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Fish Farming

Fish Farming in the Great Bear Rainforest

From the air, the fish farms floating in the Great Bear Rainforest channels near Klemtu appear like floating egg cartons. An eyesore and blight on the viewscape but otherwise benign. However look closer and the picture takes on a much more troubling character. This industry, dominated by Norwegian corporations and supported by the provincial government and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, is playing Russian Roulette with the wild Pacific salmon that are the cornerstone of coastal ecosystems.

The history of conventional open net pen salmon farming on the B.C. coast is marked by one ecological misstep after another. In 1999 juvenile Atlantic salmon were discovered in two Vancouver Island streams, the Tsitika and the Amor de Cosmos just north of Campbell River suggesting that this exotic species is able to colonize and spawn in West Coast streams. In 2001, whale researcher Alexandra Morton discovered juvenile Pacific pink salmon migrating out from the rivers of Knight Inlet through the Broughton Archipelago that were infested with abnormal levels of sea lice. It raised fears that Atlantic salmon, being raised in cramped net cages ripe for the growth of disease and parasites, were precipitating a sea lice epidemic among wild salmon. Government ignored the threat. So did industry. What was first a suspicion has been confirmed by exhaustive field research conducted by Alexander Morton, followed by analysis of historic pink salmon returns carried out by University of Alberta researcher Martin Krkosek.

“Pink and chum salmon are the electrical cord of the coast; if you pull this plug then everything dims,” says Morton over the phone from her research station on Echo Bay. “In the next four or five years, if nothing changes with fish farming we’ll be down to populations of pink and chums that are at one per cent of historic levels.”

Sea lice, about the size of a sesame seed, occur naturally and are found on adult salmon throughout the coast. However fish farms, some with more than a million fish each, provide ideal breeding grounds for this parasite. When juvenile pink and chum salmon migrate to the ocean from their spawning streams in springtime and swim in close proximity to fish farms, they unfortunately make ideal hosts for sea lice. And unlike sockeye and spring salmon, young pinks and chums lack scales and are therefore particularly vulnerable.

On a single smolt measuring just four centimetres long, Morton has counted a devastating 68 sea lice. An adult fish might be able to survive this level of infection, but not a thin-skinned juvenile. According to Morton, in the spring of 2003 when provincial government officials ordered the temporary removal of fish from farms in the waters of Tribune Channel and Fife Sound, the positive results were almost instantaneous - counts of sea lice dripped to normal, sustainable levels. Only recently has industry begun to take small steps to fallow and remove farms from sensitive migratory waters.

There are also the poorly understood impacts of fish farm waste on the benthic marine environment. Underwater film footage has recorded images of a heavily impacted seafloor beneath fish farms thanks to the accumulation of organic fish waste that contains residue antibiotics as well as other chemicals used in the salmon aquaculture industry like SLICE, a drug used to treat sea lice.

There are also human health issues. A study by the U.S. Agricultural Department revealed farmed Atlantic salmon contains as much as 70 per cent more fat than wild fish.  It doesn’t stop there. A university student doing graduate work under William Rees, the University of British Columbia professor who pioneered the “ecological footprint” method of analysis, concluded that fish farming actually reduces the world food supply because of the amount of fish used to make fish feed. The analysis revealed that net pens produce just 1 kg of salmon for every 4 or 5 kg of fish harvested to produce feed. Much of this fish come from species lower on the food chain, such as mackerel and pilchard, which are being plundered from developing country ocean waters. The net result is what some people have called a net protein transfer from the third to first world. Furthermore 2.4 litres of diesel fuel are consumed for every kilogram of Atlantic salmon produced.
“The salmon farming industry expends large quantities of costly and increasingly scarce fossil fuel to do something that wild salmon do for free, mainly forage in the ocean for food,” Professor Rees wrote in a July, 2001 letter to John van Dongen, then provincial agriculture, fisheries and food minister.

Conventional net pen salmon aquaculture may seem like an easy fix for sagging coastal economies. However, the evidence is showing that expansion of this multi-national owned industry is occurring on a shaky ethical and ecological foundation. Wild salmon are already facing severe threats from climate change and habitat destruction – do you we need to roll the dice with salmon aquaculture as well?