No cents to recover fish
Dan MacLennan, Courier-Islander
Published: Thursday, November 05, 2009
The response to last month's Marine Harvest fish farm escape calls into question the company's commitment to recover farmed fish from the wild.
That's how biologist Alexandra Morton, a well known open-net-cage opponent, views the Oct. 21 escape of Atlantic salmon from the company's Port Elizabeth farm in the Broughton Archipelago area. Both the company and a commercial fisher on scene agree large numbers of the escaped Atlantics schooled outside the farm for up to 10 hours after the escape but there was no recapture effort until after they'd largely dispersed into the wild.
On Oct. 23, two days after the escape was discovered, Marine Harvest issued a news release saying about 40,000 mature Atlantics had escaped from several holes in two pens. The release stated "a vessel is on site for recapture efforts."
What the release did not state is that thousands of the escapees that circled outside the pens for hours, were gone by the time the designated recovery seiner arrived from Campbell River. James Walkus, of Port Hardy-based James Walkus Fishing Co., was on the scene with two of his six vessels including the Kristin Joye, a seiner, shortly after the escape was noticed on the Wednesday.
"They were all fairly schooled up," he told the Courier-Islander. "It just hung right around one of my boats, the Pacific Joye. With the lights on the school stayed right by them for the duration of a night." Walkus said the school stayed together for about 10 hours.
"Right then it looked fairly easy (to catch them)," he said. "I don't know what the results would have been like if the bottom was rocky but we would have definitely made an attempt. We would have loved to have made an attempt to rescue the fish there. I think we would have had an opportunity to catch a fair chunk of it."
Walkus thought the Department of Fisheries and Oceans had refused to give permission for an unapproved boat to fish the Atlantics, but Marine Harvest spokesman Clare Backman says DFO was never asked if the Kristin Joye could attempt to recover the fish.
Backman explained DFO regulations require every fish farm company to have a ZZA licence identifying specific fishing vessels and equipment to be used in the recovery of escaped fish. He said Walkus' boats weren't on the licence. Instead, the Pacific Faith, based in Campbell River, was called in to do the job.
"The question came up about whether (the Kristin Joye) might start fishing," Backman said. "Unfortunately, that boat was not one of the ones listed on the licence. That's why the boat didn't start fishing. We had the other boat on its way, so rather than use a boat that wasn't cleared, we had to use one of the boats that was on the licence."
But the Pacific Faith didn't arrive at the farm until the next afternoon, after the main school of escaped Atlantics was gone. The Pacific Faith recovered less than 1,200 of the 40,000 escapees. Backman estimated the lost Port Elizabeth fish were worth a million dollars or more.
After the escape, Morton said she couldn't understand why Marine Harvest didn't do more to recover such a large investment when it was swimming just outside the pens. But Backman says the fish lost all their commercial value to Marine Harvest the moment they escaped.
"When a fish has been outside the net and it's recovered, it doesn't enter into our harvest stream," he said. "Unfortunately, as odd as it sounds, we can't ensure 100 per cent containment of our fish. "One of the things that we maintain is full traceability from egg to plate. We always maintain that we've had full control and security for the product security and quality over the animal, right through. Once it's left the pen, when we do recover them, we can't put them into the stream with the same confidence. It could always be argued that those fish were outside the pen for a period of time - even though it might seem to some people a little bit ridiculous if it was a few hours only - but we ascribe to pretty high standards for our fish."
Backman was asked if that didn't remove incentive for the company to recover escaped fish. "I think the stronger incentive that we have is to maintain the confidence that we're doing whatever we can to recover these animals and to reduce any real
or public concern about negative impacts on the environment," he said. "That's what the ZZA licence was initially put in place for. Yes, there's not a financial incentive to recover the fish, but here in BC it's a lot more than just the financial aspects when something like this occurs. We all want to make sure that everything's done to reduce the environmental impacts."
Backman said Marine Harvest will talk with DFO about possible changes to the regulations surrounding recovery of escaped fish. "We need to be able to have the ability to make some changes to the licence when opportunities for other recovery become available," he said. Morton says the Marine Harvest policy explains a lot.
"Suddenly this whole thing makes a lot more sense, because if you've got a boat on scene that's capable of recapturing these fish, you'd think that the priority would be to recapture them," she said. "It's not in their financial interest to recapture these fish, so they will do whatever government asks them and they'll do nothing more. So calling the Pacific Faith all the way up from Campbell River is what they decided to do.
"They knew they were going to lose these fish. They knew these fish were going to disperse because they've been through these escapes many times. "They follow the letter of the law but they create an environmental disaster. "There's something very wrong with the whole management regime of this industry that would allow this to happen. If you could physically get these animals out of the wild and you don't do it, the fault lies with both government and Marine Harvest. They are not doing everything they can to prevent these fish from dispersing to the wild."
Morton said more financial incentive is needed in the form of "enormous fines for every single fish that gets out." The provincial ministry of Agriculture and Lands said it would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation. DFO said it was not asked if the Kirstin Joye could fish the Atlantics.
© Courier-Islander (Campbell River) 2009
http://www2.canada.com/courierislander/news/story.html?id=f9f14ac4-9a58-427c-a4a9-215eaeb69d88
