with too many unknowns that can interact with the open net-cage technology; such as: what diseases and parasites are in the area, numbers of hosts, and types of species, critical habitat, and oceanography, etc. We know almost nothing about these risks.

I constantly hear denial and belittling of legitimate concerns of disease and parasite transfer from the fish farming industry. The arrogance, immodesty, and conceit in the supporting statements for the open net-cage technology are overwhelming.

I point you to the discussion about the dissocial personality disorder and CORPORATE PSYCHOPATHY on page 5 in this forum which lists these traits:

1. Callous unconcern for the feelings of others and lack of the capacity for empathy (i.e. reckless disregard for safety of self or others).
2. Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations (i.e. failure to conform to lawful social norms with a lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent about having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another)
5. Incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience, particularly punishment.
6. Marked proneness to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior bringing the subject into conflict. (i.e. deceitfulness).

If the flipper fits - wear it.

I think the industry needs to show much more modesty, humility, and above all diffidence to the fact that their industrial activities happen in the ocean – and they have no idea what their impacts will be on our wild stocks – unless a tragedy happens. By then, it’s too late.

Oops - sorry, doesn't cut it.
 
quote:
Oops - sorry, doesn't cut it.
Click to expand...

Ya like your gonna hear that. They will blame anyone else they can. Next it will be the bears eating all the salmon.
 
Sager:
quote:...Closed containment has obvious appeal, but it also has significant environmental costs: millions of tonnes of cement for construction and the burning of large amounts of fossil fuels to pump seawater...
Click to expand...

Concrete is of the least environmental concern here and if at all it may be esthetically unpleasant which can be addressed by smart designers. Costs for pumping can be drastically reduced by a good design as well. I just want to mention regenerative energy sources such as solar / wind / tidal surge.... Don't be lazy and you will find much better solutions than conventional...Therefore again and again:

GET THOSE NET-PEN FISH FARMS OUT OF THE OCEAN AND RELOCATE THEM ONTO LAND.

Technology is all there - just lacking the willingness to pay some extra dollars at the risk of our wild salmon.
 
Here's some more examples of disease transfer for those who are complacent within the assumption nothing can go wrong:

Farmed salmon that have escaped from farms have inadvertently exposed wild salmon to other diseases in Norway. The parasite Gyrodactylus salaris (generally quiescent in the wild), wiped out wild salmon populations in a number of streams after escaped farmed salmon took up instream residence. Despite radical and costly treatment, infected rivers in Norway have become re-infected.

Twenty Norwegian salmon farms closed for ~2 years in 1988 as the result of furunculosis that was accidentally introduced with imported salmon smolts in 1984. By 1989, 182 farms in Norway were infected, as well as wild runs of salmon in some 18 rivers. Vaccines have helped eliminate furunculosis from salmon farms in Norway, but clearly have not helped already-infected wild populations.

In 1989, a disease caused by a previously unknown strain of the Rickettsia spp. bacterium broke out among farmed chinook salmon (O. tschtwyata) in Chile. The disease caused up to 90 percent mortalities among farmed salmon, and was found to infect both Pacific and Atlantic salmon.

In 1999, ISAv was first detected for the first time in wild Atlantic salmon in New Brunswick, in the Magaguadavic River where escaped farmed salmon were found with ISAv.

It's so bad and apparent in Norway - that the Norwegian government announced its intention to declare 39 river systems and 22 fjords protected areas for wild salmon, in order to: “provide specific protection against harmful encroachment on watercourses and the negative impact of fish farming to …wild salmon populations.”

What do we do here in Canada? - Deny, deny, deny...
 
MLA needs an education about B.C. fish farms
Garth Mirau. Nanaimo Daily News. Nanaimo, B.C.: Apr 9, 2008. pg. A.10
Copyright Southam Publications Inc. Apr 9, 2008

THE EDITOR:

There is no doubt Liberal MLA Ron Cantelon has the right to think whatever he thinks about salmon but as an elected representative he also has a duty try to educate himself on whatever it is he decides to talk about.

Cantelon's statement that we should just close commercial salmon fishing "before we fish the ocean out of wild fish" is a bit over the top.

Or is that now the provincial Liberal government policy?

As the chairman of the all party Committee on Aquaculture he has had access to information and conclusions that are irrefutable regarding the effects of salmon farming on the environment and fish stocks. Not just wild salmon but all marine species.

The evidence that sea lice infect smolts near fish farms has been proven beyond a doubt. Cantelon referred to a study done by DFO that seemed to negate that conclusion.

But if he was truthful he would have reported that not only was that study done after the smolts were gone but in areas they did not travel and it was never peer reviewed.

The use of drugs to control disease and parasite outbreaks should be of concern to consumers even if our elected representatives try to put another face on the realities. We need to control the chemicals, antibiotics, pesticides, sewage and escapes from these farms.

The answer is simple - closed containment. It has been tried and has been shown to be possible. Of course the multi-national companies that own the majority of the farms are opposed to closed containment. Not because it can't work but because of the costs. Not a good enough reason.

It is long past time for Cantelon and the rest of the Liberals to do the right thing.

Make all farms go to closed containment -- for the sake of all.

Garth Mirau

Nanaimo

Credit: The Daily News
 
Salmon plan rebuffed; Conservationist wants to move wild fish away from farms. Biologist says she is frustrated that DFO turned down offer to transport wild fish
Robert Barron. Nanaimo Daily News. Nanaimo, B.C.: Apr 8, 2008. pg. A.4
Copyright Southam Publications Inc. Apr 8, 2008

Biologist Alexandra Morton says she's "frustrated" that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has turned down her plan to transport young wild salmon around fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago - in an effort to protect them from sea lice on their way to the open ocean.

Last week, Morton, who has spent seven years studying salmon farms in the archipelago and has concluded that sea lice infestations caused by the farms are driving nearby populations of wild salmon to extinction, appealed to Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn to allow her transport plan to proceed and "not leave these pink salmon to die alongside" the fish farms.

"It's the same ridiculous story from DFO that's being repeated again and again while salmon stocks in this area are being decimated," Morton said on Monday.

The issue of fish farms raising Atlantic salmon in open-net pens in B.C. waters has been controversial since the farms started making inroads along the province's coasts more than two decades ago.

The latest flare up is over comments made by Nanaimo-Parksville MLA Ron Cantelon last week, that fish-farming may be instrumental in preventing a collapse of wild salmon stocks and advocated a more balanced approach to the salmon industry involving both wild and farmed stocks.

"If we want to save our wild fish stocks and prevent an event similar to the collapse of the East Coast cod fishery, fish farming should be more accepted," Cantelon said.

The United Nations' food and agriculture organization recently reported that about 43% of all the world's fish and seafood currently comes from aquaculture operations, and projections are for it to surpass the catch fisheries in the near future as world populations and demand increases.

There are now more than 130 licensed salmon farms along B.C.'s coasts, with a concentration of more than 20 in the Broughton Archipelago, which employ upwards of 4,000 workers.

Despite concerns, Ottawa's Conservative government announced in its 2008 budget an investment of $22 million over two years "to help create the conditions for the Canadian aquaculture industry to succeed and grow in an economic and environmentally sustainable manner."

This investment will be put towards streamlining the regulatory process, strengthening science to create performance-based environmental standards, spur innovation to enhance the sectors competitiveness and productivity, and develop a certification scheme to meet rigorous quality standards in international markets.

Fish-farming advocates state that the commitment towards strengthening the science around the fish farms in order that the industry can be conducted in an environmentally-friendly manner is key and point to a number of successes over the years.

The pollution from the farms, specifically the accumulation of wasted food around the holding pens that has been criticized as being unhealthy for both the environment and the farmed fish, has been greatly reduced over the years.

As well, the practice of using a fallowing system, whereby the areas where the fish pens are kept are left empty for up to a year after a harvest, to allow the area to revert back to the same state it was before the farm was established, is proving successful.

However, while the use of drugs and antibiotics to deal with the lice problem on the farmed fish may work in the short-term in some cases, the industry still hasn't been successful in completely eliminating the parasites and critics say the lice are still decimating wild salmon stocks as they attach themselves to young salmon passing by the farms on their way to the open ocean.

Ted Perry, a fisheries biologist at Nanaimo's Pacific Biological Station, said Monday that Morton's plan to transport young wild salmon around fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago, the site of seven streams where wild salmon spawn and also about 20 primarily Norwegian-owned Atlantic salmon farms holding between 500,000 to 1.5 million fish each, was rejected because the risk to the wild salmon was determined to be too great due to over-handling.

He said tests so far this spring at the farms in the archipelago show that sea lice levels are at "very low levels."

Morton said these tests are "irrelevant" and the only way to determine the impacts of sea lice on passing young wild salmon is to "look outside" the pens.

"My studies are showing that 17% of young wild salmon near the pens have lice infestations and those numbers are expected to rapidly rise as waters temperatures rise this spring," she said.

A study released by the University of Alberta last December backs up Morton's concerns, concluding that unless fish farms change their practices, sea lice could drive B.C.'s wild pink salmon on some rivers to extinction within four years.

"This is the first time we've been able to measure the impact of sea lice on wild salmon populations, which turns out to be quite severe," lead author Martin Krkosek said from the Bamfield Marine Science Centre on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

"It showed that if these sea lice infestations continue these populations are going to slide away to extinction."

The study, which examined wild salmon populations in the Broughton Archipelago, estimates 99% of pink salmon in the area could be wiped out within four years.

Studies by DFO and the industry agree there is a higher incidence of lice on juvenile pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago.

However, DFO concludes there are other issues to consider, like the environmental conditions in the archipelago as compared to other areas and the abundance of wild salmon there that may be more conducive to lice development and all of this needs to be studied and explained before definitive conclusions can be drawn.

In a review of scientific studies concerning sea lice and Pacific salmon conducted between 2004 and 2008, Dr. Brian Harvey, an independent biologist specializing in conservation of endangered fish species, concluded that "at present" there is no scientific consensus on whether sea lice from farmed salmon are causing the demise of wild pink and chum populations.

He said reasons for this lack of clarity include knowledge gaps about sea lice natural history and ocean currents, as well as disagreement about the design of mathematical models for predicting louse dispersal and spread of infection.

"But behind all the shouting, the science works away as it always has," he said.

"The burden of proof, that sea lice from farmed Atlantic salmon don't cause population decline in wild salmon, is with the salmon farming industry."

Critics of open net fish farms are calling for the implementation of closed, inland pens that are self-contained so diseases and pollutants won't be passed to the natural environment.

Cantelon served as vice-chairman of the province's NDP-dominated legislative committee on sustainable aquaculture which tabled its report last May.

While the NDP-dominated committee concluded that all salmon farms in B.C. should move to closed-containment technology within the next five years or cease operating, Cantelon disagreed with the conclusions.

Among his arguments, Cantelon said while a number of pilot projects with closed-containment systems are underway, the technology is not yet there to make such operations commercially viable.

DFO has carried out its own studies with closed containment systems, as has the B.C. government and industry.

These trials have indicated that closed containment, with current technology, is not a practical alternative to the existing ocean farm design for salmon.

RBarron@nanaimodailynews.com

250-729-4234

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We want to hear from you. Send your comments on this story to letters@nanaimodailynews.com. Letters must include your first and last names, your hometown and a daytime phone number.

Credit: Daily News
 
When Genetics And Geology Meet In Patagonia

ScienceDaily (Apr. 9, 2008) — When Charles Darwin first set foot on Patagonia, he was a fresh-faced 22-year old yet to finesse his revolutionary theory of evolution by natural selection.

But traveling around the tip of South America aboard the HMS Beagle—part of an epic, five-year scientific expedition—the young naturalist had his eyes opened to the immense diversity of species and landscapes.

Now, almost two centuries later, a group of scientists from across disciplines and academic institutions in North and South America are revisiting places Darwin explored, and, like him, pondering the connections between the evolution of landscape and of organisms.

Daniel Ruzzante, Canada Research Chair in Marine Conservation Genetics, and Sandra Walde, professor of population and evolutionary ecology, both with Dalhousie’s Biology department, together with colleagues at the Universidad de Concepción in Chile and Universidad del Comahue in Argentina, have used molecular genetics to explore historic patterns of population crashes and explosions of two native species of Patagonian fishes. Explaining these patterns however, required an understanding of the evolution of landscape in the Andes.

Enter John Gosse, a Canada Research Chair in Earth Systems Evolution. The Earth Sciences professor uses digital terrain models and isotope geochemistry methods to map and date events that changed the landscape. His research often takes him to the southern Andes.

The group’s recent paper, Climate control on ancestral population dynamics, has just been published in Molecular Ecology. Presenting one of the most comprehensive phylogeographic studies yet conducted in South America, the paper argues observed changes in freshwater fish demographics occurred in response to climate change over the past three million years. (Phylogeography is the study of historical processes that may be responsible for the contemporary geographic distributions of populations.)

One of the species, Galaxias platei, gradually rebounded after its population was squeezed 23,000 to 25,000 years ago, a time which coincides with the last ice age when ice extended over southern South America. In comparison, the more widely distributed and adaptable Percichthys trucha showed continuous growth, even through the last two ice ages.

Historic climate change resulted in “genetic bottlenecks,” followed by dramatic expansion and growth of the aquatic fauna of the region, leading to the geographical rearrangement of both species and genetic diversity. This type of evidence for climate controls on the Earth’s fauna is an example of the kinds of breakthroughs that reaching across traditional boundaries between disciplines can yield.

“Patagonia is like nowhere else in the world. And the research we are doing there is all brand new stuff and this is that’s what makes it so exciting,” says Dalhousie PhD student Tyler Zemlak, who was recently in Patagonia for a fieldtrip funded by the National Geographic Society.

Now aquatic species and their habitats in Patagonia are facing different threats. There’s global warming, which is thinning the ice of mountain glaciers at an alarming rate. And, there’s competition from invasive species, including Atlantic salmon, several species of Pacific salmon, rainbow trout, brook trout and lake trout and brown trout, all northern hemisphere species native to North America or Europe.

“Many of these species, like Atlantic salmon and the various Pacific salmon species, are escapees from fish farms,” explains Dr. Ruzzante, originally from Argentina. “Now out in the wild, they’re competing with, and in some cases feeding on, native species.”

Adapted from materials provided by Dalhousie University, via Newswise.

Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats:
APA

MLA
Dalhousie University (2008, April 9). When Genetics And Geology Meet In Patagonia. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 10, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/04/080409205136.htm

PhD student Tyler Zemlak and Prof. Daniel Ruzzante go fishing in Perito Moreno National Park in Argentina's Santa Cruz. (Credit: Image courtesy of Dalhousie University)

contact:
Daniel E. Ruzzante
Dept. of Biology
Dalhousie University
1355 Oxford St.
Halifax
Nova Scotia
B3H 4J1
Telephone:
Fax: +1 (902) 494-1688
+1 (902) 494-3736
http://myweb.dal.ca/ruzzante/
http://myweb.dal.ca/ruzzante/RTsouth.html
http://science.dal.ca/RESEARCH/Faculty With Named Chairs/Ruzzante,_Daniel.php
http://myweb.dal.ca/ruzzante/pubs.html
daniel.ruzzante@dal.ca
 
quote:Originally posted by agentaqua

Salmon plan rebuffed; Conservationist wants to move wild fish away from farms. Biologist says she is frustrated that DFO turned down offer to transport wild fish
Robert Barron. Nanaimo Daily News. Nanaimo, B.C.: Apr 8, 2008. pg. A.4
Copyright Southam Publications Inc. Apr 8, 2008

Biologist Alexandra Morton says she's "frustrated" that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has turned down her plan to transport young wild salmon around fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago - in an effort to protect them from sea lice on their way to the open ocean.

Last week, Morton, who has spent seven years studying salmon farms in the archipelago and has concluded that sea lice infestations caused by the farms are driving nearby populations of wild salmon to extinction, appealed to Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn to allow her transport plan to proceed and "not leave these pink salmon to die alongside" the fish farms.

"It's the same ridiculous story from DFO that's being repeated again and again while salmon stocks in this area are being decimated," Morton said on Monday.

The issue of fish farms raising Atlantic salmon in open-net pens in B.C. waters has been controversial since the farms started making inroads along the province's coasts more than two decades ago.

The latest flare up is over comments made by Nanaimo-Parksville MLA Ron Cantelon last week, that fish-farming may be instrumental in preventing a collapse of wild salmon stocks and advocated a more balanced approach to the salmon industry involving both wild and farmed stocks.

"If we want to save our wild fish stocks and prevent an event similar to the collapse of the East Coast cod fishery, fish farming should be more accepted," Cantelon said.

The United Nations' food and agriculture organization recently reported that about 43% of all the world's fish and seafood currently comes from aquaculture operations, and projections are for it to surpass the catch fisheries in the near future as world populations and demand increases.

There are now more than 130 licensed salmon farms along B.C.'s coasts, with a concentration of more than 20 in the Broughton Archipelago, which employ upwards of 4,000 workers.

Despite concerns, Ottawa's Conservative government announced in its 2008 budget an investment of $22 million over two years "to help create the conditions for the Canadian aquaculture industry to succeed and grow in an economic and environmentally sustainable manner."

This investment will be put towards streamlining the regulatory process, strengthening science to create performance-based environmental standards, spur innovation to enhance the sectors competitiveness and productivity, and develop a certification scheme to meet rigorous quality standards in international markets.

Fish-farming advocates state that the commitment towards strengthening the science around the fish farms in order that the industry can be conducted in an environmentally-friendly manner is key and point to a number of successes over the years.

The pollution from the farms, specifically the accumulation of wasted food around the holding pens that has been criticized as being unhealthy for both the environment and the farmed fish, has been greatly reduced over the years.

As well, the practice of using a fallowing system, whereby the areas where the fish pens are kept are left empty for up to a year after a harvest, to allow the area to revert back to the same state it was before the farm was established, is proving successful.

However, while the use of drugs and antibiotics to deal with the lice problem on the farmed fish may work in the short-term in some cases, the industry still hasn't been successful in completely eliminating the parasites and critics say the lice are still decimating wild salmon stocks as they attach themselves to young salmon passing by the farms on their way to the open ocean.

Ted Perry, a fisheries biologist at Nanaimo's Pacific Biological Station, said Monday that Morton's plan to transport young wild salmon around fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago, the site of seven streams where wild salmon spawn and also about 20 primarily Norwegian-owned Atlantic salmon farms holding between 500,000 to 1.5 million fish each, was rejected because the risk to the wild salmon was determined to be too great due to over-handling.

He said tests so far this spring at the farms in the archipelago show that sea lice levels are at "very low levels."

Morton said these tests are "irrelevant" and the only way to determine the impacts of sea lice on passing young wild salmon is to "look outside" the pens.

"My studies are showing that 17% of young wild salmon near the pens have lice infestations and those numbers are expected to rapidly rise as waters temperatures rise this spring," she said.

A study released by the University of Alberta last December backs up Morton's concerns, concluding that unless fish farms change their practices, sea lice could drive B.C.'s wild pink salmon on some rivers to extinction within four years.

"This is the first time we've been able to measure the impact of sea lice on wild salmon populations, which turns out to be quite severe," lead author Martin Krkosek said from the Bamfield Marine Science Centre on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

"It showed that if these sea lice infestations continue these populations are going to slide away to extinction."

The study, which examined wild salmon populations in the Broughton Archipelago, estimates 99% of pink salmon in the area could be wiped out within four years.

Studies by DFO and the industry agree there is a higher incidence of lice on juvenile pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago.

However, DFO concludes there are other issues to consider, like the environmental conditions in the archipelago as compared to other areas and the abundance of wild salmon there that may be more conducive to lice development and all of this needs to be studied and explained before definitive conclusions can be drawn.

In a review of scientific studies concerning sea lice and Pacific salmon conducted between 2004 and 2008, Dr. Brian Harvey, an independent biologist specializing in conservation of endangered fish species, concluded that "at present" there is no scientific consensus on whether sea lice from farmed salmon are causing the demise of wild pink and chum populations.

He said reasons for this lack of clarity include knowledge gaps about sea lice natural history and ocean currents, as well as disagreement about the design of mathematical models for predicting louse dispersal and spread of infection.

"But behind all the shouting, the science works away as it always has," he said.

"The burden of proof, that sea lice from farmed Atlantic salmon don't cause population decline in wild salmon, is with the salmon farming industry."

Critics of open net fish farms are calling for the implementation of closed, inland pens that are self-contained so diseases and pollutants won't be passed to the natural environment.

Cantelon served as vice-chairman of the province's NDP-dominated legislative committee on sustainable aquaculture which tabled its report last May.

While the NDP-dominated committee concluded that all salmon farms in B.C. should move to closed-containment technology within the next five years or cease operating, Cantelon disagreed with the conclusions.

Among his arguments, Cantelon said while a number of pilot projects with closed-containment systems are underway, the technology is not yet there to make such operations commercially viable.

DFO has carried out its own studies with closed containment systems, as has the B.C. government and industry.

These trials have indicated that closed containment, with current technology, is not a practical alternative to the existing ocean farm design for salmon.

RBarron@nanaimodailynews.com

250-729-4234

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

We want to hear from you. Send your comments on this story to letters@nanaimodailynews.com. Letters must include your first and last names, your hometown and a daytime phone number.

Credit: Daily News
Click to expand...

Here's what I think: Based on pink salmon return data in the Broughton and massive studies by DFO published in Peer reviewed journals, we have not the slightest inkling that the wild stiocks are negatively impacted by BC fish farms. Only activists like Krkosek and Morton, funded by Alaska fishers have anything to say on the topic. they even have refuted their own claims and have sheepishly stated that their results do not support their conclusions.

Here's another thing I think: no one knows what closed containment is because this magic bullet technology does not exist for salmon- anywhere in the world. What trials have been done have not been "closed", have a huge energy footprint and wind up with bankruptcy or dead salmon or both.

And one more thing I think: wild salmon are suffering now because of a hundred years of overfishing, pollution, huge predator populations, oceanic changes that puny human minds cannot perceive and habitat destruction. Agent aqua you are throwing us a red herring and forcoing millions of dollars of research ijnto stupid avenues such as sea lice and containment research whne it should be going to banning fishing and habitat restoration. I think you are a pawn playing into Alaska fishers hands. You are not saving wild salmon, you and Suzuki and friends are marketting wild salmon. You are unwittingly doing Alaska's marketting for them. And Alaska is the biggest fish farmers in the world- but that's another story. Obviously the best way to save the wild salmon is to farm them in net pens. Obviously eating them and clubbing them to death and ocean ranching is NOT working.
 
handee, wish I could say nice try. It wasn't. You can't even back your accusations up. No evil Alaskan fishermen listed under funding sources, firstoff.

Secondly, who cares? As I posted earlier in this thread:
"It's okay for any group (NGO, industry, DFO, etc.) to fund any science. The litmus test of whether the science is reliable - is a peer-review process - something that the NGOs have performed far superior on, than industry. The science is in - and open net-cage technology has serious population-level consequences on adjacent wild salmon stocks. This has been proven the world over. Review the peer-reviewed science - not the news releases from the salmon farming industry."
 
Wild Salmon: $40 A Pound; Giving Away Their Water: $40 Billion


By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D.


Graph: http://static1.firedoglake.com/1/files//2008/04/salmon-returns.JPG


Why could wild salmon reach $40 per pound? DiFi, Dick Cheney, and other
dessicated Village pols keep giving away heavily subsidized water to welfare
farmers and energy megacorps in Oregon and California. Without enough water,
the salmon die. Who'd a thunk it?
We can always eat farmed salmon, instead? It's cheaper anyway, right?

Not so fast, Charlie. Want some hormones and antibiotics with your salmon
burger? Pound-for-pound,farmed salmon chow down more antibiotics than any
other beastflesh you can buy: the pinnacle of the toxic food chain. But
wait, there's more. The Environmental Working Group found 7 of 10 pieces of
farmed salmon tested in 2003 had PCB levels so high as to render the fish
toxic. PCB's -- another toxic gift from Monsanto that just keeps on
giving -- are nearly indestructible oily compounds Monsanto hawked for use
in electrical equipment. And Monsanto kept on pushing PCB's, and telling us
how safe they were, for decades after they knew full well the indestructible
little molecules were -- and are -- incredibly potent poisons. As far back
as the 1930's PCB's were known to cause chloracne, tumors, birth defects,
reproductive abnormalities, and a host of other horrors.

Oh well -- we can trust Monsanto on GMO's, right?

Anyway, farmed eat fish food made from fish oil, ground-up fish, artificial
dyes, and Antarctic critters called krill. PCB's dissolve in oil -- so
critters that eat oily fish get lots of yummy PCB's and other persistent
organic pollutants. And critters that eat the critters that eat oily fish
get even more of Monsanto's pride and joy -- PCB's. This process, called
bio-accumulation, works so well that Inuit peoples -- who eat the walrus and
killer whales and seals that eat the oily fish that eat the ... well, you
get you the picture. Some Inuit peoples have concentrations of PCB so high
that if they were food, they'd be confiscated.

Well, no one eats Inuits, so no problem, right Monsanto? Nursing Inuits and
their babies don't see it that way: the way humans excrete PCB and other
oily synthetic toxins our bodies can't break down is by excreting fat. As
you've probably noticed, we don't tend to go sliming around leaving trails
of fat. Unless, well, we're nursing. Yep -- to produce breast milk, human
women (like the other mammals) break down stored body fat to nourish those
little critters. Which is why Inuit women (and other circumpolar indigenous
peoples) have been found to produce breast milk with incredibly high levels
of PCB's and other potent, indestructible toxic compounds.

Hey -- better living through chemistry, right?


Don't wanna bother to go to the Arctic to raise levels of toxic PCBs in your
diet? Hey, you don't have to -- just chow down on farmed salmon. The EWG
found the farmed stuff is so laden with toxinsthat people should eat no more
than eight ounces per month.

Fond of tumors and synthetic dyes? Well, lucky you -- here's a big steaming
pile of farmed salmon. In addition to being flabby (from spending their
lives in pens, rather than swimming through the ocean oceans), farmed salmon
are a lovely shade of -- urp -- grey. Those thoughtful salmon farm owners
think of everything, so they give their flabby captives a diet high in
artificial dyes. Yum.

Fond of PCB's, tumors, synthetic dyes, and global warming -- and have it in
for penguins? Well, step right up. Remember that yummy food for farmed
salmon? Well, the part that isn't made from fish oil and oily fish laden
with PCB's and persistent organic pollutants -- that part's made from krill.

What are krill? Oh, just another ocean critter we clever humans are mining
to hell. Krill live around the Antarctic, where they are a main component of
penguins' diets and an apparently nifty way of pulling CO2 out of the
atmosphere and into the deep oceans.

An eco two-fer, right?

So, of course, we're killing them off for salmon farms. The krill, that
is -- and hence the penguins that depend upon them.

An ecocidal two-fer.

But wait -- there's more.

Salmon farms also act as giant petri dishes for sea lice. Yum. Sea lice are
parasites that slowly accumulate on some salmon as they grow to adulthood,
spawn, and die. Mother Nature, clever woman, ensured that the adult salmon
croaked and turned to bear meat and forest fertilizer long before their eggs
hatched into smolts for the trip out to the ocean. No adult salmon -- no sea
lice for the little ones.

The miracle of salmon farming, however, ensures that -- on their way out to
sea -- the young salmon run a gantlet of farmed adultish fish in pens --
fishy versions of a sea lice Petri dish. This efficient system for killing
wild salmon has already crashed salmon in Ireland, Scotland, and Norway. On
Canada's west coast, salmon runs that pass through coastal areas with fish
farms are expected to crash in four years.

Bye, wild salmon. Hello, fish farms.

What do toxic crap and chloracne and dead penguins and sea lice and liver
tumors have to do with Cheney and DiFi? Without consulting genealogists, the
incomplete answer is that Cheney and DiFi give their wealthy pals our
Federal water, and their pals turn around and kill off wild salmon across
the West by killing off their habitat.

Yesterday the Pacific Fisheries Management Council cancelled the 2008
Chinook salmon fishing season for California and most of Oregon, citing
collapse of the only healthy salmon run passing though the California Delta
and San Francisco Bay. The week before, DiFi "improved" her plan to give 500
wealthy families federal water that used to feed the Delta -- and the
salmon.

Oh, the improvement? Well, under the old plan, the 500 Lords of the Westland
Water District would only have been able to sell low-cost subsidized federal
water for sixty years (twice the length of the average irrigation contract).
Under the new plan DiFi loves, the 500 families get an indefinite contract
for the water ... water they can ultimately turn around and sell on the open
market.

What is low-cost federal water? Water from vast projects you and I and all
the other U.S. taxpayers paid the Bureau of Reclamation to build for the
public good; in the arid West, most of the projects carry water that
originally flowed off public lands. The plan DiFi loves takes water from the
slopes of the Sierra Nevada that once flowed into the San Joaquin River, and
spits it into the Westland's siphons -- and pockets.

WTF does this have to do with salmon?

Well, the San Joaquin River and the Sacramento River flow together to create
the California Delta, which flows into the Pacific through the San Francisco
Bay. The vast Delta-Bay waters form the largest estuary on the Pacific Coast
of the Western Hemisphere. As estuaries act as giant nurseries for fish and
shellfish, the Delta-Bay system is the biggest single fish nursery between
Tierra Del Fuego and Alaska.

And DiFi wants to pay 500 families who already suck water out of that system
to do so for forever.

And all they had to do was poison 400,000 acres of land and stiff the Feds
for $490 million.

Now that's a return on investment: for every acre of land poisoned and every
million I stiff the Feds, DiFi will push through a bill to give me $100
million -- and push endangered salmon right over the edge to
near-extinction.

Such a deal -- for the wealthy 500 families DiFi pays off. And for the deep
pockets that own the fish farms killing off Northwest salmon.

If you or I willfully poison an acre of federal land -- and kill endangered
species -- while stiffing the Feds for a million dollars, do you think we
would get indefinite rights to sell cheap federal water to the highest
bidder? Nope.

We'll get to be inmates.

In the meantime, we can have antibiotics and sea lice -- with a side helping
of flabby farmed salmon. Or we can have fresh Pacific Northwest salmon --
before the fish farms kill 'em off -- for up to $40 a pound.

Ain't the Village sweet?

Bon Appetit.

http://firedoglake.com/2008/04/11/wild-salmon-40-a-pound-giving-away-their-water-40-billion/
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/23/fishing.food

· Krill live in all the world's oceans, but Antarctic krill are the most numerous, with an estimated population of up to 500 million tonnes.

· Antarctic krill grow to 6cm. If they were all put together they could fill Wembley football stadium 1,500 times.

· Krill eat algae and plankton and are eaten by predators such as whales. One whale can eat four tonnes of krill a day.

· Krill are thought to 'sequester' carbon equivalent to the emissions of 35 million cars a year.

· Average Antarctic Peninsula temperatures have risen 2.5C in the last 50
 
Volume 13, Number 1–January 2007
Commentary
Salmon Aquaculture and Transmission of the Fish Tapeworm

Felipe C. Cabello* Comments to Author
*New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York, USA

...until recently, few examples have been reported of pathogens that could be transmitted to humans directly by the products and subproducts of salmon aquaculture. I discuss here information indicating that salmon aquaculture may be involved in expanding the range of fish tapeworm infections in nature and to humans.

Several recent publications report outbreaks of human cases of infection by the fish tapeworm Diphyllobothrium latum in Brazil (5–9). These infections have been epidemiologically linked to consumption of raw salmon produced by the aquaculture industry in southern Chile, thousands of miles away (5–9). Infections by D. latum have been detected in several cities in Brazil (5–9), and in a tourist who traveled there from Europe (10). These cases of diphyllobothriasis are noteworthy because this parasite was totally unknown to clinicians and parasitologists in Brazil, where it does not appear to have an endemic life cycle (5–9)....

...The link that closes the epidemiologic chain between the Brazilian outbreak of fish tapeworm infections and the aquaculture of salmon in southern Chile is that some of the freshwater lakes where D. latum and D. dendriticum are endemic are used to grow the freshwater stages of juvenile salmon, or smolt, in cages...

...This epidemiologic event may also be understood as a cautionary tale and an additional example of the dangers entailed by the globalization of food supply and of the rapidly changing global eating habits that facilitate the distribution of human and animal pathogens worldwide. The expansion of diphyllobothriasis-endemic areas in Chile may, in turn, facilitate the appearance of future outbreaks of this disease as the aquaculture industry expands to these new infested areas and the market for Chilean salmon enlarges worldwide. ...

for this article in it's entirety, see:
http://www.cdc.gov/NCIDOD/EID/13/1/169.htm
 
Here's some more info for you folks, on the development of DFO (in 1979) and what is the actual legal mandate is (as opposed to what they are illegally trying to change)...

The department was created in 1979 through the passing of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Act (1978-79, c. 13, s. 2.). The first DFO minister was the Hon. Roméo LeBlanc, who was first appointed as the Minister of State (Fisheries) from 1974 to 1976, appointed again as the Minister of Fisheries and the Environment from 1976 to 1979, and then became the first Minister of Fisheries and Oceans in 1979 after the passing of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Act in 1979. The current minister, Loyola Hearn, is the 19th since the department was formed.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans Act is a short act, and it states:

2. (1) There is hereby established a department of the Government of Canada called the Department of Fisheries and Oceans over which the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans appointed by commission under the Great Seal shall preside.
(2) The Minister holds office during pleasure and has the management and direction of the Department.
1978-79, c. 13, s. 3.
3. The Governor in Council may appoint an officer called the Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to hold office during pleasure and to be the deputy head of the Department.
1978-79, c. 13, s. 4.
4. (1) The powers, duties and functions of the Minister extend to and include all matters over which Parliament has jurisdiction, not by law assigned to any other department, board or agency of the Government of Canada, relating to
(a) sea coast and inland fisheries;
(b) fishing and recreational harbours;
(c) hydrography and marine sciences; and
(d) the coordination of the policies and programs of the Government of Canada respecting oceans.
(2) The powers, duties and functions of the Minister also extend to and include such other matters, relating to oceans and over which Parliament has jurisdiction, as are by law assigned to the Minister.
5. The Minister may, with the approval of the Governor in Council, enter into agreements with the government of any province or any agency thereof respecting the carrying out of programs for which the Minister is responsible.
1978-79, c. 13, s. 6.
6. The Minister shall, on or before the 31st day of January next following the end of each fiscal year or, if Parliament is not then sitting, on any of the first five days next thereafter that either House of Parliament is sitting, submit to Parliament a report showing the operations of the Department for that fiscal year.
1978-79, c. 13, s. 7.

The strategic objectives of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, as published in the DFO 1979-80 annual report, are to assure:

- the comprehensive management of Canada's fisheries resources through the protection, rehabilitation and enhancement of individual fish stocks and the aquatic habitat upon which these resources depend;
- the "best use" of fisheries resources, through a variety of measures affecting when, where, how and by whom these resources are harvested, processed and marketed to obtain highest possible social and economic benefits;
- the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge of oceanic processes and environments so as to support activities related to defence, marine transportation, the exploitation of offshore energy resources, and the management of the fishery resource and its aquatic habitat;
- hydrographic surveying of Canada's coastal and inland waters for the production of nautical charts and other information necessary for safe navigation;
- the provision of a national ocean information service;
- the provision and administration of a national system of harbours in support of commercial fishing vessels and recreational boating; and
- the conduct of a range of international activities in both the fisheries and oceans sectors.

NOTE: Nowheres is promotion of open net-pen aquaculture listed as one of the key strategic objectives

So, basically - the minister looks after the fish and the ocean, including all matters over which Parliament has jurisdiction (i.e. the management of the fishery resource and its aquatic habitat) BUT *NOT* those duties assigned to any other department, board or agency of the Government of Canada. This is the basic laws of Canada, here.

Okay lets look at say Industry Canada's mandate, then:
http://www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/ic1.nsf/en/h_00018e.html

Industry Canada's mandate includes three strategic objectives — a fair, efficient and competitive marketplace; an innovative economy; and competitive industry and sustainable communities. Okay - one would expect some support here for the high-tech end of the aquaculture business.

What about Agriculture Canada? http://www.agr.gc.ca/index_e.php?s1=info&page=mandat

The Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food is responsible for all matters relating to agriculture. This includes supporting agricultural productivity and trade, stabilizing farm incomes, encouraging research and development, and being responsible for the inspection and regulation of animals and plant-life forms. The Minister has been assigned responsibility for coordinating rural development and enhancing the quality of rural life.

Sounds like a natural fit here - for the promotion of aquaculture.

Yet, DFO's Federal Aquaculture Development Strategy http://www.ncr.dfo.ca/ocad-bcda/aqu_e.pdf states:

"DFO is the lead federal department for the sustainable management of fisheries and aquaculture.In 1990, the department published an initial strategy for aquaculture development. This was followed, in 1995, by the Federal Aquaculture Development Strategy, a plan that covers all federal departments having a role in aquaculture. The objectives of the strategy are:

* to provide a framework for integrated federal support for aquaculture development
* to advance aquaculture in a manner that complements traditional, recreational and Native fisheries, and is consistent with federal responsibilities for public health and the environment
* to help position the industry in a manner that supports the realization of sustainable competitive advantages while minimizing resource use conflicts

In other words, DFO's legal mandate has become hijacked to support and advance aquaculture, while simultaneously trying to protect and manage the fishery resource and its aquatic habitat against impacts from the advancing open net-pen aquaculture.

Remember that DFO is supposed to *NOT* take on those duties assigned to any other department, board or agency of the Government of Canada - including Agriculture Canada - BY LAW.

In addition to breaking the laws of Canada; Canada and DFO support the statement in Principle 15 of the “1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development” which states:

“In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capability. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

This “precautionary approach” should encourage, or perhaps even oblige, decision-makers to consider the potential for harmful effects of activities on the environment before (and not after) they approve those activities (http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/cppa/PDF/discussion doc-e-allfonts.pdf).
DFO is legally mandated to use the precautionary approach.

DFO has frequently used the “precautionary approach” to shut-down commercial fisheries. Never once have they used it to shut-down an open net-pen site.

I think someone in DFO should go to jail. It all started with the Office of the Commissioner for Aquaculture Development (OCAD) (see previous posts)...
 
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