No easy answers in fish-farm discussion

Amonth ago, federal Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc announced amendments to the federal Fisheries Act. The proposed amendments include, for example, promoting restoration of degraded habitat and rebuilding of depleted fish stocks, allowing for better management of large and small projects that affect fish and fish habitat through a new permitting framework and codes of practice, creating new fisheries-management tools to enhance the protection of fish and ecosystems, and modernizing enforcement powers to address emerging fisheries issues.

That’s a lot of talk about protecting fish, fish habitat and fish stocks.

Here in British Columbia, that means salmon.

Not three weeks after that announcement, a U.S. senator from Washington state called on the B.C. government to phase out ocean-based Atlantic-salmon farms. The state’s Senate and House of Representatives recently passed bills to phase out net-pen farms in its coastal waters when their leases come up for renewal over the next seven years.

The bills are a direct response to the failure of a net pen at a fish farm in the Puget Sound area last summer. Hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon escaped. A state review subsequently found the net had failed because it was weighed down by mussels and debris, and was poorly maintained.

The senator suggesting a similar phaseout in B.C. points out that a Washington ban in the Salish Sea would be considerably less effective if fish farms continued to operate in Canadian waters. Salmon, after all, don’t recognize political boundaries.

In the weeks after the net-pen collapse, Atlantic salmon were reported in the Strait of Georgia and as far north as Tofino. Although many fisheries experts say farmed salmon cannot survive long in the wild, fears remain.

Will any of the farmed salmon survive despite the expert opinions? Will the farmed salmon compete for salmon food against wild salmon? Will any find their way up West Coast rivers and spawn?

The biggest fears, however, are that the farmed salmon will spread disease to our depleted, already stressed Pacific stocks.

Fish-farm leases in B.C. are up for renewal in June. Despite our preference for wild Pacific salmon, farm-raised salmon is the province’s biggest agricultural export. We have more than 10 times as many fish farms as Washington does, and salmon farming is worth more than $1.5 billion to our economy. It also supports more than 6,500 jobs, many in smaller coastal communities.

The B.C. government says that nearly 10,000 jobs in the province depend on wild salmon.

The debate underscores how complicated we’ve made this issue and its resolution. The Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development is responsible for the tenurerenewal process in B.C. It issues tenures where operations take place in either the marine or freshwater environment, licenses marine-plant cultivation and manages business aspects of aquaculture such as workplace health and safety.

However, the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans is responsible for licensing and regulating most aspects of the aquaculture industry in B.C. It issues licences for marine finfish, shellfish and freshwater operations. Licences stipulate the volume and species that can be produced at a site and outline requirements for fish health, sea-lice levels, fish containment and waste control.

And, although B.C. has tougher requirements for fish farms, and few farmed salmon have escaped B.C. fish farms in the past couple of years, the industry is problematic. Recent confirmation by B.C. scientists that effluent from a fishprocessing plant near Campbell River contains a highly contagious virus that can infect and likely sicken wild salmon has heightened the concerns. A B.C. filmmaker released footage last fall of fish blood being discharged from a facility that processed farmed fish.

In December, wild B.C. salmon purchased in grocery stores in Vancouver, Victoria and elsewhere in the province tested positive for the same virus. The tests were part of a study that found farmed salmon could pass the virus on to wild salmon that migrate past open-net pens.

The proposed amendments to the Fisheries Act, to enhance protection of fish and ecosystems, and rebuild depleted fish stocks, bear directly on this issue.