Bounday change approved for Cooke’s Digby salmon farm
The Nova Scotia Aquaculture Review Board has approved a boundary amendment for a Kelly Cove salmon farm site near Rattling Beach, in the Annapolis Basin. The decision was announced on the board's website on Jan. 28.
The board noted the number and configuration of sea cages, as well as farmstock, has not changed and will not change with the boundary amendment.
Kelly Cove has operated on this lease since 2004, and the site has been an active aquaculture operation since 1994.
However, the Rattling Beach aquaculture site has been the subject of controversy.
During three days of public hearings in Yarmouth last November, Ecojustice lawyer Sarah McDonald said the company had admitted on the record that they have been operating at their current size of 29 hectares – three times the size of their lease – for 17 years.
McDonald was representing local citizen Gregory Heming, who was an intervenor at the hearing.
In his application Hemming stated he was “rewilding” his property on the shores of the Annapolis Basin, located about 2.5 km from the farm. Hemming said the boundary amendment would impact on his rewilding project and therefore claimed he would be “substantially and directly affected.” The application for Farm Site AQ1039 was to bring all moorings and equipment within the lease boundary, with no changes in equipment, location or production increases.
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The Board concluded that the boundary amendment would have no negative impact upon the factors which it was required to consider; including other fishing activities and public right of navigation.
What, if any impact, will the proposed operation (boundary amendment only) have, based on the eight factors set out in section 3 of the Aquaculture Lease and Licence Regulations? “The short answer is none,” the board wrote, “with the possible exception of . . . the contribution of the proposed operation to community and provincial economic development."
“This 'proposed operation' consists only of redrawing a line on the water, so to speak. If the application is refused, the farm would continue to exist, but the cages, and therefore the production of stock would be reduced by 80 percent, with an obvious consequential negative impact on economic development.”
Cooke Aquaculture, the parent company of Kelly
Cove Salmon, welcomed the approval. Joel Richardson, the company's vice president of public relations, said the evidence submitted at the hearings shows that Kelly
Cove Salmon has been proactive and has invested heavily to follow international best practices.
After the review board's decision, however, Healthy Bays Network chair Brian Muldoon noted, “Both the department's and Cooke's testimonies were based entirely on past performance, inadequate harm prevention and mitigation measures backed by a toothless regulatory system.”
It was noted testimony from Atlantic Salmon Federation scientist Jonathan Carr had challenged claims from Cooke and the department that the Rattling Beach fish farm would have no effect on wild salmon in the area. The Healthy Bays Network and the Ecology Action Centre both said the board's decision largely dismissed that testimony, favouring the proponent's self-administered mitigation measures in the face of concerns around sea lice and interbreeding between wild salmon and farmed escapes.