Thursday, August 15, 2019

Salmon Farming...The Fauxification Of The Precautionary Principle.

EcosystemsDoNotAlwaysBendTo
BottomLinesVille


Alexandra Morton has been doing a lot of heavy lifting to determine whether or not ocean-based salmon farming is a danger to wild fish stocks.

Here are excerpts from her piece from earlier this week in the Georgia Straight:

...In 2011, Creative Salmon knocked on Dr. Kristi Miller’s door at the DFO Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo. They needed help figuring out why the Chinook salmon in their farms were turning yellow and dying. Miller is head of the DFO Molecular Genetics Laboratory in Nanaimo.

Miller detected piscine orthoreovirus, or PRV, a new virus discovered only a few months earlier, as the cause of heart and skeletal muscle inflammation—HSMI—a disease spreading unchecked through the salmon farming industry in Norway...

{snip}

...In 2017, we reported that 94 percent of farm salmon in markets are infected and that the virus has spread coastwide. But it is significantly more prevalent in wild salmon caught near salmon farms...



Now.

As Ms. Morton's piece points out, there is a raging debate about whether this specific virus poses a significant threat to wild fish. Ms. Morton feels that she and the folks she is working with have the evidence to indicate that this is, indeed, the case. As I am not an expert, I won't weigh in on the matter except to say that the calls for the DFO to engage in more research do not appear unreasonable.

However, the fact that the virus has been passed from farmed fish to wild fish in the waters of British Columbia indicates that other things can be passed between the two groups as well.

Which means, in my opinion, and in the opinion of at least one fish farming company, that there is cause for concern.

And how do we know that at least one farming company is concerned?

Well, they've gone out of their way to make better pens.

David Gordon Koch had that story in the Tofino-Ucluelet Westerly News a few months ago:

Cermaq, a major aquaculture company, is hailing an experimental “closed containment” facility in Norwegian waters as a safer mode of fish farming, saying that it reduces interactions with the marine habitat.

A similar system could be introduced to Canadian waters by next year, according to David Kiemele, managing director for Cermaq Canada...

{snip}

...He said that a barrier surrounding the net “limits potential interactions between our fish and the environment outside,” although he acknowledged that the experimental facility isn’t completely closed.

Seawater is pumped through the system from a depth of about 13 metres, he said.

“When you’re talking about parasites like sea lice and whatnot, very rarely do you find them down that deep in the water column,” Kiemele said...


Hmmmm....

'Sea lice and whatnot' are very rare down there according to Mr. Kiemele.

Don't know about you, but that does not give me the greatest of confidence that cross-contamination of, say whatnotish-type viruses will be eliminated.

Regardless, given their obvious concern about trying to stop cross-contamination why has the company  not just gone all the way and moved it's pens to tanks on land?

...Asked why the experimental pens are ocean-based – industry critics have called for fish farms to be removed from the sea entirely – Kiemele said that fish farming would require “a large amount of land” that could be used for other activities, including agriculture.

He also said that a land-based facility would consume large amounts of water and energy for pumping.

“From a practical and economical sense, at the moment it just doesn’t stack up,” he said, adding that the company could also continue to use its ocean-based leases this way...



Ahhhhh...

The stacking of the math is the problem.

Now we get it.


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5 comments:

e.a.f. said...

get the fish farms out of our waters. the profits are mainly made by foreign owned companies, Norway. We take the risk. It is us in Canada who could loose the wild salmon stock. What does Norway care. If the Salmon die, so will many other animals. For what a few buck? The jobs in fish farming aren't great and given the economy here in B.C. they'll find other jobs. If any one wants fish farms, they can do it on dry land.

RossK said...

Just hold on there a minute e.a.f.--

Are you perchance suggesting that the PR on the job prospects is, perhaps, pernicious?


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e.a.f. said...

well it goes like this, jobs on fish farms don't pay that well. it was one week in and about that much out.

One of those large fish farms, about a decade a go started firing their fish farmer workers. What did they have in common? well they were the higher paid ones, being long term workers and had all taken the 9 month fish farm course and some had years of experience and also had the unfortunate talent to "guess' when the fish were sick. Gave them "severance pay", etc. Interesting, it was alleged the new hires, had less education and were paid less.

If we were going to ban open pen fish farms, it would now be the time to do it. Construction is booming here on the Island and if you try finding some one to build a fence, get in line. Need landscaping created, 2 or 3 month wait. Signs up all over the place looking for staff, so yes, if the fish farms are suggesting any sort of "mass unemployment" good luck with that. The Island also seems to be in short supply of truck drivers, that air break class type.

My suggestion is: ban the open pen fish farms or any type of fish farm in the ocean, all employees attend a job fair, and government supplies grants for those who want to return to school for re training. We do have a shortage of nurses in this province, along with care workers. end of problem.

Personally don't think farmed fish of any sort does much for us. If wild salmon is expensive, well so what. Fishers have the right to make a decent return on their work.

Scotty on Denman said...

Read another way, if fish farms aren’t allowed to dump their pollution into our marine waters, then they’d be unprofitable.

Whether floating-closed-pen or landed-closed-pen, the only way to stop dumping pollution into the marine environment is to collect and dispose of the offal and uneaten food pellets—which otherwise settle in toxic piles on the seafloor and are a significant vector for PRV—is to process it somehow. I should think (and I’m no expert) that simply composting it on land would be the cheapest way to do it (and it wouldn’t be as cheap as simply dumping it into the marine environment). So it seems the farm must be near land to do this—and most of them are.

It’s definitely cheaper to build a lighter, closed, floating pen that a freestanding one on land. Thus the cheapest solution appears to be floating, closed pens where offal, morts and other waste are totally captured and transported somehow (by barge, slurry-pump, balloon...?) to the shore for processing: no sealice or PRV transfer to wild fish or the marine environment. (There might even be a use for the composted fish farm waste—but I note what used to be popular just a few years ago, “rocket-compost” from a fish-farm mort-composting and mixing facility at the Cumberland Dump, has suddenly been discontinued, I suspect because of residual hormone and antibiotic concerns; it certainly didn’t live up to the “organic” label initially attached.)

Cermaq probably sees the writing on the wall: Premier Horgan punted the fish farm controversy precisely five years ahead when a number of inside-waters, five-year licences expired last June. Hitherto, a coalition of local First Nations had been variously occupying or blockading fish farms they claimed—justifiably—were polluting their traditional territorial waters which, of course, are not included in any treaty. Horgan wisely defused the standoff by permitting the companies to continue operations, but only with cooperation with the FNs involved in the protest, the licences only renewable in four years hence if the two interests have come to some kind of compromise.

It’s unlikely the FNs will permit further pollution to their unceded territorial waters, therefore the companies have to figure out what they intend to do—change how they operate to the satisfaction of the FNs and the two licensing authorities (BC and Feds) or shut down and remove operations.

Horgan’s was a smart compromise because everybody realizes the FNs could have pursued their goal by way of pressing their right to a treaty in court. After the SCoC William (“Tsihlqot’in”) decision 2014, FN recourse to the courts is now a viable approach with likely positive results. The writing is, therefore, on the wall for open-pen fish farming.

Cermaq appears to be ‘pumping-cost-averse’ and so one wonders how the pollution aspect will be dealt with. It seems it’s trying to find a middle ground where reducing live contact between crop fish and marine wildlife by way of closed-floating-pens is good enough for both FNs and government licensing authorizes. But what about the actual waste?

Finally, FNs have a strong case to realize at least some of their constitutional rights with respect the environment. But will there be any compensation for environmental damage already done? Will there be any clean-up after open-pen rush farms are decommissioned? Naturally the companies want to avoid costs to remain profitable. Does that mean, then, that some of them will be decamping for sunnier shores?

e.a.f. said...

decamping for sunnier shores? I'd say exit stage left, but in this case it will be exit to some place stage right.

What Scotty on Denman writes regarding the "crap" which goes to the bottom of the ocean is quite correct. Now if we were standing on a boat and chucking that over the side of our boat and the coast guard or some government agency saw us doing that, we'd most likely be arrested for something.

They feed those fish these pellets and they don't smell good. The fish don't eat all of them, the sink. Fish die, they sink, etc. Its not natural to have that many fish in one spot all the time.