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New Year Brings Hundreds of Thousands of Escapes
While winter storms ground many people’s travel plans to a halt over
the holiday season, open net-cages full of farmed fish also had their
share of problems. In late December, two British Columbia salmon farms
reported escapes. In the Tofino area, approximately 2,500 farmed salmon
escaped from Mainstream Canada’s Mussel Rock farm on December 18th.
While the company stated the incident is still under investigation,
they believe the escape was a result of equipment failure.
On December 29, a sea lion tore several nets at a Marine Harvest Canada farm on the Central Coast of BC near the village of Klemtu. Weather reportedly forced workers to wait a full day to repair the net, giving the estimated 43,000 market-sized fish in the nets plenty of time to escape. While the total number of escaped fish is still under investigation by Marine Harvest, Clare Backman, company spokesman said, “We suspect a large portion of them are missing, but we don’t have a number. It could be 50 per cent, we don’t know.”
And in the south, the picture for Mainstream is particularly serious. In the Los Lagos region of southern Chile bad weather caused 12 net pens at one farm site to capsize. Of the nearly quarter million farmed Atlantic salmon in the net pens, between 190,000 and 200,000 escaped into the water. The company claims nearly half have been re-captured, however, reports on the ground suggest the company is vastly inflating the number recovered.
Another open net-cage fish farm in the same area, operated by a subsidiary of Aqua Chile, had an escape of 700,000 farmed sea trout the same night.
Research has shown the introduction of large numbers of exotic fish is competing for food with Chile’s Magellanic penguins, a species classified as "near threatened" by the World Conservation Union.
Just this week, Scottish company Loch Duart also reported the escape of some 6,560 farmed Atlantic salmon in the North Atlantic. There have been at least four other escape incidents from Loch Duart net pens since 2000 involving around 45,000 fish in total.
No matter where they take place, escapes of farmed salmon represent a major threat to local ecosystems. Scientists have long warned that the escape of farmed Atlantic salmon into Atlantic waters has an adverse effect on the remaining stocks of wild Atlantic salmon. Escaped fish can transmit diseases and they also mate with wild stock, leading to a harmful narrowing of the gene pool.
Open net-cages cannot prevent escapes. The time to invest in closed system technologies that will eliminate this threat is long overdue. The Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform is organizing one last push to urge the BC government to invest in solutions by supporting a closed containment technology fund in the upcoming February budget.
If you live in B.C. please call your MLA and let them know you want to see the government take concrete action to stop the impacts of open net-cages. You can also help by sending an on-line message to the B.C. Minister of the Environment.
Deadly Salmon Virus Spreads
In 2008 we watched the deadly Infectious Anemia Salmon (ISA) virus rage across the salmon farming regions of Chile. The industry kept expanding further south into previously pristine areas, but ISA has kept apace. According to Seafood International, ISA is now endemic to all three regions where salmon is farmed in Chile. The industry has admitted their eradication attempts have failed and the best they can hope for now is to attempt to get the disease under control.
Years of massive expansion and weak regulation leading to poor industry practices no doubt played a role in the disease explosion. But the worst affected companies are the same global giants that dominate the B.C. industry, Marine Harvest and Mainstream.
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Fish farm / Photo: S. Proboszcz
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Hundreds of thousands of farmed fish have been slaughtered in an attempt to get the virus under control, yet infection continues to spread. Companies have lost but it is the ecosystem and the workers in Chile that are really paying the price for the poor practices of this industry.
By spring it is expected that the number of job losses in Chile due to ISA will exceed 20,000. While some government money has gone to provide support for unemployed workers, more money has gone straight into the pockets of the companies whose practices led to the disease outbreaks in the first place.
Before the news of ISA had a chance to subside in Chile, an outbreak in the Shetland area of Scotland was grabbing headlines. ISA was reported on a Grieg Seafood salmon farm in Scotland’s highest density salmon farming area. The deadly disease is suspected on two other farms and 31 farms are under surveillance. Ten years ago, Scotland’s industry was devastated by the disease with losses of USD135 million dollars (100 million euros) and 200 jobs.
Adding a deadly infectious disease is an extremely risky proposition that open net-cages do not offer any protection against, especially when the industry is pushing for continued expansion and higher densities. Aquaculture specialist, Dr. Neil Frazer from the University of Hawaii explains, “even without expansion, stocking levels have already made BC a ‘sitting duck’ for viral epidemics.”
For a disease like ISA to be ‘endemic’, Dr. Frazer says it means that the disease is established and cannot be eradicated. The most one can hope for is to control it. Pacific salmon appear to be resistant to ISA so far. But, Dr. Frazer cautions, “nature has an effectively inexhaustible supply of viral diseases, of which ISA is just one example.” We have seen deadly viruses on B.C. salmon farms before. In 2001-2003 there was an epidemic of infectious haematopoietic necrosis (IHN virus) in the Broughton Archipelago. What this outbreak tells experts like Dr. Frazer is that “stocking levels exceeded the threshold for viral epidemics. BC’s Sockeye, Chinook and Steelhead salmon are susceptible to IHN, and stocking levels have increased since the 2001-2003 epidemic.”
Closed containment systems are the only way to adequately control the risks of disease. Dr. Frazer agrees: “I believe that the costs of disease control will eventually force salmon farmers out of the ocean and into closed containment facilities. Whether BC will have any wild salmon left when that happens is the important question, and I am not optimistic about the answer.”
Dr. Frazer’s concern is certainly warranted. That’s why it’s so important that we act now to push the BC government to include closed containment funding in their upcoming budget. Read the full interview with Dr. Neil Frazer.
Beat the January Slowdown: Dine Out in Vancouver
If you’re in Vancouver, join in the celebration of BC food and wine and Dine Out Vancouver at one of the participating Wild Salmon Supporter restaurants this month.
From January 14 through February 1, several restaurants are offering set menus for $18, $28, or $38 per person. Many of our Wild Salmon Supporters – Diva at the Met, Sanafir, and So.cial at Le Magasin to name a few – are offering great dishes at an incredible price. Get out and support our Wild Salmon Supporters!
Check here for a complete list of participating Supporters.
In The News: Campbell’s Selective Use of Science
Globe and Mail reporter, Mark Hume, questions the fate of BC Premier Gordon Campbell. Campbell’s unwavering support for the open net-cage industry, despite a mountain of recent, peer-reviewed science clearly showing sea lice are devastating wild salmon, puts Campbell in a risky position as he gets ready to face voters in May.
Read the full story.
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