Future of B.C. salmon farms up in the air, as deadline to phase out open-net pen farms looms

After years of uncertainty, the future of salmon farming on B.C.’s coast stays up in the air.

Fish farms are a key half of the salmon trade on Vancouver Island and coastal B.C., using up to 4,700 folks, in accordance to the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association.

But open-net pen farms have additionally drawn criticism for the dangers they pose to wild salmon shares.

During the 2019 federal election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on a promise to phase out open-net pen farms in B.C. by 2025, and as soon as re-elected he instructed the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to come up with a transition plan for the trade by 2023.

That plan nonetheless is not in place, nonetheless, and each these in favour of and opposed to salmon farms in B.C.’s waters are anxious time is working out: environmental teams say depleted salmon shares cannot afford to await the transition, whereas the trade worries about job losses if the transition is not dealt with rigorously.

“I feel everybody understands the important state that wild Pacific salmon are in,” stated Joyce Murray, minister of fisheries, oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, on a current go to to Vancouver Island.

“British Columbians are united in our want to shield them, which is why I’m engaged on this transition away from open-net pen aquaculture.”

Concerns over salmon well being

In open-net pen aquaculture, fish are raised in cages or nets the place water flows freely between the farms and the open ocean.

Environmental advocates and scientists have lengthy sounded the alarm on excessive ranges of sea lice, and different pathogens, spilling over from the farms into wild salmon populations as a consequence.

Studies in 2011 and 2017 discovered younger sockeye salmon from B.C.’s Fraser watershed are contaminated with increased ranges of lice after swimming previous sea farms.

The Cohen fee on the decline of Fraser River sockeye in 2012 additionally stated the Discovery Islands — positioned between Vancouver Island and B.C.’s mainland coast — act as a bottleneck alongside wild salmon migration routes, and eliminating the fish farms was one of its key suggestions.

But motion towards that aim hasn’t been smooth-sailing. 

In 2020, earlier fisheries minister Bernadette Jordan introduced that open-net pen farms in the Discovery Islands would shut completely by June 2022.

But in March 2022, B.C. Premier John Horgan informed the Prime Minister that that might price a whole bunch of jobs in the province.

The following month, a federal court docket choose dominated that Jordan had breached the rights of salmon farmers by ordering them to phase out operations with out correct discover or session.

As a consequence, in June, licences for 79 open-net pen farms outdoors of the Discovery Islands have been granted an working extension till not less than spring 2023. 

LISTEN | CBC reporter Emily Vance explains the stakes for salmon farming in B.C.

A press release from the First Nations Wild Salmon Alliance says greater than 100 First Nations assist the transition away from open-net farms and has known as on Ottawa to “keep the course.”

“We are deeply involved that wild salmon runs in B.C. have suffered from the impacts of fragmented administration selections at each the federal and provincial ranges, selections which have contributed to the precarious extinction-level state of wild salmon and which should now be corrected if we’re to see wild salmon runs efficiently rebound,” stated Bob Chamberlin, spokesperson and member of the Kwikwasut’inuxw Haxwa’mis First Nation .

Search for options

It stays to be seen what a transition from open-net pen salmon aquaculture would appear like.

A dialogue framework put ahead by the DFO leaves the door open for farms to stay in the water as it seems to be to “progressively decrease or eradicate interactions” between cultured and wild salmon.

Murray says they’re wanting to the trade to come up with progressive options, which probably embody semi-closed marine containment techniques that scale back, however don’t eradicate, communication between wild and cultured salmon.

But some say the federal authorities’s timeline is inadequate to come up with progressive, sustainable options — and to safe funding from buyers to assist implement these options.

“Two years simply makes folks nervous, makes staff nervous, buyers nervous they usually’re reluctant to make investments,” stated Ruth Salmon, interim government director of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association.

At the coronary heart of the debate is whether or not fish farms ought to be allowed to keep in the water in any respect.

Groups like the First Nation Wild Salmon Alliance say no, and are calling for a land-based, closed-containment system the place salmon are raised outdoors of the ocean and rivers with no likelihood of coming into contact with wild shares.

But the Coalition of First Nations for Fish Stewardship, which represents between 40 and 60 First Nations, say that plan is simply too expensive, and would possible consequence in the collapse of the salmon trade altogether.

“We do not have sufficient sq. footage to find a way to construct a facility that might be … economically viable,” stated Dallas Smith, coalition spokesperson and member of the Tlowitsis First Nation.

Smith says the coalition is wanting into semi-closed choices — however Chamberlin worries that also poses a danger to wild fish.

“It doesn’t have water filtration. It nonetheless permits for the introduction of illness and pathogens into the water column … it is not doing a protecting measure for wild salmon,” he stated.

“It’s the identical field with a special ribbon.”