Groups differ on farmed salmon upgrade
Seafood Watch gives go-ahead, while SeaChoice raises concerns about risks from sea lice
B.C. salmon farmers are celebrating their industry’s upgrade by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, but the local seafood watchdog SeaChoice is raining on their parade.
Seafood Watch has rated B.C.’s farmed Atlantic salmon a “good alternative,” citing low pesticide use, fewer escapes and improved transparency.
And while the report notes that the industry is vulnerable to sea-lice infestation, “there is currently insufficient evidence to conclude that population-level impacts to wild salmon are occurring due to pathogen and/or parasite transfer from salmon farms.”
But that kind of uncertainty is unacceptable to SeaChoice — a coalition of the David Suzuki Foundation, Living Oceans and the Ecology Action Centre — which has its own seafood rankings and places B.C.-farmed Atlantic salmon on its ‘“avoid” list.
“This comes down to a single part of their criteria,” said Scott Wallace, senior research scientist at the David Suzuki Foundation.
“It’s not about whether sea lice have an effect on individuals, but whether that translates to a coast-wide, population-level impact.”
In the complex ecology of the ocean, cause and effect relationships are notoriously difficult to discern.
“(Sea lice) pose a risk, they cause mortality, but to say they don’t have a population-level impact, we just don’t know for sure,” he said. “We’d rather take a precautionary approach.”
The industry was quick to dismiss SeaChoice as an opponent of ocean-based salmon farming.
“The organizations that are involved in SeaChoice are fundamentally opposed to farming salmon in the ocean, regardless of the environmental performance and the science,” said Jeremy Dunn, executive director of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association.
The Seafood Watch upgrade is recognition of the industry’s “world leading” practices, he said.
“They acknowledge there is a degree of uncertainty about the interactions between wild and farmed salmon, there is still work to be done from a scientific perspective,” said Dunn. “And we agree with that.”
The industry’s push to have all B.C. salmon farms certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council by 2020 means that information on pesticide and antibiotic use, sealice counts and escapes are freely available.
“(Seafood Watch) has reviewed a lot of data over the past five years and the improvements they’ve seen are providing a body of evidence that allowed them to raise our score,” he said.
Dzawada’enuxw First Nation hereditary chief Willie Moon was “surprised” to hear of the Seafood Watch upgrade for farmed salmon.
“Maybe sea lice aren’t much a problem for adult fish, but when they get on the smolts it’s really bad for them,” he said. “I’m losing 40 to 50 per cent of the smolts coming out of our river system.”