More on Pollution...

Good point Agent. He'll shoot himself in the foot just fine on his own...

Regarding the methodology of likening or quantifying salmon farming pollution to a human sewage equivalent, I don't know why some of you seem to take issue with that; it's simply a different perspective.

We all know how pissed many people are that Victoria still pumps all it's **** directly into the Juan de Fuca. Well when I first read that data comparing the pollution output of your average fish-farm to that of the raw-sewage equivalent of a city of 500,000 people... then multiplied it by what... 125 active farms, the fact that it also had lots of water mixed in with it soon became a moot point to me.

Think about it.

The Norwegian salmon farmers are making money hand over foot in our water. About a thousand or so folks in BC's more remote communities have a medial paying job thanks to the industry and a few collusive politicians are also getting their pockets greased.

But what does the average Joe British Columbian like you and me get out of it?

1) Catastrophic disease & parasite transfer to our beloved Wild Pacific Salmon, some of which (sea-lice) has already been shown to be killing them by the millions. Remember the other big-ones, the viruses (ISA ect) haven't broke out yet... YET!

2) A foreign owned industry licensed by our own government to dump unspeakably-horrific amounts of toxic-waste directly into many of our most beautiful and pristine marine waterways, twenty-four hours a day... seven-days a week.(If you or I took a dump then pumped it out while tied-up at a marina, the Coast Guard would fine you in a heartbeat!) But this is okay. As long as they're not set up in the Howe Sound, Burrard Inlet or here on the South Island and remain out-of-sight of 95% of BC's tourists' - who cares?

3) A steady stream of escaping alien fish (Atlantic Salmon) that have shown us they have the capacity to colonize our waterways and compete with Pacific Salmon and Steelhead for both food and habitat resources.
And regardless that even the most seasoned scientific industry-apologists will concede that colonization is not impossible, they are all quick to point out that it has not happened yet... YET!

4) An industry that appears to have successfully convinced (paid-off) enough people in high-places (Campbell & Harper) that Canada needs not to worry about investing crucial resources in the welfare & rehabilitation of Pacific Salmon because they - 'Our Saviors' - are here to grow all the toxic-fish us pig-headed North Americans' will ever need.

Any more "Top-rods" on this forum want to chime-in in defense of this catastrophe-in-the-works?

Me, I'm not leaving 'rubber-fish' for my kids!
 
LH, I'm not defending the industry, but just looking at only one of your arguments objectively! As to the sewer equivilency, I just want to know how many pounds are thrown per day into a farm. That translates into what falls to the bottom and gets pooped out of a fish, neither you, nor sockeyfry has that answer. If a farm of 100,000 fish need 1000 pounds per day of food, that's 1000 pounds per day of "sewage" in the water. That's half a ton, or less then half a cubic meter. The cleaning table at Port Renfrew Marina fires that into the water every day.

It's a simple fact that nothing more goes out of the arse end of a fish then what goes into the mouth of it. For a city of 500,000 people, 50 or 60 tons per day of feed would have to go into a FF. If you put that anywhere near any of the farms I've seen, they would sink. Hell, most skiffs can't haul anywhere near that much.

I'm just citing an example here, but to someone who looks at everything objectivly, lets get some numbers here on what goes in. As a mod, I'm not taking sides, but just want to get to the bottom of this one particular aspect of the fish farm issue on our coast.




Last Chance Fishing Adventures

www.lastchancefishingadventures.com
www.swiftsurebank.com
 
Going with LC's theory the best way would be to find out how much fish feed is sold in the province. There of course are other factors as well though, like how much of the feed doesn't get eaten and just sinks to the bottom.

Take only what you need.
3641877346_d9919f98d0.jpg
 
quote:Originally posted by LastChance

LH, I'm not defending the industry, but just looking at only one of your arguments objectively! As to the sewer equivilency, I just want to know how many pounds are thrown per day into a farm. That translates into what falls to the bottom and gets pooped out of a fish, neither you, nor sockeyfry has that answer. If a farm of 100,000 fish need 1000 pounds per day of food, that's 1000 pounds per day of "sewage" in the water. That's half a ton, or less then half a cubic meter. The cleaning table at Port Renfrew Marina fires that into the water every day.

It's a simple fact that nothing more goes out of the arse end of a fish then what goes into the mouth of it. For a city of 500,000 people, 50 or 60 tons per day of feed would have to go into a FF. If you put that anywhere near any of the farms I've seen, they would sink. Hell, most skiffs can't haul anywhere near that much.

I'm just citing an example here, but to someone who looks at everything objectivly, lets get some numbers here on what goes in. As a mod, I'm not taking sides, but just want to get to the bottom of this one particular aspect of the fish farm issue on our coast.




Last Chance Fishing Adventures

www.lastchancefishingadventures.com
www.swiftsurebank.com
Click to expand...
Good questions and observations, Last Chance. They don't use skiffs to move the feed around - but barges.

I just did a mock-up of an 18 month production cycle for a "typical" Atlantic salmon fish in BC. I punched-in starting with 2 million 75 gram smolts, and ended-up with 593K 4.94 Kg market-size fish. I factored-in a 30% overall production cycle mortality rate (which I got from the web) - works-out to about a 0.225%/day mortality rate.

I then figured-out total weight of fish in that production cycle. Then I used the feed rates sockeyefry gave, with the youngest fish having the greatest feed rates of 1.5%, and gradually decreasing with age/size to 0.5%. That gave me amount of feed used per day, which starts at only ~2.25 tonnes per day, but increases to 146 tonnes per day at the end of the production cycle.

Then I added-up all the feed, and all the weight of the fish produced. It actually works-out to 49.94 Kg feed per 5 Kg fish produced (there's your 10% trophic level transfer I stated earlier); or to put it another way, 10.1 Kg feed are used to produce 1 Kg product at the end of the production cycle.

I then looked at the 72,000 Tonnes of fillets produced yearly in BC, and looked at how much feed that would require. I then subtracted the amount of product produced, and divided by how many active farm sites there are (~80 active, 140 tenures) - and ended-up with something like each farm site produces 27,000 Tonnes faeces each year (this is weight of faeces, not volume of sewerage, which can be misleading when comparing sewerage output from cities).

I then compared to so-called "average" faecal weights produced by an "average" human (http://www.ams.ac.ir/aim/0034/asl0034.html), and got a human-size equivalent for yearly nutrient loading from each site.

It works-out that each farm site has the equivalent sewerage of a city the size of 190,000 people, when comparing nutrient loading.

If anyone (incl. sockeyefry) has more accurate numbers - I'll update this spreadsheet, and the answer - but broad scale, the BC Salmon Farming industry adds the equivalent of 80 cities with an average population of 190,000 (in each city) to our coastal waters; for a total of 14,969,193 more humans pooping into the ocean.

Anybody know how many people live and poop into the water on the BC coast, currently?

The whole BC population (inland and coastal, treated and untreated sewerage) is ~4,435,738 (Apr. 01, 2009).
 
Yes the numbers are scary and they are also wrong.

If you were a fish farmer Agent you would be out of business very fast.

A typical farm does not start out with 2 million smolt and end up with 593K markets. You had better check your math cause that is not a 30% mort rate, that's a 30% survival rate. Where did you get that number anyway? Typical survivals are 85 - 95%.

A real farm takes in 700K smolt and produces 630K markets. On the first day they are fed a little over tonne, and on their last day just before slaughter they would receive 157 tonnes. The feed rate increases as they grow, but it is not linear as the feed rate also declines with temperature and light levels, so it is higher in the spring ands fall and lower in the summer and winter (it can get too hot in the summer).

The total feed required is 4,026 tonnes or approximately 1.2 - 1.3 kgs of feed to produce 1 kg of salmon.

For every 1000g of feed fed the following happens:

600 - 700 g becomes fish meat and energy
70 - 100g is "exhaled" through the gills as nitrogenous waste
200 - 260g is excreted
30 - 40g is uneaten pellets.

Source: Dr Steve Cross

Per tonne of feed fed, 0.3 tonnes becomes solid waste. The 4000 tonnes of feed fed would produce 1200 tonnes of solid waste. This of course would be spread over 18 month production cycle from a low of 300 kgs on the first day to a high of 50 tonnes on the last day. The worst production of solid waste at a salmon farm is 50 tonnes per day.

So your estimate of 27,000 tonnes per farm per year is quite exaggerated from an actual production of 800 tonnes per year. If I am reading your post right, that 27,000 per farm is the equivalent of a city of 190,000 people. The 800 tonnes of actual effluent is then equal to a town of 5600 people. 80 farm sites at 5600 people each is a total of 448,000 people, which is 1 / 10th of the BC population you cited at 4.4 million.

So you see once you get the proper figures, it is not that big of a doggie after all.

To further illustrate how far off the mark your estimates are: salmon feed costs around $1.50 per kg. Your 10 kgs of feed to produce 1 kg of fish means your feed cost would be $15 per kg of salmon produced. The current price for salmon is $4.50 per kg. You have spent 3 times the value of your product on feed. How do you spell receivership?
 
Agent,

The article was perceived by the industry as a threat because that is exactly what it was. If Orr's intentions were to show how rockfish can be contaminated then why did he specifically choose a site near a farm? Why didn't he do a broad sampling of rockfish from various habitats to see which are worse than others? That would have been a more meaningful study if the intention was to show how rockfish are contaminated. But this was not the point of the study. He did not study other areas because he may have found that rockfish around farms were no more or less contaminmated than those in other sites, or horror of horrors he may have found that they were less contaminated. Now we couldn't have that especially when we are trying to keep our legions of loyal sheep believing in the horror of the sal;mon farm could we?
 
quote:Originally posted by sockeyefry

A typical farm does not start out with 2 million smolt and end up with 593K markets. You had better check your math cause that is not a 30% mort rate, that's a 30% survival rate. Where did you get that number anyway? Typical survivals are 85 - 95%.
Click to expand...
I got it off the web; didn't save the web address. I'll use your numbers. And yes, I had it reversed (mortality/survival). Thanks for the correction and update, sockeyefry.

It does change the feeding ration early in the production cycle. I now get total feed volumes starting with 0.8 tonnes/day as a newly-stocked smolt (@ 700,00 pieces) and ending with 155 tonnes/day, as a 5 Kg market-sized fish (630,000 pieces).

However, it does not substantially change the total feed requirements over the total production cycle. I now have only a slightly reduced requirement for 25,400 tonnes for the whole cycle, verses 27,000 tonnes for the previous estimate. It only reduces the BC industry footprint from 14,969,193 to 11,765,498 human equivalents.

I don't understand how you can claim it only takes 4,026 tonnes.

The problem your industry has in estimating total feed requirements is:
1/ You are comparing dry feed weights to produced wet weights of fish, (not dry-to-dry or wet-to-wet), and
2/ You forget about the mortality costs.

The dry pellets also have another factor that is not taken into consideration: fish oil is added. It takes extra rendered fish (or weight) to produce that oil - another factor not considered in your feed conversion ratio estimation of 1.2-1.3.

Re: your question Craig Orr's rockfish study - why wasn't the open net-cage industry forced to do these studies, as you suggest they be done?
 
Agent,

Something is seriously wrong with your calculations if you think it takes 27,000 tonnes of feed to produce 600,000 5kg salmon.

You are gaining 3,000,000 kgs of biomass. Salmon convert at 1.3 to 1. You simply multiply 3,000,000 by 1.3 to get the required feed. Your 27,000 tonnes would be able to produce something like 24,000 tonnes of salmon.

Start with 700,000 smolt not 2 million. Set your mortality so you end up with 630,000 fish at 5kg and try it again.

The feed conversion I am using is an economic FCR, which takes into account the effect of mortalities removing biomass. This is different from a Bioliogical FCR which just measures how the individual fish convert the feed into flesh.

Yes we are using a dry weight of feed compared to a wet weight of fish. It does not matter as long as you are consistent.

Don't forget we have to make money doing this. I would probably tend to believe the figures of a guy whose been doing this for 20+ years over a person who's simply grasping at straws.

Agent, The massive sewage argument has never held water that's why the anti's have mostly abandoned it. The numbers do not add up to a disaster that they predict because salmon are the best converters
 
I confess some significant puzzlement over the offal thoughts raging forth.

I can't imagine 500,000 fish pushing a more significant volume of crap than 350,000 people... I mean when I look to check the degree of my personal satisfaction, I'd say it weighs at least that of a 12" trout, more or less. Then there's the folks who eat at McDonalds or Pizza Hut, adding whatever chemotherapy was included free of charge with that meal, or the latest & greatest in birthcontrol pills, or heart meds, or anti-depressants or anti-cancer drugs... I mean the fish just gotta luv that stuff right?.. Then there's the junkies, speedos & crackheads adding their delights... Or the avian flu/swine flu, hepatitis & AIDS... I mean that runs through the system...

The awful fish-processors dumping offal in the ocean are how much worse than those thoughtless salmon running up the river, doing their messy breeding thing, then having the termerity to die and rot in our fresh water resources? Not even mentioning those flying outhouses that feed on some of that rotting flesh only to excrete it back into the river? I mean the WHOLE fish is rotting and littering the river, and no small part washes back into the oceans... not just the awful offal.

And crabs each WHAT?.. Well, I know when they're hungry, they take powerbait, but if I'm not mistaken, they prefer to scavenge dead bodies and offal... converting it into a delicious 3-4 pairs of legs.
That's probably why Jimmy's never been found. And I know prawns & shrimp feed on whatever the offal organics are feeding.

It's sort of like the chain of life... You're born, eat all the veggies & meat you can, you die and feed all the veggies & meat you can... directly and indirectly.

The offal truth is it ought to go back from whence it came so as to feed the mini-munchers which feed the biggie munchers.

None-the-less, I'm still in awe that a 12# pen-raised salmon will produce more poop in a year than you or I do. Now a Canada Goose... I'd believe that! They carry fleas & ticks too! Oh jeez... that adds Lyme disease to the saltchuck too!... Let's kill all the geese... They're as bad for the oceans as cows & oxen are to the carbon footprint...

Closed Pens & filters... That would settle the danged hysteria once & for all.... Oh darn... I forgot about the peace & serenity and the unalterable postcard perfect view we all want from our boats... That's it... eradicate the cities... Get back to nature... We simply must stop feeding people!
 
cliffjumper - an excellent and entertaining post.

SF - Something is "offal" (thanks for that CJ) with FCRs. I'll check it out and get back to you.
 
Did any of you notice Sockeyes' deflection/distraction tactic?

After his lame rebuttal to Agents FCR/Fish-poop quantification, he quickly threw-in a revisit to the Craig Orr topic; pollution issues' make salmon-farmers nervous.

But Agent, true to form, stayed on topic and let'em have another one!

This is great! Hell, we otta' invite Barbender back and make a real party outta' this tag-teaming the both of em'.

I guess a correction is in order here. According to Agents' calculations my pollution data source could be skewed. (Who'd believe anything from NOAA any how?)

So, let's assume for now - until more detailed data is revealed - that collectively BC's salmon-farms ONLY dump the equivalent raw-human sewage into our pristine marine waterways as 10 to 15/million people.

What the hell have I been so concerned about?
 
quote:Now a Canada Goose... I'd believe that! They carry fleas & ticks too! Oh jeez... that adds Lyme disease to the saltchuck too!... Let's kill all the geese...
Click to expand...

You might be on to something here...[:eek:)]

Take only what you need.
3641877346_d9919f98d0.jpg
 
cliffjumper:
quote:None-the-less, I'm still in awe that a 12# pen-raised salmon will produce more poop in a year than you or I do.
Click to expand...

Well, then you try to quadruple your weight withing a few weeks and see how much you would have to eat and poop. You will be amazed!

quote:The awful fish-processors dumping offal in the ocean are how much worse than those thoughtless salmon running up the river, doing their messy breeding thing, then having the termerity to die and rot in our fresh water resources? Not even mentioning those flying outhouses that feed on some of that rotting flesh only to excrete it back into the river? I mean the WHOLE fish is rotting and littering the river, and no small part washes back into the oceans... not just the awful offal.
Click to expand...

Well, unfortunately it's not the more the better. They found this out the hard way when governments around world tried to artificially fertilize oligotrophic lakes 60 years ago to increase the lake's productivity. Which they achieved for a short while until the natural balances were way off and the whole ecosystem collapsed. Some lakes never recovered. Never forget that nature has created a natural balance which can take a hit here and there without keeling over but once too much and it's out of orbit. Who says how much is too much? Well, often you will only know afterwards that is was too much and then it will be too late to turn around. So I'd say stop or slow down when you can before it shows signs of too much. And we can force the fish farms to closed containment, even though they don't like it. It seems common sense to demand precautionary action before the damage is done but who has common sense????

sockeyefry:
quote:Something is seriously wrong with your calculations...
Click to expand...

No, something is wrong with this industry. It's not the calcs - it's the facts that blow your mind. I am glad you seem to feel that too. Wasn't so hard so see, was it? Your proposed feed/product ratio of 1.3/1 is laughable. Even your colleagues have confirmed way higher ratios - 3/1 to 5/1 from what I remember.
 
Chris you have a very selectuive memory. Back in the old days of indescriminate feeding and the culture of pacifics salmon FCR's were through ther roof, but today the feed wastage has been tightened up with that aid of cameras and better understanding of the biolog.

Agent, you will find my assumptions and the calculations are correct.

LH,

I was responding to AA's post regarding the rockfish. Read the rest of the posts. I was playing catch up.
By the way, It is not 11 million people worth, but only 500K worth. Sorry to stop you in mid rant, but AA's calculations are wrong, and the effluent is not the catastrophy that he has made it out to be with his inaccurate forecast.
I too am wondering what you are all excited about? A bit of rabid chicken little in you perhaps?
 
I closely reviewed the excel file I created re: feeding rates, and (as yet) cannot find anything wrong with it. I'll post part of it here, for everyone's review.

The start and ending columns of size (i.e. weights), number of fish, and feed (using the percentages sockeyefry gave) are correct, as far as I can tell. The feeding rates fits nicely into what sockeyefry gave, as well. See the pic below (I just included 1st and last 2 sizes, to make the image small).

3697804243_ed10e067d9_o_d.jpg


However the total amount of feed fed over 1 production cycle (i.e. 540 days, or 18 months) does seem to be at odds with the financials sockeyefry gave. I'm not sure what to make of this. Maybe it's got something to do with the dry/wet FCR conversion

Maybe the time frame is too long. Anyone have any ideas?
 
Hey, I finally found the glitch, and got it to match sockeyefry's figures. On 07/06/2009 : 14:23:54 sockeyefry posted: "A real farm takes in 700K smolt and produces 630K markets. On the first day they are fed a little over tonne, and on their last day just before slaughter they would receive 157 tonnes."

That 157 tonnes worked in my spreadsheet (see post above), so I didn't notice that this was a ~10% feed rate verses a 1% feed rate they finish with. That does change the overall feed input to the production cycle, and I am confident now - all the financials work too:

3697907947_90eec16d05_o_d.jpg


What this means is that each open net-cage site in BC has the equivalent sewerage nutrient loading as a town of 6030 people, with a total overall industry input in BC equivalent to 482,447 people (which also nearly matches sockeyefry's estimate of 448,000 people)

3697908113_7622103455_o_d.jpg


I am confident of these numbers being correct as they match the financials Sockeyefry gave.

These are still NOT insignificant numbers, sockeyefry, especially given the other impacts associated with this unregulated release of toxic/heavy metals at the site of anoxia, and the fact that DFO requires other industries to comply; which we already discussed.

However thanks for the help in providing the numbers for this.

There you go, Last Chance. You're question is finally answered - we have the equivalent of an extra 0.5 million people pooping in these pristine areas.
 
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