Future of B.C. salmon farms up in the air, as deadline to phase out open-net pen farms looms | 24CA News

After years of uncertainty, the way forward for salmon farming on B.C.’s coast stays up within the air.

Fish farms are a key a part of the salmon trade on Vancouver Island and coastal B.C., using as much as 4,700 folks, in keeping with 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 section out open-net pen farms in B.C. by 2025. Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) plans to have a transition plan in place by June 2023.

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

“I think everyone understands the critical 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 desire to protect them, which is why I’m working 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 consequently.

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

The Cohen Commission on the decline of Fraser River sockeye in 2012 additionally stated the Discovery Islands — situated 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 in all its key suggestions.

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

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

But in March 2022, B.C. Premier John Horgan informed the Prime Minister that that will price lots of of jobs within the province.

The following month, a federal courtroom decide dominated that Jordan had breached the rights of salmon farmers by ordering them to section 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.

An announcement from the First Nation Wild Salmon Alliance says greater than 100 First Nations assist the transition away from open-net farms and has known as on Ottawa to “stay the course.”

“We are deeply concerned that wild salmon runs in B.C. have suffered from the impacts of fragmented management decisions at both the federal and provincial levels, decisions that have contributed to the precarious extinction-level state of wild salmon and which must now be corrected if we are to see wild salmon runs successfully rebound,” said Bob Chamberlin, spokesperson and member of the Kwikwasut’inuxw Haxwa’mis First Nation.

Search for solutions

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

A discussion framework put forward by the DFO leaves the door open for farms to remain in the water as it looks to “progressively reduce or eradicate interactions” between cultured and wild salmon.

Murray says they are looking to the industry to come up with innovative solutions, which potentially include semi-closed marine containment systems that reduce, but do not eliminate, interaction between wild and cultured salmon.

But some say the federal government’s timeline is insufficient to come up with innovative, sustainable solutions — and to secure funding from investors to help implement those solutions.

“Two years simply makes folks nervous, makes workers nervous, buyers nervous and so they’re reluctant to take a position,” said Ruth Salmon, interim executive director of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association.

At the heart of the debate is whether fish farms should be allowed to stay in the water at all.

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

But the Coalition of First Nations for Finfish Stewardship — which works with a number of First Nations on B.C.’s coast that have negotiated agreements with aquaculture companies in their territories — say that plan is too costly and would likely result in the collapse of the salmon industry altogether.

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

Smith says the coalition is looking into semi-closed options — but Chamberlin worries that still poses a risk to wild fish.

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

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