Researchers take aquaculture deep dive
Dal, MUN team to study workplace injuries, fish die-offs
A project involving a team of researchers from Dalhousie and Memorial universities is working to learn more about the aquaculture industry in Atlantic Canada and its impact on local communities.
Led by Charles Mather of MUN and Lucia Fanning of Dalhousie, the two-year project will examine things like occupational health and safety risk factors in the industry, the dynamics between wild fisheries and aquaculture, optimal density and number of finfish an aquaculture site can support, and environmental factors and other causes of fish die-offs in aquaculture operations.
Social scientist Barbara Neis is one of the researchers. She will lead a team studying occupational health and safety.
Neis told SaltWire the field hasn’t really been touched in Canada.
“There is no currently empirical research on aquaculture health and safety in industry in Canada that’s actually looked at the compensation claims, conducted interviews and done an analysis of health and safety systems.”
She said what they know using information from the aquaculture industry in Norway, where they have more data and research, is that “aquaculture looks to be one of the most dangerous occupations."
A review of compensation claims in Canada appears to support that theory, she said.
“Certainly, the accidentinjury rate is higher than the provincial average across Atlantic Canada. And we know that the types of injuries, illness and fatalities we’re seeing here are similar to those in Norway.”
However, Neis said, workplace health and safety issues in the Canadian aquaculture industry have been invisible because the statistics are included with those from the broader fishing industry.
Her goal, through this project, will be to separate the statistics to provide a more accurate picture of occupational hazards in the industry.
Gerald Singh, a geography professor at MUN, is also involved in the multi-team research. Working with other academics, he will study factors that contribute to salmon die-offs.
Singh said they’ll examine everything from how fish are fed and reared to high water temperatures and other environmental factors.
“We’re particularly interested in how a changing ocean can lead to increased risk of mass die-offs.”
The research is not simply to point out problems but to offer solutions.
“Taking into account that aquaculture has a presence here and may grow more, it’s worth thinking about how to do so sustainably.”
By knowing more about the causes of die-offs in salmon farms, the research could lead to practices to reduce the risk of these events, said Singh.
The project is a two-year Ocean Frontier Institute sustainable aquaculture research program. Final reports from the studies are to be available in 2022.